The Ninth Nightmare

she carries on her back. Then — when Jekkalon needs to zap somebody — like Nepththys and her priests for example — Jemexxa raises her hand and sends him a bolt of lightning. Or two bolts, one from each hand, if he needs them. All he has to do is angle his hand so that the lightning ricochets off it and hits whoever or whatever he wants it to.’

Kiera looked at the palms of her hands and they were as highly reflective as Kieran’s.

Springer said, ‘See — it’s as simple as shining a sunbeam from one mirror to another.’

Kieran and Kiera looked at each other again. Their helmets gave them the appearance of two giant praying mantises, one black and the other silver.

As they stood there, their Night Warriors uniforms gradually faded. After less than a minute, Kiera was back in her football shirt and Kieran was wearing his T-shirt and his jogging pants.

‘So what’s it to be?’ Springer asked them.

‘I just don’t know,’ said Kiera. ‘It’s all so much to take in. I can’t decide if I’m dreaming all of this, or if it’s real, or if you guys are pulling some kind of scam.’ She started to sound panicky. ‘Like, how can we cancel an entire sold-out concert? That’s two thousand five hundred seats. And we’re supposed to be on stage in less than three hours, for a final soundcheck.’

John shrugged. ‘Like Springer says, sweetheart, it’s entirely up to you. But if you don’t come with us, the rest of us will have to go anyhow, and from my experience we’re going to need all the firepower we can muster.’

Kiera clapped her hands over her ears in frustration. ‘Even if we say yes, Lois will be back soon, and there’s no way that she’s going to let us cancel tonight’s concert and drop off to sleep, just like that! Think of all the money that the promoters are going to lose if we don’t show! Think of all the money that we’re going to lose. And how can we let so many fans down? They’ll hate us for it! They’ll never forgive us!’

‘OK,’ John told her. ‘If that’s the way you feel. But what about your mom, trapped in that freak show? Are you just going to leave her there?’

‘She’s not real. She’s just a dream. You said so yourself.’

‘Right now she is, yes. But people suffer, sweetheart, even in the world of dreams. And if we don’t stop Brother Albrecht from bringing his carnival back to this world, she won’t be a dream any more. She’ll be real, and suffering for real. Brother Albrecht will put her on show, along with all of his other freaks, so that the paying public can come along and gawp at her.’

Kieran said, ‘He’s right, Kiera. We can’t let that happen.’

Kiera sat down at her dressing table again and stared at three reflections of herself in its mirrors. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘Selfish Kiera and mean Kiera and uncaring Kiera.’

But Rhodajane came and stood behind her and laid her hands on her shoulders. ‘Honey, all of us are selfish, and all of us are mean, and none of us give a shit. That’s the way I’ve been all of my life — with men, and with money, and with my own dear sisters. But you only have to do one thing for somebody else — just one — for no other reason except that you believe it’s your duty as a human being, and God will forgive you for all of your heartlessness, and you might even find that He gives you a heart by way of saying thank you.’

Kiera wiped tears away from her eyes. Springer came up to stand beside Rhodajane and said, ‘When you walked into that dream last night, Kiera, that wasn’t even your dream. Kieran knew that, didn’t you, Kieran? It was being dreamed by a young girl of eight years old who was staying with her parents in Room Six-Two-Five. Your psychic sensitivity enabled you and Kieran to enter her dream and find out what had happened to your mother.

‘You can see the dead, can’t you — you and Kieran?’

‘You know about that, too?’ said Kieran. ‘Is there anything you don’t know about us?’

‘To Ashapola, Kieran, all human beings are an open book. All I do is turn the pages and read what’s written there.’

‘So you know we saw some bum on Santa Monica Boulevard jumping in front of the traffic and never getting hurt; and some gangster with his throat cut in the barbershop at the Handlery Hotel in San Francisco; and some drowned woman in the Japanese Garden in Portland, just lying under the water in the pond smiling up at us like she was happy at last.’

‘Yes,’ said Springer. ‘And that’s why you can be so useful to us. We suspect that Gordon Veitch could be one of those dead people who won’t lie down. A Dread, we call them. That’s why he can move so easily from the real world to the dream world, and back again. He can appear, he can disappear, whenever he feels like it. But he won’t be able to hide from you two, in either world.’

Kiera reached out and took hold of Kieran’s hand. She briefly closed her eyes and gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

‘OK,’ said Kieran. ‘We’ll do it.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘We’re sure,’ Kiera told him. ‘Kieran’s right. If there’s any chance of rescuing our mom — we have to try, at the very least.’

‘The point is, how do we get out of here?’ asked Kieran. ‘Sherwin and Lamar won’t let us out of their sight, even if you turned yourself back into “Lois”. The promoters pay for them, to protect their investment.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Springer. ‘I’ve already booked a room on the fourth floor, room Four-Three-Nine, directly above this one. All you have to do is climb two stories up the fire escape. I left the balcony doors unlocked. Meantime, I’ll leave here through the front door and tell your bodyguard friends that you’re not to be disturbed.’

Kiera said, ‘So you have everything arranged already. How did you know we were going to say yes?’

Springer was gradually changing his appearance, from Kenny Ballantine back into Lois Schulz. They all found it fascinating to watch, as “Kenny” dwindled down to five feet four and his hair turned dark and his long gangly legs became skinny and bowed, with shiny black pantyhose and black patent shoes with very high heels.

‘How did I know you were going to say yes? You’re natural-born Night Warriors, that’s why. You’re Jekkalon and Jemexxa, the acrobat and the acrobat’s twin. That’s who you are, even more than Kieran and Kiera Kaiser. It’s your destiny.’

TWELVE Night Flight

By midnight, David was snoring softly with his green mask over his eyes. Katie eased herself out of bed and went through to her dressing room. She opened up her white satin-covered jewelry box and took out the folded slip of paper that Springer had given her. Before she opened it, she looked at herself in her dressing-table mirror.

‘You don’t have to do this, Katie,’ she told herself. ‘If you’d rather take a rain check, what can he do to you? He’s just a young guy who happens to look a whole lot like Mr Flight, that’s all.’

Actually, she wasn’t so sure about that. If Springer was capable of showing her what she looked like when she was all dressed up in her Night Warriors suit, maybe he was capable of making sure that she wore it, and that she went out hunting for this Gordon Veitch character, and Brother Albrecht’s carnival, whether she wanted to or not.

She held up the piece of paper. To her surprise, the words on it seemed to be written in her own handwriting. Very softly, she read them out.

‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil. So be it.”’

Katie thought that the words sounded rather pompous and medieval, but in spite of that she still found them stirring, and she particularly liked the phrase about ‘the place of our meeting, armed and armored’, which reassured her that she was not going to be alone, but part of a fighting force with other Night Warriors.

She crept back into the bedroom and slid herself under the covers. David was lying on his right side now, and talking to himself. As far as she could make out, he was giving a lecture, but it all sounded like nonsense. ‘Not psychotic, no. Umbrellas. And everybody has to go now.’