The Ninth Nightmare (17 page)

‘Dead on time, JD,' she told him.

He waddled back toward her with his arms held up in surrender. ‘Hey – it's not what you think, believe me.'

‘How do
you
know what I think?'

‘Sorry, but it's pretty obvious. You think I'm hitting on you. You think I'm some kind of stalker. Whereas that is absolutely not the case.'

‘“That is absolutely not the case,” huh?'

‘Absolutely one hundred thirteen percent.'

Rhodajane thought for a moment, with her lips pursed. Then she said, ‘You want to know what I'm really thinking?'

‘OK. What are you really thinking?'

‘I'm thinking that you found my earring in the back of your taxi and you came here to return it to me. You're hoping that I'm going to be
so–o–o
grateful that I'll agree to have dinner with you and maybe one thing will lead to another. Or that at the very least I'll give you a sawski by way of a tip.'

John held out the earring in the palm of his hand. ‘Here – look – take it. I'm not looking for a tip and I'm not expecting you to come out to dinner with me and I'm not expecting one thing to lead to another, although I acknowledge that it can sometimes happen, you know – one thing leading to another – especially after the cream-cheese
pierogis
at Sokolowski's. They're almost worth learning Polish for.

He paused, and frowned, and then he said, ‘Wait up a goddamned minute. How the hell did you know I came here to return your earring?'

Rhodajane kept smiling. ‘Your friend told me. He said that you'd show up in exactly twenty-one minutes, and sure enough here you are.'

John leaned sideways, trying to see over her shoulder into Room 309. ‘Excuse me? Who –
what
– which friend is that, exactly?'

‘Come on in and meet him,' said Rhodajane. ‘He's been telling some real interesting stuff.
Weird
, I'll grant you, but interesting.'

She stepped aside so that John could enter the room, but he didn't want to go in first because of the split in his coat. He took hold of her elbow and gently pushed her ahead of him, and closed the door behind him.

‘I could sew that for you,' she said. ‘You wouldn't think it, but I'm pretty good with a needle and twist.'

John was about to ask her how the hell she knew about
that
, too, but then he saw the figure standing in the bay window with his back to him. He was silhouetted against the gray, subdued daylight, his hands deep in his pockets, his coat collar turned up, his shoulders slightly hunched, but John recognized him immediately. He felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

‘
Deano
,' he said. ‘Deano, is that you?'

The man turned around. The hotel room was so dark that it was difficult for John to see his face, but there was no question that he was smiling.

‘Hallo, John. How's it hanging?'

‘Deano! I know you're not Deano, so don't try to give me that “how's it hanging” bullshit.'

Rhodajane went over and switched on the bedside lamps. Now John could see that Deano was very much younger than the last time he had seen him. He had died of chronic alcoholism at the age of forty-two, with blotchy skin and rheumy red eyes and a mass of white tangled curls, like a half-starved Santa Claus. But here today, in Room 309 at the Griffin House Hotel, he looked as young as he was when John first met him at Fort Polk, over twenty-one years ago, when they had joined the Army together. Handsome, in a rakish way, with a broken nose like Owen Wilson and piercing blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair. He held out his hand but John ignored it. This wasn't Deano. Deano had been cremated on a gray day up in Presque Isle, Maine, with only four people to sing
Amazing Grace
and one of them had throat cancer.

‘Your friend's been spinning me all kinds of fancy stories,' said Rhodajane. ‘Like how I'm descended from some kind of family who can walk around in other folks' nightmares and hunt down demons. Hey, would you care for a drink?'

‘Best not,' said John, guardedly, without taking his eyes off ‘Deano'. ‘The cops have been keeping a pretty close eye on me lately. They even pulled me over for taking a bite of my muffaletta sandwich at a traffic signal. It's that fat guy, what's his name? Detective Windsocky. He really has it in for me.'

‘Well,
I'm
going to have a drink,' Rhodajane declared. She went across to the mini bar and bent down in front of it so that her purple thong appeared over the waistband of her jeans. ‘Champagne, I think. How about you, Deano?'

