Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (7 page)

“It’s really quite simple,” Madame Pompadour explained with passive disgust. “You do exactly what you did to get
into
my office, only in reverse.”

Madame Pompadour returned to her Vilofax. To her, it was as if Marlo suddenly ceased to exist. The problem was, Marlo was beginning to feel the same way.

6 •
i
N THE FL
i
CK OF
i
T

INSIDE THE MASSIVE
tent was—somehow—an even
more
massive carnival. It was crowded with lurid signs (
BEHOLD: EL HOPPO THE MEXICAN FROG BOY!
for instance), sideshow exhibits, and baffling rides.
A carnival on the edge of time
, Milton thought.

He looked above him at the swaying wooden sign, daubed in bright yellow and blue:
STEP RIGHT UP
…

And so Milton did, passing beneath the sign to the frozen, painted metal automaton standing between the hundred or so fearful phantoms and the midway. The figure wore a black top hat and a pin-striped vest, waistcoat, and pants. It held a varnished wooden cane with what looked like a mummified monkey head on top. As Milton scrutinized the figure, it twitched to mechanical life.

“From the instant you are born to the moment you
expire, the clock is your executioner,” the automaton relayed in a deeper-than-expected voice. “There’s no escape from the great finale of life where each of you is destined to play your farewell performance.”

More PODs huddled together around the robotic curiosity.

“Or
is
there? Can one actually delay that final moment when the bony hand of death scrawls one’s name in his crowded diary?”

The automaton’s mouth squeezed and scraped into a smile.

“Of course there is, ladies and gentlemen, and that is why I am here….”

The figure waved its arm toward the midway in a grandiose gesture.

“I am Savage Bumble, and this is my Tragical Confusement Park!”

Suddenly, three very large
somethings
landed on the roof of the tent. The fabric puckered dangerously inward. The creatures’ legs scrabbled for purchase, tearing into the canvas.

Through the shredded canvas roof, one of the creatures dropped the lifeless body of a bewilderbeast onto Swami River’s Fortune-Telling Booth, smashing it to splinters.

The phantoms around Milton screamed and slammed their shopping carts into one another in desperation. He gaped, stunned, at the roof above his head
as it was slowly yet purposefully scratched to ribbons. Jack pushed his cart to the head of the line and waved his arms for attention.

“Hey, cats, cool it,” Jack said calmly. “We’ve got to scatter. Take to these crazy tents and caravans and force those crazy bugs to hunt alone. Hurry.
Like now!”

The edgy phantoms frantically broke off into clusters. Jack led a group of older, slower phantoms to a tent marked
AMAZING CURATIVES AND SUPERNATURAL SALVES!
just past an empty platform marked
HUMONGOUS HEXED RABBOT
. Milton felt like he often had back on the Surface during gym class after all the teams had been picked: shunned and awkwardly alone.

“C’mon, boy,” Moondog said as he tugged him toward a pink and green caravan, “you’re my good-luck charm.”

Milton grinned, and the two hastily wheeled their carts into the mouth of the horseshoe-shaped midway. They scrambled past a Loop-Die-Loop—a mechanical contraption composed of three eggbeater-like blades with coffin-shaped passenger carriages attached—and into a booth, identified by a sign as the
MAUSOLEUM OF MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY-FELLOWS
.

Inside the garishly painted booth were rows and rows of jars—
soul
jars, by the looks of it—like the ones Milton had stolen from Limbo’s Assessment Chamber. These jars were smaller than the Lost Souls Milton had used to escape from Heck, yet the souls themselves
were similar, only thinner and far less substantial, like watered-down ectoplasmic broth. They were also strangely cheery.

One jar held what looked like wisps of dull-pink cotton candy while another held glittery globs and speckled, purple-gray goop.

Moondog was right:
Everything
is energy
, Milton reflected.
So why not imaginary friends? A child makes them as real as anything. And just because a kid stops believing in them doesn’t mean that energy just disappears. It moves on … ultimately settling here …

A female phantom’s scream ripped through the air. Milton spun around toward the woman as a monstrous flea-tick sawed through the canvas roof above her with its harpoon nose. The creature fell on top of the Bury-Go-Round—a small roller coaster with an abrupt end at a mound of dirt—fifty feet away from Milton and Moondog. The pair dashed through the mouth of a spacious tunnel with hinged wooden doors at the far end of the carnival. Lurid orange letters declared it the
KILLING TIME ZONE
.

The bloated, speckled flea-tick skittered toward the tent. Its amber eyes glowed weakly, like twin laser sights in the darkness. Its proboscis quivered until pointing directly at Milton. The jittery creature’s eyes flared.

“Let’s go!” Moondog shouted as he grabbed Milton
and heaved him and his cart into the tunnel. He quickly upended the cart and spilled out dozens of metal scraps, forming an impromptu barricade behind them.

“What about
your
cart?” Milton asked.

“Blast the cart!” Moondog barked. “I can always spend another eternity collecting more junk!”

The swollen creature scuttled up to the mound of metal and stabbed through the shopping cart’s carriage with its snout.

“Why does everything always want
me
?” Milton mumbled, backing away with fear and disgust.

Moondog, with surprising strength, hoisted Milton up, set him into his shopping cart, and pushed him farther into the tunnel.

Inside, movie projectors cast glimmering, dull 3-D images onto the walls of the tunnel. As Milton raced past them—a passenger in his own cart—he saw a man shaving, a teenage girl waiting by a phone, a fidgety toddler in the backseat of a car, a businessman at the airport, boys loitering outside a convenience store, and dozens of other less-than-memorable memories.

