The Ninth Nightmare

‘You said you didn’t have any dreams.’

‘I don’t. Not printable ones, anyhow.’

The waitress brought Walter his beer, and he drank half of it in one gulp, leaving himself with a white foam moustache. ‘Jesus, I needed that.’

Charlie was anxiously biting at the edge of his thumbnail. ‘Listen, Walter, I know you don’t believe a word of what Henry was telling us, but I spent a long time studying clowns. I got to know them, the way they think. The clown code of honor. Clowns play tricks but they don’t tell lies. And they have a long history of psychic sensitivity. I still think we ought to follow this line of enquiry a whole lot further.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘For starters, we ought to check all of the rooms in this hotel and see if we can come up with some kind of pattern. Not just forensic evidence — something more like the pieces of a puzzle. Henry talked about a figure of nine, didn’t he? Something’s going down here, and it’s going down tonight. I can feel it. Something weird.’

Walter finished the rest of his beer and belched into his fist. ‘I thought I told you before, Charlie. Me Hunch Detective. You Deductive Detective. Leave the frissons to me, OK?’

‘OK. But don’t you get any sense that something in this hotel is out of whack?’

‘Sure I do. I get a sense that I need another beer, and maybe some giant pretzels.’

‘And then we can check out the rooms?’

Walter’s head dropped in resignation. ‘OK. I give in. Then we can check out the rooms — but only so long as the manager allows us to do it without a warrant. If he doesn’t object, ask him if we can borrow a floor plan and a couple of pass keys. But I hope you realize that this hotel has one hundred thirty rooms and nine suites. It’s going to take us forever.’

Charlie stood up. ‘You’re not going to regret this, Walter. I really think we’re going to have this case cracked.’

‘Cracked is the word for it.’

Charlie went off to the find the manager, and Walter turned around to wave to the waitress and order another beer. As he did so, he saw John step out of the elevator and walk past the entrance to the Lantern Bar.

He squeezed his way out of the booth and waddled out into the lobby. John had found himself an armchair underneath a potted palm, and was shaking open a day-old copy of the Baton Rouge Advocate. Walter approached him and stood right in front of him, with his arms folded.

John lowered his paper. The headline was Iguana Regulation Bill Killed. The state senate had decided it was unnecessary to control the sale of pet iguanas, despite the fact that they could grow to ten feet long and pose a lethal threat to children and small animals.

‘Not taxi-driving tonight?’ asked Walter.

‘Taking some time off, detective. Catching up with some homespun gossip from B.R.’

‘Right here? In the Griffin House Hotel?’

‘Is there a law against it?’

‘Not that I know of.’

John looked up at Walter, unblinking. It was obvious that Walter felt that there was something suspicious about him sitting here, but he couldn’t think what it was. After a few moments, Walter said, ‘OK. But watch the attitude, OK?’

‘Oh, you bet,’ said John. ‘I’m keeping my attitude under constant scrutiny.’

Walter returned to the Lantern Bar, although he stopped and turned around before he went back inside, and gave John a look that almost made the potted palm wither up. John, for his part, shook his newspaper ostentatiously, lifted it up high in front of him, and pretended to read an article about people in Baton Rouge burning trash in their back yards and creating too much toxic smoke.

John was sitting in the lobby to keep a watch for Mago Verde. He didn’t expect Gordon Veitch to walk into the hotel wearing his clown make-up, but he reckoned he could pick out a Dread without too much difficulty. There was something about Dreads which he always recognized — a blurriness, as if he were seeing them through a fogged-up window.

From his vantage point beside the potted palm, he could clearly see the main entrance, as well as the elevators and the stairs. He could also see the entrance to the Lantern Bar and the Boa Vinda Restaurant and the corridor that led to the hotel parking-lot in back. The only way that anybody could enter or leave the hotel without him noticing them was if they climbed up one of the fire escapes.

He checked the time by the art deco clock standing by the reception desk. Seven-twelve. Kieran had promised to relieve him after two hours and he knew that he was going to need relieving. The smell of pan-fried escalopes of veal was wafting his way from the restaurant and he hadn’t eaten since twelve thirty.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Kieran, Kiera and Rhodajane had walked up and down every corridor and looked into every door that was open. When they returned to Rhodajane’s room, they found Springer sitting on the balcony, keeping an eye on the fire escapes.

‘Nothing,’ said Kieran, as he closed the door behind him. ‘Maybe he’s not coming.’

‘Oh, he will, I’m absolutely sure of it,’ said Springer. ‘After your attack on him last night, Brother Albrecht is going to be very anxious to complete the sacrificial ritual as soon as possible. Think about it: this could be his last and only chance to bring his circus back to reality.’

It was growing dark outside, and street lights were beginning to twinkle all around University Circle.

Kiera said, ‘What if we miss him? What if he manages to get into the hotel without us seeing him?’

‘Then you’ll have to go after him in Brother Albrecht’s dream, and hope that you can nail him before he manages to hand over his sacrifice.’

‘And if we can’t get to him before that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Springer, gravely. He was still in the guise of Dean Brunswick III, but he was beginning to look older and grayer than he had at first, as if the alcoholic ravages of Deano’s later life were catching up with him. ‘I guess you’ll just have to give it all you’ve got, and hope for the best.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ said Kieran. ‘Not.’

‘I don’t know what else I can say,’ Springer told him. ‘For some reason, Brother Albrecht appears to be invulnerable to the most powerful existential weapon in Dom Magator’s armory. Maybe he’s vulnerable to something more rudimentary — like a regular bullet-firing gun, or a crossbow bolt, or an ax.’

‘You think we should try chopping his head off?’ said Kiera, her eyes wide with revulsion.

‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ said Rhodajane. ‘Not us, anyhow.’

Springer said, ‘Anyhow, all we can do is wait. Mago Verde may have abducted and mutilated a ninth victim already, but he still has to come here and dream what he did to them into the hotel walls. Hopefully, that should give us enough time to find him. And even if we can’t find him, thousands of people all around the Great Lakes will be asleep by then, and dreaming, and at least some of them will be dreaming about Brother Albrecht’s circus. We can enter one of their dreams and go after him.’

‘I have a real bad feeling that this isn’t going turn out too good,’ said Kiera.

‘And what about our mom?’ asked Kieran.

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Springer. ‘You’ll have to play this as it comes. If you get the chance to rescue her, then take it. But I can’t offer you any guarantees. I can’t even offer you a plan. The truth is, with Brother Albrecht, I don’t even know what we’re up against.’

TWENTY The Ninth Nightmare

By twenty after eight, Walter had checked out seventeen rooms and two de luxe suites. It was police procedure at its most procedural, and to make matters worse he wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to be