‘Deano doesn't drink,' said John.

‘Oh, really? What, are you in AA or something?'

‘Deano doesn't drink because Deano isn't Deano. The real Deano is dead and his ashes scattered at the Fairmount Cemetery in Presque Isle, Maine. This is a messenger from the great Power-That-Is, who recruits poor suckers like us to fight the eternal war against good and evil.'

Rhodajane stood up with a half bottle of Cuvée Napa in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. She blinked her eyelashes furiously, as if she were trying to create two miniature hurricanes. ‘You mean what he's been telling me is
true
? It isn't just a line?'

‘Deano' kept looking at John and smiling, although he didn't say a word.

John said, ‘It's true all right, Rhodajane, and I can prove it to you. I never would have had you down as one of us unlucky few, but there you are. Most of us look pretty unlikely in our everyday bodies. One of the last guys who fought with us, he was kind of a retard in real life but inside of those dreams and nightmares, he was a regular genius. I mean it was like eat your heart out, Stephen Hawking.'

Rhodajane turned to ‘Deano' and said, ‘So who did you say I was supposed to be?'

‘Xyrena, the Passion Warrior. The woman who can inflame the sexual desires of everyone and everything she meets – man or woman, demon or beast.'

‘There!' said Rhodajane. ‘That's some line, isn't it? “Man or woman, demon or beast!” But you're trying to tell me it's for real? If you're not this guy's old army buddy, then who the hell are you?'

‘So far as I know, his name is Springer,' said John. ‘Well – I say “his” name but he can pop up in pretty much any kind of guise he wants to, male or female. He gets sent here by the Man Upstairs – God, or Gitche Manitou, or Allah. Springer always calls him Ashapola.

‘Ashapola is who or what protects the human race from the forces of evil, and believe me there are plenty of forces of evil out there. That's why he created the Night Warriors, which is
us
– you and me, and hundreds more like us. It's our dubious distinction to save the world from corruption, chaos and ultimate destruction. Let me put it this way, ma'am: if there had never been any Night Warriors, the human race would never have survived so long as it has. We would have gone to hell in a handcart centuries ago.'

‘So you're a Night Warrior, too?' said Rhodajane. She handed him the half bottle of sparkling wine and said, ‘Here – can you open this for me? I don't mean to be rude or nothing, but how did you get past the physical?'

John gently eased the cork out of the bottle so that the gas came out with faintest
piff
! ‘Angel's fart,' he told her. ‘That's the correct way to do it.'

Then he said, ‘Like I told you, none of us look especially prepossessing, present company excepted. You don't have to be Steven Seagal in your waking life to be a tough guy in your dreams.'

‘So who are
you
?' asked Rhodajane. ‘You know – like I really believe all of this, not.'

Springer came over and laid a hand on John's shoulder. ‘This is Dom Magator, the Armorer. He carries most of the weapons that the Night Warriors need when they do battle in the world of dreams. For instance, he has over two hundred different kinds of knives – like a Retinal Stiletto, which – when you throw it – will exactly follow your line of sight, and unerringly hit who or what you are looking at. Or a Spiral Flensing Knife, which will peel whoever you cut with it like an apple, in one long spiral – skin, subcutaneous fat and all.

‘He also carries over a dozen guns, like the Density Rifle, which compresses its target down to its ultimate possible density. A two-hundred-fifty pound man can be instantly reduced to the size of a smoking walnut. Or an Absence Gun, which uses quantum physics to negate the existence of whoever it hits. If you get shot by an Absence Gun, you don't get killed. You were never born in the first place. There never was any you. I have to tell you that it makes a most thrilling sound when it hits its victims, like a thunderclap, echoing back for years.'

Rhodajane poured herself a glass of sparkling wine and drank almost all of it in three gulps. She burped and said, ‘Excusez-
moi
! I have to tell you two mooks that I am finding it very difficult to get my head around all of this. Either this is some kind of ridiculous set-up for
Candid Camera
, or it's a joke in very bad taste, or you're both out to lunch.'

‘It's none of the above,' said John. ‘It's for real.'