“The
Killing Time
Zone,” Milton observed. “A place full of moments that were killed …
wasted.”

The flea-tick flailed its front legs with frustration at the scrap metal and shopping cart barrier. Sweat trickled down Moondog’s face as he pushed onward.

“You’re really gettin’ the hang of bein’ dead, kid!”
he puffed. “This place feels like a collage of time continuums. Boring little scraps of reality left on the cutting-room floor of life.”

A crash thundered through the tunnel, followed by a dozen or so scrabbling feet. Milton and Moondog charged down the tunnel as the creature, now joined by another, skittered ever closer.

“Stop!” Milton shrieked. Moondog screeched the cart to a halt. Its front caster wheels dangled off the edge of a precipice.

“I didn’t see
that
coming!” Moondog gasped.

Beneath them was a steep drop into what looked like a roller coaster of spooled time-space laid on a shimmering “track” of moments. All of the segments of track had one thing in common: hundreds of people staring at hundreds of television sets.

Milton turned. His mouth went slack with fear as three flea-ticks forced their bloated, disgusting bodies down the tunnel, taking peevish swipes at one another with their long snouts. The trio of overgrown parasites stopped and judged Milton and Moondog with their emotionless red eyes before rearing back.

“Get us out of here!” Milton shrieked.

The three plus-sized parasites sprang forward. Moondog hopped on top of the shopping cart, crowding in next to Milton, then kicked both of them off the edge of the tunnel with his workboot. They plunged down the track of residual, barely solid energy. Milton
gripped the side of the cart as his stomach pitched into a somersault.

The shopping cart plunged down through countless living rooms, dens, and basements—a chain of people lounging on couches staring blankly at flickering screens. The “ride” began with clean-cut families sitting, enrapt, before large boxes broadcasting warped black-and-white images of cowboys and Indians. The shopping cart sped through the shimmering vignettes, each one fading behind Milton and Moondog just as it was experienced. The tracks leveled out, and the shopping cart whizzed past shaggy-haired people mesmerized by colorful images of spaceships and war.

“Brace yourself,” Moondog cautioned. Up ahead was a series of loop-the-loops. The cart jerked as they entered the tight coils of time. The g-force bent Milton’s neck so that his chin was jammed into the top of his chest. Around him was a repetitive blur of cop shows and sitcoms.

“Must … be … reruns,” Moondog muttered.

They shot past the loop-the-loops and ascended steadily along the track, entering each bit of wasted time as if flipping through a stack of moving postcards. Milton looked behind him, past Moondog’s whizzing white mane. The flea-ticks stumbled down the track, their barbed, spindly legs slipping on the insubstantial clusters of time energy. They tried sucking, in vain, the vaporous wraiths of moments around them.

Milton and Moondog climbed upward, streaking through images of teenagers lying on their stomachs, feverishly playing a variety of video games—first Pong, then Pac-Man, then Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Halo in ever-quickening succession.

“Uh-oh,” Milton murmured as he saw the track abruptly end up ahead. “I think we’re running out of time.”

7 • DROP-DEAD GORGE-OUS

“HOLD ON!” MILTON
yelled as he and Moondog, hunkering down tight, sailed off the track. The airborne cart shot through the end of the tunnel, spinning like a corkscrew for a few dozen feet, until it burst through the canvas of the confusement park tent. Milton’s stomach felt like he had swallowed a child’s wind-up toy.

A shred of the coarse, sturdy cloth snagged on the cart’s sawtooth bumper. The gash in the side of the tent widened as Milton and Moondog hurtled back into the Wastelands.

“Grab the canvas!” Moondog ordered as they plummeted outward and, unfortunately, downward. Milton hugged the fabric while Moondog clutched the rough cloth with his long, yellow nails. The shopping cart tore free and plummeted forty feet to the ground, where it
smashed to its original, prewelded state of castaway parts.

Milton winced as he and Moondog, their arms wrapped tightly around the stiff canvas, swung down and slapped into the side of the tent. The impact knocked the wind out of Milton, and the fabric cut into his palms, but he held on for all he was worth. They hung suspended in the air as a crowd of PODs gathered beneath them, their carts laden with newly acquired curiosities.

The confusement park tent creaked and buckled as the disintegrating canvas pulled itself apart.

“Let go!” Moondog bellowed. Milton and Moondog tumbled down the steady slope of the tent and fell to the ground.

Jack was a hundred yards away with a mass of PODs—nearly all of them—staring gravely at the tent. He waved Milton and Moondog forward with his lanky arms.

“Beat it out, Popsicle!” he yelled. “The sky is falling!”

Milton turned around to see the towering tent crumple behind him. Moondog grabbed Milton’s hand, and the two ran briskly as Savage Bumble’s Tragical Confusement Park collapsed in a fluttering heap of shredded canvas skin and splintered wooden bone.

Panting, Milton surveyed the PODs’ shopping carts.
They were bulging with exotic new wares—a bewilderbeast pelt and a creepy ventriloquist dummy, for instance. This motley group of wandering phantoms was many things—eccentric, spooky, touchy—but one thing it wasn’t was wasteful.

“Where did those big sucker bugs go?” Milton asked Jack.

The lively POD leader—pushing a cart stacked with jars of Make-Believe Play-fellow souls—looked toward the rumpled mess of tents.

“Just after we, like, scattered, they left us alone and pulled an Amelia Earhart … a total disappearing act.”

“Well, they sure didn’t leave
us
alone,” Milton said.