The Ninth Nightmare Read online

  ‘Oh my Gawwd,’ she said. ‘I cannot walk around like this, flaunting my pussy! Not even in somebody’s dream!’

  ‘I did tell you,’ said Springer. ‘Xyrena arouses man or woman, demon or beast.’

  ‘But I’m showing everything I’ve got. Well, I’m not really, but as good as.’

  ‘Xyrena is the ultimate paradox,’ Springer told her. ‘She attracts, she arouses, she fascinates. Did you know that the word “fascinates” comes from fascinum, which was a penis-shaped object worn around the neck in Ancient Rome, and often used in medieval witchcraft? If a woman fascinates a man, she gives him an erection, and that’s just what Xyrena does. But even though it looks so revealing, nothing can penetrate Xyrena’s armor, and believe me, Xyrena herself is deadly.’

  Rhodajane pouted at herself in the mirror. She struck an exaggerated pose to the left and then to the right, and then she slowly tottered around in a circle. Underneath her voluminous gilded cloak, her back was armored in the same polished gold, with her shoulder blades and her dimpled buttocks as perfectly replicated as her breastplate.

  ‘Well, I don’t know . . .’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I could get used to this I do have a pretty good figure, though I say it myself.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’ John asked Springer. ‘OK, fine, she turns people on. As a matter of fact, she’s making me feel distinctly twitchy in the BVD department right now. But why does she do it?’

  ‘Hold out your hands, Xyrena,’ Springer instructed her. ‘That’s right. Spread out your hand so that your fingers are totally rigid.’

  Rhodajane did as she was told, and almost immediately eight long fine needles slid out, one from the tip of each finger. The needles were at least three inches long, and slightly curved inward.

  ‘Xyrena arouses her intended prey until they’re blinded with lust,’ Springer explained. ‘Then she takes them into her arms and embraces them – whether it’s a he or a her or an it. All she has to do then is run these needles into their back. They’re forged out of an alloy of titanium and ultrasound, way beyond the range of human hearing, and they can pierce through anything. Skin, leather, chitin, armor. Absolutely nothing can bend them or deflect them.’

  ‘So she gives her prey a few little pricks,’ said John. ‘Then what?’

  Rhodajane turned around to face him and struck another pose, her hands on her hips, her crowned head slightly tilted to one side. ‘I’m really turning you on, aren’t I, John?’

  ‘Let’s just get this over with, shall we?’ John protested. ‘I have to go eat before I can think about sleeping.’

  Springer said, ‘The needles enter the victim’s veins and his blood literally boils. It usually takes less than twenty seconds for his entire blood supply to evaporate, and that’s between five and six liters. Then, of course, he’s dead. It’s a very effective way of killing somebody at very close quarters.’

  ‘Do you have anybody in particular in mind?’ John asked him. ‘This clown guy, for instance?’

  Springer didn’t answer, but closed the closet door so that Rhodajane’s Night Warrior costume instantly vanished.

  Rhodajane said, ‘Oh, no. Not the clown guy. I feel like every guy I ever went to bed with in the whole of my life was some kind of clown.’

  TEN

  A Night to Dismember

  Walter wedged himself into his usual corner booth in Rally’s, smacking his hands together in anticipation of his triple cheeseburger. Outside the sky had grown even darker, and raindrops began to patter against the windows as if somebody were throwing handfuls of raisins at them.

  Netta their waitress came over to take their order. She was four feet ten and as squat as a Munchkin, with fraying gingery hair and a swiveling cast in her right eye which always made Walter feel seasick. ‘Hi, big feller,’ she greeted him, taking her notepad out of her red checkered apron. ‘Guess you want your usual?’

  ‘You got it, sweet cheeks. But maybe today I’ll go for the loaded fries.’

  ‘The loaded fries? With the Cheddar cheese sauce and the ranch dressin’ and the bacon bits?’

  ‘Those are the very babies I had in mind.’

  ‘You do know that a single regular-sized serving of loaded fries contains nine hundred eight calories, which is almost half your recommended daily intake?’

  Netta’s right eye was fixed on the clock on the wall, as if she were timing how much longer he had to live.

