The Ninth Nightmare

‘Not from here I can’t. We’re right in back.’

‘That doesn’t matter. George Roussos isn’t important right now. The main thing is, can you see Brother Albrecht?’

‘I’ll take a look. Don’t go away now, will you?’

Xyrena lifted her head with its high gilded crown and looked cautiously toward the stage. At first her sight line was obscured by a bulky woman with frizzy red hair, so she took two or three steps sideways until she was standing at the end of the nearest aisle, and she could see most of the stage quite clearly.

On the left-hand side of the apron, a seven-piece band of black musicians was playing that slow, off-key blues number — one of those down-and-dirty blues numbers that would have had deeply suggestive lyrics if anybody had been singing it, like I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl. The band were all wearing brown- and-yellow-striped satin vests and immaculately-pressed brown pants, and it was only when Xyrena looked at them more intently that she realized what was so freakish about them.

Four of them were two pairs of conjoined twins, the sides of their vests slit open because their abdomens were connected with a thick band of skin. They were so closely connected, in fact, that their faces were pressed together, and the trumpeter and the clarinetist had to share the playing of their instruments — the trumpeter using his left hand to finger the register key of his twin’s clarinet, and the clarinetist using his right hand to mute his twin’s trumpet.

The other three were conjoined triplets. Two of them were joined at the side of the head, while the second and the third were joined at the shoulder, so that one of them had no left arm and the other had no right arm. Between the three of them they were playing banjo and alto sax.

They were accompanied by a pianist, who was sitting behind them at a shabby red upright piano. He was thin and pale, with a half-starved face and curly white hair, but what was immediately striking about him were the two curved horns which protruded from the top of his head, each of them at least nine inches long. Xyrena guessed that they must have been grafted on to his skull to give him the appearance of a devil or a demon or a faun. He was naked to the waist, with a scarred, emaciated back; but it was only when Xyrena moved a few feet to the right that she could see that he was completely naked. Not that he was exposing himself — he was covered from the waist down in shaggy white fur. He had no feet, only hooves, which he was using to jab at the loud and the soft pedals. He had been literally cut in half, and his hips and his legs replaced with those of a Rocky Mountain goat.

Xyrena was so horrified that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Jekkalon and Jemexxa came up close behind her. ‘Holy moly,’ Jekkalon breathed. ‘I never saw anything like that in my whole goddamned life. Never. That is so gross.’

The pianist swept his fingertips all the way up the keyboard, to the plinkiest note at the top, plink! Then he sat with his horned head dropped down and his arms hanging limply at his sides and staring at the floor. A few moments later, with a collection of squeaks and honks, the jazz band petered out, too. The audience gave them a smattering of applause, but almost immediately they were drowned out by another ferocious drum roll, and another strident fanfare of trumpets.

Out of the red velvet drapes at the back of the stage burst a hugely fat man in a ringmaster’s top hat and a bottle-green tailcoat and shiny black knee-boots. He swaggered up to the footlights, cracking a ringmaster’s whip.

‘Ladies and gentlemen! And those who are both, or neither! Welcome to Brother Albrecht’s Traveling Circus and Freak Show! This evening we have gathered you here to celebrate the penultimate step toward the realization of our dreams! And when I say “realization” I mean “real-ization” — our seemingly endless nightmare at last made flesh! A triumphant return to the world of reality from the world of dreams in which we have been so cruelly and unjustly exiled for so long!’

There was a short pause before anybody in the audience applauded, and when they did, the clapping sounded half-hearted and sporadic. One or two of them cheered and whistled, but the Night Warriors noticed that there were just as many who sat with their hands in their laps, although they looked more bewildered than hostile.

‘Today I am overjoyed to tell you that the great Mago Verde has brought us back sacrifice number eight! Not only that, he has already dreamed her abduction and her mutilation into one of the bedrooms of the Griffin House. Her pain is now part of that building’s fabric, mixed with its very molecules, joining the seven other sacrifices whose suffering is secreted within its walls!’

