The Further Adventures of The Joker (63 page)

I found Toddy. What’s left of him. Wandering down by the Canal. I saw him from behind and knew it was him, I yelled and shouted but he never turned around, finally I ran up to him and hugged him, nearly tackling him. He still never turned around to look at me so I pulled him up and looked at him.

When I saw his face I thought I’d be sick, he was just grinning, this awful smile. I said, “Hey, glad to see me or what?” But he never said anything. He just smiled, he never stops smiling now, like the man in the crazy sedan, he just smiles and won’t say anything, not what happened, not what he did to him, he doesn’t say anything at all.

I brought him back to Panic’s. I didn’t know what else to do, where else to go.

Panic had a sickly smile when he saw me coming, my arm around Toddy’s shoulders. “You found your friend,” he said. For a minute I thought maybe he was relieved, relieved to see me, relieved to see Toddy and think maybe everything was gonna be okay, it was just another mark in a fancy car.

Then he saw Toddy’s face. “What’s he smiling at?” Panic hissed. Kids scrambled to get out of his way as he stormed across the room, hitting one of those trailing lightbulbs so the whole place was filled with spinning shadows. “What’s he laughing at, WHAT’S SO GODDAMN FUNNY?”

I started crying then. ’Cause like I walked the whole way across Gotham, from the Canal to here, practically carrying Toddy sometimes, and he never said a word, he never said a goddamn thing. “I don’t know!” I shouted, shoving Toddy so he stumbled and then caught himself and stood between us, me and Panic, grinning that horrible empty grin. “Something happened, he did something to him—”

“
Who
did?” Panic yelled. It was like he’d gone crazy too, only crazy-scared. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, saying over and over, “Who did it? Who?” until finally I spat out, “
You
know who! The guy in the limousine, that crazy guy, the one they say controls the J—”

He let go of me then and stepped back a little breathlessly, like I’d kicked him. “Who told you that? No one knows that, no one knows for sure, no one’s supposed to say . . .”

His words trailed off. He stared at Toddy standing there, swaying a little like he was held up by wires. Then, before I knew what happened, Panic lunged at him. There was this flash of something in the air, and I heard one of the other kids cry out. Then Panic moved on, he crossed the room and hunched over a stack of Baggies. For a second Toddy stood there in front of me, still grinning; only now it was like he had two smiles, one on his face, another a brilliant slash of red across his throat. As I watched his head lolled back, until I was left with only that other grin. Without another noise, he toppled to the ground at my feet.

I went crazy then. Going after Panic, who was shaken enough to try and hide from me before he figured out it was him with a knife against one berserk kid with nothing. Then it was me running, kicking over stacks of jangle and yanking the lights out until the place was stone dark and one of the other kids hissed across the floor for me to follow her, she knew a way out.

I did, and she did. So now I’m here in the rain by Haggard Square, nothing but a pocketful of jolts and my notebook and a stolen pen. Toddy’s dead and I know who’s next, oh, yeah, I do, only no one’s gonna track me down. I’m gonna freak him, that blood-soaked angel. I’m gonna give him something to laugh about, ’cause maybe he thinks he’s gonna find me but it ain’t gonna be like that. I’m gonna find
him.
He’s somewhere in this sewer city and I’m gonna track him down, I’m gonna make him show me what it is he knows and I don’t, I’m gonna make him tell me what the point is, what he’s laughing at, what the punchline is. I’m gonna find him if it kills me.

The man lifted his head, stared into the surrounding darkness. His body shook with grief and rage. For a moment he could not go on, remembering. But that was long ago and this was a different boy. Then he turned the page and softly swore, as if hardly surprised to see the elegant script, the ink so thick and green it seemed to writhe across the page like some hothouse growth—toxic, evil and alive. It was a hand he knew well, a poison that never lost its sting but only added to the venom in his veins. Perhaps one day his tolerance for it would disappear like hope or happiness and he would die like all the others. Perhaps he would even welcome that end.

But not yet. Not while he could still hate, still hurt, still hear the horrid laughter and feel the loss as if it had happened only yesterday.