  ‘Is that all? Sheesh! In that case, you’d better fetch me the jumbo-sized serving.’

  Charlie ordered a plain hot dog, no bun, mustard only, no ketchup, and a Diet Coke.

  ‘I don’t know how the fuck you can live on that, Charlie,’ said Walter. ‘You need calories. Calories are very much maligned. They make your brain work, among other parts of your body. And do you know what they put in hot dogs? Chicken’s feet.’

  Charlie looked across at him with total seriousness. ‘Believe me, Walter, if I thought that eating a triple cheeseburger would help me to understand how Maria Fortales got out of her bedroom, I’d order one, same as you. And the loaded fries.’

  ‘We need to ask Mossad,’ said Walter.

  ‘Mossad?’

  ‘You know, the Israeli secret service people. They whacked that Hamas dude in his hotel bedroom in Dubai, didn’t they, but they left his door locked from the inside, with the chain fastened, even. Now, how did they do that? I don’t have a clue. But it must be possible because they did it.’

  Netta brought their drinks over. As she set down Walter’s Gatorade, she accidentally knocked his glass and spilled it. Walter grabbed two handfuls of napkins from the dispenser and frantically dabbed at the spreading soda to stop it from pouring across the table top and on to his pants. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the day looking like he’d peed himself.

  ‘Netta, for Christ’s sake!’ he blurted out, but he managed to bite his tongue before he said, ‘Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?’ He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  ‘I’m real sorry, Walt,’ said Netta. ‘I’ve been as clumsy as a ox all mornin’. I haven’t been sleepin’ good.’

  Walter wiped up the last of the Gatorade. ‘You need a man to share that lonely bed of yours, Netta. That’s what you need.’

  ‘A man? What good would a man do me? I need to stop havin’ them nightmares more like.’

  ‘What nightmares?’

  ‘Them circus nightmares. I’ve been havin’ them every single night for weeks and weeks and they always wake me up and I’m shakin’ and sweatin’ like nobody’s business.’

  ‘Circus nightmares?’ asked Walter. He felt a crawling sensation down his back, as if a cockroach had dropped into his shirt collar. ‘What kind of circus nightmares?’

  ‘Oh shoot, you don’t want to know about them. Probably some psycho-mological thing from out of my childhood. I’ll go bring you another soda.’

  ‘No, wait up,’ said Charlie. ‘Tell us what they’re like, these nightmares.’

  Netta shrugged. ‘I always have them round about the same time of night, about two a.m. I’m walkin’ up this grassy hill and it’s rainin’ cats’n’dogs and I can hear this music playin’ like all off-key. Kind of music you used to hear when a carnival came to town, only all the notes are wrong.’

  ‘Go on,’ Charlie encouraged her.

  ‘Right at the top of the hill I see all of these tents, and they’re all black, with red lights hangin’ off of them like shinin’ drops of blood. And I walk between the tents and there’s trailers and animal cages all covered over with black tarps and the music’s still playin’ but I can’t work out who’s playin’ it or where it’s comin’ from.

  ‘In The Good Old Summertime, that’s what it sounds like, only like I say it’s all off-key and none of the notes are right.’

  ‘Is there anybody else there, in your nightmare, apart from you?’

  Netta shook her head so that her jowls wobbled. ‘Not to begin with, but when I carry on walkin’ between
the tents I see shadows runnin’ hither and thither and I can hear people mutterin’ and coughin’ and some people whinin’, too. Then I always turn this corner and there’s a row of trailers and I see this small critter go scuttlin’ across the grass from one trailer to another and he goes scamperin’ up the steps more like a rat or a groundhog than a person, but he’s wearing a coat like a person and this weird kind of hat.

  ‘I try to call out, hey, where am I? I’m lost! But somehow the words won’t come out, like somebody’s got their hand pressed over my mouth. And this small critter stops at the back of the trailer and starts jabberin’ at me like five different languages all at once.’

  ‘Can you remember what he says?’ asked Charlie.