She prodded her finger into John's chest. ‘OK, if it's for real, prove it. You said that you could. So go ahead.'

John looked at Springer and said, ‘What are you doing here, man? Is something going down?'

Springer nodded. ‘Yes, there is, and it's serious, and it's happening right here, in this hotel. But before I tell you what it is, I think it would be a good idea if we convinced Xyrena here that we're not spinning her a line.'

John took a deep breath. ‘When you say
serious
—?'

‘I mean serious to the point of the whole world falling victim to the same nightmare, all night, every night. I mean serious to the point of the human race losing all of its morals, all of its scruples, all of its kindness, all of its humanity. I mean what John Milton meant in
Paradise Lost
when he wrote about “Chaos and Old Night”. A hell on earth, John, where nobody respects anybody else's authority, or their dignity, or their freedom, or even their right to life. A mirror image of the US Constitution, if you like, in which it is almost mandatory to do harm to others.'

‘That
does
sound serious,' Rhodajane agreed. ‘I think that sounds very, very,
very
serious,' and she nodded her head emphatically with every ‘very'.

‘Then let us prove it to you,' said Springer. He went across to the closet and opened it up, adjusting the door so that John could see himself in the mirror on the back of the door. Springer beckoned to him, and John slowly walked over to join him.

‘This is how Dom Magator appears in the world of dreams,' Springer announced.

John stared at his reflection in the mirror. He thought his face was looking baggy and lived-in, and he hadn't realized that his pompadour was now so thin that his scalp was gleaming through. However, Springer rested his hand on his shoulder again, and after a few seconds he began to see the ghostly image of a helmet materializing around his head – big and black and cube-like, with only the narrowest visor for him to see through, and even that was tinted dark green like the vizier in a welder's face-mask. The helmet was encrusted with knobs and switches and locking springs and other small metal attachments.

‘Jesus,' said Rhodajane. ‘Talk about Transformers.'

Now Dom Magator's battledress began to appear – a heavy cloak made of some soft, gray, metallic material, and underneath it a suit of black, leathery armor, jointed like the thorax of a stag beetle. He wore a wide metal belt, from which seven or eight handguns were suspended, all with decorative handles and elaborate cocking mechanisms and illuminated sights – some laser, some infrared, some ultraviolet. Across his back was fastened a curved chrome-plated frame, in which all of his various knives were fitted, as well as his armory of rifles and bazookas.

His outfit was finished off by heavy-duty knee-boots, to which even more knives were clipped. There was scarcely an inch on his body which had no weapon attached to it.

Rhodajane came up to Dom Magator and cautiously touched his helmet with her fingertips.

‘There's nothing there,' she said, in bewilderment. ‘I can only feel your hair.' She paused, and then she added, ‘What there is of it.'

‘Get out of here,' John snapped at her.

Springer said, ‘You cannot feel his helmet because this is nothing more than a holographic vision of Dom Magator's battledress. This is the waking world, Rhodajane, and your Night Warriors' uniforms only take on physical reality in the dream world. Likewise, Dom Magator's weapons. We couldn't have anybody running around the waking world with an Absence Gun, or a Successive Detonation Carbine. Think what a terrorist could do with a weapon like that.'

Rhodajane stepped back, and Dom Magator's armor gradually began to fade, until he was back in his crumpled blue button-down shirt and his tan sport coat with the split in the back.

‘Now do you believe us?' John asked her, primping up his hair. ‘It isn't easy, I'll admit. I didn't believe it myself at first – not until our first mission.'

Rhodajane looked at her champagne glass. ‘OK, I guess I have to believe you. That's unless you've slipped me a roofie.'

‘So what's happening?' asked John, with a sniff. ‘“Chaos and Old Night” – that sounds like Satan's involved.'

‘A child of Satan, if you like,' said Springer. ‘At least, that's what he likes to call himself. His name is Brother Albrecht and he used to be a Cistercian monk. For a very long time, though, he has called himself
der Ursprüngliche Sohn des Teufels
– the Original Son of the Devil.'