It did not take long for the boy to come here, the runaway named Galen Starling. But then I wanted to be found, nearly as much as he wanted to find me.

“A pretty name, Galen. Does a starling sing? Does it have a sweet voice?”

He stood, dumbstruck, in the middle of the chamber. I could see he was trying not to look impressed but oh! these youngsters, they wear their hearts in their eyes, haven’t you noticed that, Gentle Reader? But I digress—

“What did you do to him?” he croaked at last, tearing his eyes from the images on the walls. His clothes were soaked from the passage through the tunnel and he shivered. I motioned him nearer to me where I sat alone in the center of the room. I had sent the others away, stupid thugs, this boy would appreciate my artistry more than they did. He was a dreamer.

“I did what I always do: I gave him what he wanted. I always give the people what they want. Jangle, for instance; and other things.” I gestured at the walls. “Do you like my pictures?”

He crossed the room slowly, rubbing his arms as he stared at the photographs, averting his eyes from some, his gaze lingering upon others as he read the legend beneath each.

“Now that’s a particularly good one there, Galen—‘A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.’ I had the devil of a time getting a needle through some of those spots!”

He gagged, turned to glare at me. “You’re crazy, you’re really crazy—”

I stood and crossed the room to join him. He shuddered as I casually draped my arm around his shoulder, but didn’t pull away; no, he was a curious young man, eager to learn; a little bird striving to fly with eagles. “Here, Starling, look at this one—”

“No!” He surprised me then, he turned on me. His eyes were burning, he must have taken more of the drug on his way down. “Why—why do you look like that?”

“Like what?” I leered. I guided him away from the photos—he was not as astute a critic as I had hoped—and brought him to the center of the room, to the sofa there. “Have a perch, Starling.” Oh, I do so love to play with them first!

“That smile,” he whispered, sitting. He seemed more in awe of me than afraid, and—dare I say it?—quite entranced with what he saw. Meeting the Prince of Darkness on his own turf, et cetera. I decided to entertain him for a few more minutes. I took out my cards and began to shuffle them. “Why do you smile like that?” he demanded.

I glanced at the top card, then up at him. “This smile? Why, don’t you recognize this, Starling? It’s the smile on the face of the tiger . . .”

As he stared at me I turned the card over, held it so that he could see the figure of the young violet-clad boy walking blissfully along the edge of a cliff, his eyes cast skyward as one foot strays into the empty air. “Oh, dear,” I said, and let the card fall to rest upon his knee. “That’s rather a bad one under the circumstances, Galen: The Fool. Delirium and madness. Thoughtless decisions. A sensitive soul led astray by bad companions.”

He tried to run then, poor thing, but I clamped my hand around his neck and brought him to me.

“But why—” he whispered; that was before he began to scream. “Who are you?—”

“I am your heart’s desire, Galen,” I crooned, flipping one last card from the deck as it fell to the floor. Another bad card, Death grinning from a dark sedan. It was the last thing he saw before I started.

The young body he found in the vacant subway tunnel was spattered with paint: yellow, green, and red. There was an
R
carved upon the bright red breast. White makeup caked a tattooed face. The hair was dyed a sloppy green, the lips shone red. The arms were spread as though in flight; his feet had left the floor. The grin was so wide it had split the skin. The eyes would see no more.

Plucking from between stiff fingers the folded paper left for him to find, the man turned from the broken boy and read the Joker’s note. Soft mocking laughter filled the room like poison flames inside his head.

“Birds of a feather die together,”
was what the Batman read.

About the Authors

EDWARD BRYANT
has been one of the most heralded writers and critics of science fiction, fantasy, and horror for more than two decades, his short stories “Stone” and “giANTS” having each won the Nebula Award. His books include
Phoenix Without Ashes
(with Harlan Ellison),
Cinnabar,
and the short story collection
Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse,
among others.
DAN SIMMONS
is the author of five novels:
Song of Kali
(winner of the World Fantasy Award),
Carrion Comfort, Phases of Gravity, Hyperion,
and
The Fall of Hyperion
(coming in March 1990 from Doubleday Foundation). Winner of
Twilight Zone
magazine’s Rod Serling Memorial Award for best new writer in 1982, he currently resides in Colorado.

