The Ninth Nightmare

‘Oh my God,’ said Kiera. ‘You’re really frightening me now.’

‘Well, just sit and listen,’ said Springer. ‘When I’m through, you can either tell me to get the hell out of here and never come back, or you can agree to help us save your mother, and scores of other people, too.’

‘What other people?’

‘Your mother isn’t the only one who has been taken away by that carnival. Over the years, over the centuries, there may have been hundreds of them. Men, women, children, even babies. Some of them were born freaks, but many of them were deliberately mutilated and deformed so that they were turned into freaks.’

‘That’s so terrible. But why?’

‘Because the man who started the carnival is determined to bring out the worst in human nature. He wants to see an end to love, kindness and charity. He wants to see nothing but cruelty and depravity and wholesale, meaningless war. In other words, he wants his personal revenge on God.

‘If he can bring his carnival back from the world of dreams into the world of reality, it will spread around the world like the worst contagion you can ever imagine. A moral sickness like the Black Death, only a thousand times worse.

‘This is why I’ve come here today. This is the time when we need to act, and fight back, or the whole planet is going to turn into a slaughterhouse.’

Kieran said, ‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not, dude. But you sure look like Kenny Ballantine. You’re the spit of him. Even got that warty thing by the side of your nose.’

Carefully and quietly, Springer explained who he was and where he had come from. He told them about Ashapola, and how the purity of Ashapola could protect every person on earth, regardless of their religion or their core beliefs. He told them about the Night Warriors, and how their mother had been Azurina, the Sky Dancer, and how, as twins, they had both inherited her powers.

He also told them about Brother Albrecht, and how his arms and legs had been amputated, and how that had led him to set up his carnival and freak show.

When Springer had finished, he sat back to let his words sink in. Kieran and Kiera stared at each other in complete silence, but it was obvious that they were sharing their thoughts about everything that he had told them.

Eventually, Kiera said, ‘How could we have been these Night Warriors all of our lives and never known that we were?’

‘Because you weren’t needed, until now. Some Night Warriors go through their whole lives without finding out, simply because their special abilities were never called for.’

‘I never knew I was, not until last year,’ John told her.

‘And I never knew until about an hour ago,’ said Rhodajane.

‘So who are you supposed to be?’ Kieran asked John.

‘Me? I’m Dom Magator the Armorer. I carry every kind of handgun and rifle and bladed weapon that you can possibly think of, and most of which you can’t. You want a pistol that can make somebody half a mile away go stone deaf? You want a knife that you can throw through solid concrete? How about an Amnesiac Rifle, that can make your enemy forget who he is and what the hell he’s supposed to be doing there?’

‘This has got to be a joke,’ said Kieran. ‘Amnesiac Rifle? Who are you trying to kid?’

‘It’s no joke,’ Rhodajane assured him. ‘I’m Xyrena, the Passion Warrior. I can turn on anything that has a pulse, and a few things that don’t, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Springer said, ‘The best way for me to convince you that I’m telling you the truth is to show you what Jekkalon and Jemexxa actually look like.’

‘Jekkalon?’ Kieran protested. ‘What kind of a stupid name is that?’

‘Actually, Jekkalon is a highly-respected name amongst the Night Warriors,’ said Springer. ‘The very first Jekkalon was a servant at the court of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti the First in the year twelve ninety-one BC.’

‘Now I’m sure you’re kidding me.’

‘Not at all. The demon goddess Nepththys ambushed Seti in his dreams and took him to her palace in the dry desert. She tried to mummify him in his sleep, so that he would be powerless to act out his dreams. We all have to act out our dreams in order to stay fit and sane, but Nepththys was hoping that she would drive Seti mad and that she could turn the entire kingdom of Egypt into a barren wasteland.

‘But Jekkalon and Jemexxa followed her, and Jekkalon vaulted over the walls of Nepththys’ palace, which had always been believed to be impregnable. He blinded Nepththys and her priests with lightning, which Jemexxa had reflected from a distant electric storm. Seti escaped, and rewarded Jekkalon and Jemexxa with great riches.’

‘Well, it’s a cool story,’ said Kieran. ‘Sounds like something out of X-Men.’

‘Do you want to see yourself as Jekkalon?’ asked Springer. ‘All you have to do is stand in front of that mirror.’

‘Go on, Kieran,’ Kiera urged him. ‘You know you love looking at yourself more than anything else in the world.’

Kieran walked across to the large oval cheval mirror in the corner of the bedroom. Springer stood up and joined him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

‘Be patient,’ said Springer. ‘It doesn’t take long.’

Kieran shook his head. ‘Jesus, man. You look so much like Kenny, I can’t believe it. Remember that time you swung on that rope over Mill Creek Falls, pretending to be Tarzan so that Susan Ladenes would be all impressed, and the rope broke and you fell in head first and broke your arm?’

‘It was my collar bone, as a matter of fact,’ Springer corrected him.

‘This is totally crazy,’ said Kieran.

He turned away from the mirror for a moment, grinning at Kiera in disbelief, but Kiera suddenly said, ‘Look! Just look at yourself!’

Kieran turned back, and there, in the mirror, he saw a reflection of an athletic young man wearing a skintight suit made of some glittery black fabric that looked as if it had been cut out of a starry night sky. On his head he had a sleek black helmet with slanted black lenses covering his eyes and two long antennae.

‘Is that me?’ said Kieran. He leaned forward to look at himself more closely, and his reflection leaned toward him. ‘Shit! It really is me!’

‘To be more accurate, it’s Jekkalon,’ Springer corrected him. ‘But, yes, it really is you.’

‘And I’m some kind of an acrobat? Is that it?’

‘The best. You can jump, you can roll, you can run on stilts as fast as most athletes can run on their feet. You can walk on a high wire without using a balancing pole and you’re one of the greatest trapeze artists that ever was. Double flips, triple flips, easy.’

Keiran stood back, and spread his arms wide. ‘This is unbelievable. This is absolutely un-fricking-believable. I am Jekkalon. I can feel it. I know that I can really do all of that stuff.’

‘Well — you can’t quite do it yet,’ said Springer. ‘You’ll have to wait until you’re asleep, and dreaming. You don’t want to risk hurting yourself, like your old friend Kenny.’

‘So how do I go about making people go blind?’ Kieran asked him. ‘I don’t seem to be carrying any guns or nothing.’

‘Take a look at your hands.’

Kieran raised both hands and turned them over. The palms of each hand were so highly reflective that he could see his face in them.

‘So I got shiny hands, so what?’

‘Kiera — stand beside him,’ Springer asked her. Kiera put down her bottle of nail polish and came across the room. As she stood beside her twin brother, her reflection in the mirror began to shine, and soon she was wearing a tight silvery suit as sparkling as Kieran’s, and a wedge-shaped silver helmet to match. On her back, however, she was carrying a metal grid like a hiker’s backpack frame, except that it was covered with layers of complicated copper shapes like fall leaves, each connected by wires and circuit-breakers and switches.

‘Jemexxa is acutely sensitive to any static electricity stored in the upper atmosphere,’ Springer explained. ‘She can almost smell it, even if it’s twenty miles away and thirty-five thousand feet high. She attracts it in exactly the same way as a lightning rod attracts lightning, and stores it up in the framework that