  Netta frowned. ‘Only a couple of words. Somethin’ that I guess sounds Frenchish, like “prennay guard”. Then some stuff that’s all mixed up and don’t make no sense at all. “Coop sign pianos.” And “may go wordy”. And “gang up you start”. That’s what it sounds like, anyhow, but he says it over and over and over, that’s how I remember it so good. He says it over and over and over.’

  ‘OK, so he spouts all this gibberish,’ Walter prompted her. ‘Then what?’

  ‘He opens the door and disappears inside the trailer, and I’m left out there all on my ownsome, and it’s still rainin’ cats’n’dogs and the music’s still playin’. I’m about to turn around and go back the way I come but then I hear a woman sobbin’ her heart out. I follow the sound of her sobbin’ and it’s comin’ from inside of this little black tent.

  ‘I push my way into the tent but there’s no woman inside it, only a man in a black suit and he’s standin’ with his back to me. I say excuse me, sir, but at first he don’t answer. I say excuse me again and then he turns around and he has this clown face and he’s grinnin’ this greasepaint smile at me even though his real mouth ain’t grinnin’ at all.

  ‘He says somethin’ to me but I don’t understand what it is and I’m so darn scared that I fight my way back out of that tent and I run and I run in between the tents and the trailers and down the hill and that’s when I usually wake up.’

  Charlie said, ‘That’s some nightmare, Netta.’

  ‘Every night, too. Every night the same. For weeks and weeks and I don’t know how to stop havin’ it. And I don’t know why I’m havin’ it, or what it’s supposed to mean. Like, dreams are supposed to have meanin’s, aren’t they? Like you dream about a pigeon poopin’ on your head and that means you’re goin’ to win the lotto.’

  ‘This clown you see, what color is his make-up?’

  ‘His face is like gray but his lips are shiny green.’

  ‘And he has long gray hair?’

  Netta fixed him with her good left eye. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I know a whole lot about clowns and I think that this particular clown is called Mago Verde, the Green Magician. Part clown, part conjuror. And you heard that rat-person say “may go wordy”, right? “May go wordy” – that could be “Mago Verde”.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Netta. She was impressed. ‘That’s exactly what it sounded like, Mago Verde.’

  Charlie said, ‘“Prennay guard”, you’re right, that’s French – “prenez garde” – and that means “beware”. Sounds like this rat-creature was telling you to watch out for Mago Verde.’

  ‘How about “coop sign pianos”? What does that mean? And “gang up you start”?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue,’ Charlie admitted. ‘But give me some time, and I’ll work on it.’

  Netta said, ‘Guess you think I’m losin’ my reason. It’s the stress, probably. My brother Kyle lost his job at the Brook Park engine factory last September and he and me have been strugglin’ to make ends meet ever since.’

  Walter took hold of Netta’s piggy little hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘You’re probably right. Maybe you should talk to your pharmacist – ask him for something to help you sleep more heavy.’

  When Netta went off to refill Walter’s soda glass, Walter leaned across the table and said, ‘How about that? Netta’s been having the same goddamned nightmares as Maria Fortales. The same – in every detail. How in hell’s name can that happen?’

  Charlie pulled a face. ‘It’s not totally unknown for strangers to share the same dream. Some psychologists think that dreams are like an alternate state of reality, rather than an alternate state of consciousness.’

  ‘Meaning exactly what, exactly?’

  ‘You know, like that Second Life thing you can do on the Internet – turning yourself into a sexy-looking avatar and leading a double life in some tropical fantasy world. And Carl Jung believed that the entire human race shares a collective unconscious.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Carl Jung must have gone to see that last Mel Gibson movie. The whole audience was collectively unconscious, including me.’

  Netta brought them their food. Walter immediately picked up his triple cheeseburger in both hands and took a large bite; but Charlie said, ‘Were you ever scared of clowns, Netta, when you were a kid?’

  Netta shook her head. ‘Clowns? No, never. I loved clowns. They used to make me laugh.’

  ‘You never had a scary experience at a circus, or a carnival?’

  ‘I was sick as a dog once on the Tivoli Spin-out Ride at the Ohio State Fair. But then so was most everybody else. But I don’t know. Maybe somethin’ bad happened to me when I was a kid and I got some kind of horrible memory that’s just comin’ out only now.’