JOEY CAVALIERI
lives in New York City.

GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER
’s stories and novels have made his name significant in the science fiction field for nearly twenty years. Author of
When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun,
and the forthcoming Doubleday Foundation novel,
The Exile Kiss,
he most recently won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette for his story “Schrodinger’s Kitten.”

KAREN HABER
, while having started her career as a non-fiction writer, has written stories for
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Full Spectrum 2,
and
Women of Darkness.
She is married to Robert Silverberg, with whom she currently edits the original anthology
Universe
and was coauthor of the first volume in the Doubleday Foundation series
The Mutant Season.

ELIZABETH HAND
is the author of the forthcoming Bantam novel
Winterlong
. Her short fiction has appeared in
Pulphouse, Full Spectrum 2, Twilight Zone
, and
The Year’s Best Horror 1988.
She reviews books regularly for the
Washington Post Book World
and is a Contributing Editor for
Science Fiction Eye
magazine. She is at work on her second novel,
Aestival Tide,
and lives in Rockport, Maine.
PAUL WITCOVER
’s fiction has appeared in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Night Cry,
and
Twilight Zone
. He recently completed his first novel,
Piggydossum
, and is at work on a biography of Zora Neal Hurston. He lives in New York.

ANDREW HELFER
has been a comic book editor for DC Comics for several years, guiding the adventures of such characters as Superman, Green Lantern, and Justice League America. His writing hag included the series
Deadman, The Shadow
, and the recently completed miniseries
Justice Inc
. (illustrated by our cover artist Kyle Baker). In addition to his full-time job, he is also a writer for the “Superboy” syndicated television series. He lives in New York City.

EDWARD D. HOCH
, born 1930, is one of the most prolific short story writers in history, with over 800 published works of mystery, science fiction, and horror to his credit. President of the Mystery Writers of America in 1982, he was also the winner of the organization’s Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1968.

STUART M. KAMINSKY
is well known for his tales of 1930s Hollywood and is the author of the Toby Peters and Porfiry Petrovich mystery series.
A Cold Red Sunrise
. the latest novel in the Rostnikov series, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1988. Born in 1934, he is Professor of Radio, Television, and Film at Northwestern University.

JOE R. LANSDALE
is best known as a writer of horror and suspense, with dozens of short stories to his credit. His work has appeared in
Twilight Zone, Mississippi Arts and Letters,
as well as the
Shadows
and
Black Lizard Anthology of Crime
collections. His novels include
Dead in the West, The Nightrunners, The Drive In
and
The Drive In 2.
In 1989 he was nominated twice for the World Fantasy Award, for Best Novel
(The Drive In)
and Best Short Story (“The Night they Missed the Horror Show” from
Silver Scream).
He lives with his wife and children in Nacodoches, Texas.

ROBERT R. McCAMMON
, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, has published nine novels of horror and dark fantasy, including
Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour, They Thirst,
and
The New York Times
bestseller
Stinger.
His short fiction has been adapted for television, his World Fantasy Award-winning story “Nightcrawlers” appearing as an episode of the 1980s revival of
The Twilight Zone.

WILL MURRAY
, in addition to being the current pseudonymous writer of Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy’s
Destroyer
action series for New American Library, also scripts the
Destroyer
comic series for Marvel Comics, is the Boston Correspondent for
Starlog
magazine and has written numerous radio scripts for
The Adventures of Doc Savage
for National Public Radio.

MARCO PALMIERI
’s story “Best of All” marks his writing debut. A native New Yorker, he currently lives in Brooklyn with his roommate Doris and their cat Lestat, where he is finishing work on a novel.

GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS
is a Canadian-born writer whose previous novels include
Bloodshift
,
Dream
land, Children of the Shroud,
and
Nighteyes.
Now a California resident, his new novel will appear in 1990 from Doubleday Foundation.