The Ninth Nightmare

‘Nobody’s going to hear you, tin man,’ leered Mago Verde. ‘Better off saving your breath!’

He forced the scarf into Walter’s mouth and tied it tightly behind his head. It tasted foul, like dog grease. Walter bounced himself up and down and tried to scream, but he only managed to produce a muffled gargling sound.

Mago Verde unfastened the buckle of Walter’s belt, and tugged down his zipper. Then — grunting with the effort — he dragged down his pants and his floral boxer shorts as far as his knees.

Walter lifted his head up as high as he could, his eyes bulging, staring at Mago Verde in a helpless appeal not to mutilate him. ‘Mmmfff!’ he cried out. ‘Mmmmmmfff!’

Mago Verde looked down at him and gave the slightest shake of his head. ‘Sorry, tin man. This has to be done. The Grand Freak wants a fat man who won’t ever feel like messing with his women!’

He held up the serrated kitchen knife and ran his fingertip along the blade. Even though he did it only lightly, it still drew blood. He smiled and sucked his finger, and then he lifted up Walter’s shirt.

‘Mmmmmffffff!’ shouted Walter, in desperation.

He felt almost nothing. A sharp coldness between his legs, and then a flood of warmth. In fact he couldn’t believe that Mago Verde had really done what he had threatened to do. He tried to raise his head again, but he didn’t need to, because Mago Verde was holding up something that looked like a bloody fledgling that had fallen from its nest.

‘There!’ he said. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it, that the only difference between a man and a eunuch is one insignificant piece of gristle!’

Walter’s head fell back on to the carpet. He felt darkness overwhelming him, as if he were sinking into a black swamp, and he did nothing to resist it.

Mago Verde stood over him for a while, and then he went through to the bathroom and dropped his bloody prize into the soap dish. He stared at his painted face in the mirror for a while, expressionless. Sometimes he was so cruel that he amazed even himself. Could this really be the same Gordon Veitch who had loved puppies when he was a small boy, and whose mother had sung him to sleep with Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes?

Well, not really, he decided. The real Gordon Veitch had died a long time ago, without even waking up.

He went back into the bedroom and lay on the bed, with all of his clothes and his shoes on. Walter was still lying unconscious on the floor, his shirt-tails stained dark with blood. Mago Verde closed his eyes and thought about nothing at all. He could fall asleep at will. Within moments he was breathing steadily, and dreaming.

TWENTY-ONE Hot Pursuit

It took Charlie over an hour and a half to check every room on the third, fourth and fifth floors. After he had visited the last of them, he called Walter to see if he had found anything suspicious. When he got through to Walter’s cellphone service, however, an automated voice insisted that there was no such number.

He called Walter again and again, but each time he had the same response. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again. In the end he took the elevator up to the seventh floor and walked up and down every corridor. No Walter anywhere.

He knocked on the door of one room after another, asking the guests if they had been visited by a well-built detective in a red-and-green plaid coat. All of them said yes, they had. ‘He told us he was looking for signs of disturbance. Whatever that meant.’

If a room was unoccupied, he used his pass key to open it up. In two of them, he came across people asleep, but there was no sign of Walter in any of them. When he looked into Room 702, however, he found that the bedside lamps were both lit, and that the bedcover was rucked up, as if somebody had been lying on top of it.

He circled slowly around the room. Apart from the bedside lamps and the rumpled bedcover, there was no other evidence that anybody had been here, yet Charlie felt distinctly unsettled. He tried calling Walter’s cellphone again, but there was still no response.

He sat down on the end of the bed and called headquarters. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve lost Wisocky. Yes. I know. But we were searching the Griffin House Hotel and he’s vanished into thin air. His cellphone’s out of service and I have absolutely no idea where he is. I’m going to need backup to look for him.’

He snapped his cellphone shut and sat still for a moment, trying to work out what was disturbing him. He sniffed, and then he realized what it was. The faintest smell of Walter’s aftershave, Tom F Extreme. He sniffed again, but the smell had gone. Maybe he had imagined it. But he still had the feeling that something highly stressful had happened in this room; something so stressful that it had left a resonance, like the lingering resonance of a violin concerto, even after the very last screeching note has been played.

Kieran and Kiera came out of the elevator into the lobby. John gave them a wave with his rolled-up newspaper and called out, ‘Man, am I pleased to see you two! I thought I was going to die of malnutrition.’

Kieran said, ‘We looked pretty much everywhere. Nothing. I don’t think Mago Verde’s going to show.’

‘Springer seems convinced that he will,’ said Kiera.

John eased himself out of his armchair. ‘I’m never too sure about Springer. Sometimes he seems to know everything and at other times he seems to know squat.’

‘I can’t really work out who he is,’ said Kiera.

John sniffed. ‘Who he is? I’d like to know what he is. Once or twice he’s showed up and he isn’t even a he, he’s a she. Anyhow — listen, you guys, I’m going to get myself some chow before the restaurant closes. Have a boring time, won’t you? I sure did. Do you want to read my Baton Rouge Advocate?’

He turned around, and he was just about to make his way to the restaurant when the elevator doors opened and Kieran saw Mago Verde step out, wearing his shabby black suit and his greasy green grin.

‘Shit!’ he said. ‘He’s here! Mago Verde! Look!’

Kiera said, ‘Oh my God, yes! But where’s he going?’

John spun around and around. ‘Where? Where is he? I don’t see him!’

‘He’s crossing the lobby in front of the reception desk! He’s just passing the portrait of that sour-faced old man!’

‘I don’t see him! Why don’t I see him? I can usually see Dreads, but I don’t see him at all!’

‘But where’s he going?’ Kiera repeated. ‘I thought he was supposed to be coming to the hotel to dream about his last victim. But he’s leaving. There — he’s walking out through the front door. There — he’s gone.’

John thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘I think I know why he’s going. He’s going because he’s done the dirty deed already. He’s caught his victim, and mutilated her, and he’s dreamed her into the hotel walls. Now he’s gone off to find somebody who’s dreaming about Brother Albrecht’s circus — anybody. Then he can do the same as we do, and step inside their dream, and he’ll be back there — back at the freak show.’

‘But what about his victim?’ asked Kiera. ‘If she’s here, inside of the walls, how is going to take her to Brother Albrecht?’

‘I don’t know for sure,’ John told her. ‘But I guess that this hotel is like some kind of way through to the dream world — a gateway. A normal person wouldn’t be able to step into somebody else’s dream the way that we do, or the way that Dreads like Mago Verde can. Once Mago Verde is back in Brother Albrecht’s dream, he must have a way of arranging for his victims to follow him there.’

‘What the hell are we going to do now?’ said Kieran. ‘If he’s taken his ninth sacrifice already, and he’s on his way back to the circus—’

‘You heard what Springer said. We’ll have to go after him, and try to catch up with him before he manages to deliver his victim to Brother Albrecht. Otherwise, all hell is going to bust loose.’

They took the elevator back up to Rhodajane’s room. Springer was still there, watching the fire escapes. He looked sicker and grayer and more hunched-up than ever.

Springer said, ‘What’s happened? Have you seen Mago Verde?’