Again, a few desultory handclaps, accompanied by coughing and the shuffling of feet.

The ringmaster cracked his whip three times. ‘Now there remains only one more sacrifice to be made before the gates to the waking world will be flung open to us, and the circus can pass through, with its bells and its trumpets and its clowns! One more nightmare, that is all — just one! And then we can bring chaos and anarchy to the entire planet, and undo the works of God for ever!

‘Ladies and gentlemen! And those who purport to be one or the other, or neither! I give you the greatest Dread who ever walked the world of reality and the world of nightmares — Mago Verde, the Green Magician!’

More clapping, more enthusiastic this time, and one or two piercing whistles, and then through the curtains appeared the gray-faced clown with the poisonous green smile. He circled around the stage with a self-satisfied strut, nodding his head to acknowledge the applause — occasionally flicking his long gray hair with his fingertips and blowing kisses, as if he were pretending to be gay.

‘Thank you, my friends, thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you dreamers all for joining our dream.’ His voice was hoarse and barely audible, so that everybody in the audience had to strain to hear him. ‘You are all far too kind to me — unlike the shits who are under the delusion that they run this circus!

He paused, and gave a real grin underneath his painted grin. ‘They all detest me, every one of them! And do you know why? They detest me because I am the only one, ever, who has shown himself capable of giving them what they want! I am the only one who can lead them back through to the waking world, and give them back the real life which they have almost forgotten.

‘You would think they would show me some gratitude, wouldn’t you? But no! They are all so jealous! I have the ear and the confidence of the Grand Freak himself, our beloved Brother Albrecht, and they hate that! But the Grand Freak knows that nine sacrifices have to be made, and that every one of those nine sacrifices has to be dreamed into the walls of the Griffin House, and that nobody else can do that, except for moi! Only then will he be able to wake up out of his dream, and lead his circus back to reality.

‘Of course the Grand Freak loves me! How could he not love me? He escaped into this dream eight centuries ago, thinking that he could easily return to the waking world whenever he wanted to, and continue to wreak his revenge on God, and all of God’s creation. But he reckoned without Pope Eugene. Pope Eugene cast a holy sanction — Sanctus Sanctio — which prevented the Grand Freak from waking up. And so for eight hundred years he continued to dream this dream. This wonderful, terrible, fearful, depraved and disgusting circus, which is everything that Heaven deplores, on wheels!

He stepped backward, toward the curtains, and then he called out, ‘Bring on the sacrifice!’

There was some tussling behind the curtains, but after a few moments two clowns staggered out, carrying high between them a bentwood chair. One of the clowns was in traditional white face and dressed entirely in white, while the other was made up like an Auguste, with a wild gingery wig and scowling red lips and baggy check pants.

Sitting in the chair, and tied to it with cords, was a plump young Hispanic girl with wavy black hair. She was wearing a long sleeveless dress of dirty gray linen, heavily bloodstained, and Xyrena could immediately see why. She had no arms, only two stumps at her shoulders which had been covered with thick gauze pads and adhesive tape to prevent them from bleeding, although both pads were now dark brown with congealed blood.

The two clowns carried the girl to the front of the stage and set her down facing the audience. ‘Behold!’ cried out Mago Verde, performing a little fluttering dance around her. ‘The eighth offering! Numero ocho! Maria Fortales is her name! A Mexican beauty beyond compare!’

It appeared to Jemexxa that the girl was concussed, or drugged, or dreaming. She made no sound at all, and her eyes roamed around as if she couldn’t understand where she was, or what was happening to her. But even if she were semi-conscious, her eyes were filled with tears, and tears were glistening on her cheeks.

The audience of assembled dreamers started a slow handclap, as if they approved of this latest victim, but were growing impatient to see what would happen to her. Dom Magator said, ‘What the two-toned tonkert is going