  Walter flapped his hand at Charlie and said, with his mouth full, ‘Eat.’ At that moment, however, his cellphone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘What? I’m on my lunch break.’

  But he listened, and then he said, ‘Where?’ and at the same time he slowly lowered his triple cheeseburger back on to his plate.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Charlie.

  Walter nodded. ‘That was Skrolnik. He had a call from the School of Law where Maria Fortales was studying. There was blood dripping out from the bottom of her locker.’

  ‘Jesus. Did they open it?’

  ‘Of course. They thought that she might be locked up inside of it, and still alive.’

  ‘But she’s not?’

  Walter turned to Netta and said, ‘Hey, sweet cheeks, the call of duty calls. Could you put this burger into a box for me, so that I can take it out?’

  He waited until she had taken his plate back to the kitchen before he turned to Charlie and said, ‘They found her arms, that’s all.’

  ‘Only her arms?’ Charlie looked down at his hotdog and pushed his plate away.

  ‘Maybe that was the sawing noise that old man Yarber said he could hear.’

  ‘But there was no blood. How do you saw off a girl’s arms without spraying a whole lot of blood around?’

  ‘Search me, Charlie. Let’s go take a look for ourselves.’

  It was raining even harder by the time they turned into the parking lot outside the George Gund Building, where the School of Law was housed. An ambulance was parked there already, its red lights flashing, as well as two squad cars and a black Grand Voyager from the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office.

  Officer Skrolnik was waiting for them underneath the slabby concrete entrance.

  ‘Sorry about your lunch, detectives,’ he said, although he didn’t look sorry at all, only tired.

  ‘When did you get the call?’ asked Walter.

  ‘Only about forty-five minutes ago. One of Maria’s friends was trying to slip a note into her locker when she noticed that there was blood seeping out of the bottom of the door. She went to find the co-director. The co-director called nine-one-one and then she had the janitor cut off the padlock.’

  ‘OK. Lead on, MacSkrolnik.’

  Officer Skrolnik ushered them into the shiny marble lobby area, which was arranged with pale turned-oak sculptures that looked like gigantic doorknobs and chess pieces. Then he led them along the corridor where the students’ gray steel lockers were lined up.

  One o
f the locker doors was wide open, and bent almost double, and three police officers and two CSIs were gathered around it, as well as a paramedic and a bored-looking deputy coroner. Walter and Charlie joined them, with a few desultory ‘hi’s’ and ‘how’s it going’s?’ One of the CSIs was taking pictures, so that whenever his camera flashed, everybody appeared to jump two inches in the air.

  Walter went up to the locker and looked inside. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling this was going to turn out bad.’

  In the locker’s top compartment, two human arms were folded over each other, almost as if they had been patiently waiting for somebody to open the locker door and find them. Above the elbows, both arms were heavily smeared and spattered with congealing blood. Below the elbows, they were dusky-skinned, with sprinkles of tiny moles on them.

  ‘Would you look at that?’ said Charlie. ‘He didn’t even bother to take off her jewelry.’

  Twisted around the left wrist was a silver Mexican bracelet with red-and-green flowers enameled on it; and on the third finger of the left hand there was a latticework silver ring. On the third finger of the right hand there was a ring with a single topaz in it. The nails of the right index finger and the right middle finger were both bitten right down, almost to the quick.

  ‘Look here,’ Walter told him. ‘More clowns.’

  Scotch-taped to the back of the bent locker door there were dozens of photographs of Pierrots and augustes and saltimbanques, including three nearly-identical pictures of Mago Verde. There were a few other pictures, too – Emilio Zapata and Carlos Santana and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico – but most of the pictures were of clowns.

  One of the CSIs came rustling up to them in her blue Tyvek suit, a fortyish woman with a sallow face and unplucked eyebrows and very pale blue eyes, as if all the death and mutilation that she had seen during the course of her career had leached most of the color out of them.

  ‘Both arms were sawn off approximately eight centimeters below the shoulder,’ she told them. ‘We’ll have to take them back to the lab, of course, but I’d say that the perpetrator used a regular garden-variety handsaw.’