The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (61 page)

Kreiger’s hands returned to the keyboard
… and the jaws of the trap sprang shut.

*     *     *

More white light. Ellen blinked
repeatedly, consciousness slowly pulling apart the gray veils surrounding her
as reason sifted an explanation from the insensible images. The white light the
reflection of sunlight through dusty train windows, diffused and brilliant,
igniting the chrome skin of the waiting train so that it blazed down upon her
like a …

Images flashed up from moments
before: a doctor, a nurse, a medical procedure, strapped down, confused,
suffocating, some kind of treatment, things attached to her temples, sticky and
itching, going on three. (
Bad
!) Two. (
Very Bad! Please stop
!)
One. (
NooooOOOO
!)

But everything was different now.

Or was it that nothing had ever
really changed?

Her head lolled to one side, staring
upside-down at the platform beyond. Her arms lay like dead flesh over her head,
limp and unresponsive as though her veins were running with liquid gold, warm
and exquisite. Her eyes rolled further and she saw her left hand clenched into
a fist around a crumpled piece of orange-colored paper, wadded and wrinkled. A
tremendous weight pressed down upon her, pinning her down even as she inched
her way across the floor, empty, worm-like struggles amounting to nothing.
Dimly, she was aware that reality at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon had stepped out
upon the fire escape for a smoke; what stayed behind was chaos personified.

Her eyes rolled again, the only
movement her deadened flesh would allow, and she saw Reginald Hyde straddling
her waist, fattened haunches resting upon her thighs, pinning her. His tattooed
skin was pressed so close that she could smell his sweat, read the confused
hieroglyphs and disturbing images inscribed upon his living flesh. Black
pictures and words and vague symbols swirled and moved, dancing with the ghost
images that stirred over him, captured indigo spirits enslaved to his will.
Hyde was indifferent to both them and her, amusing himself with his own
distractions.

Her sweatshirt was pulled up, Hyde’s
hands running course as sandpaper across her belly and exposed breasts. He
leaned down to her, his tongue urging from between his lips, the surface
covered in blisters like the bumps on the back of a toad. Toad skin could be
dried and crushed then smoked for a quick ticket on board the Dreamline; she
had heard of such things, but never dared try it. That was madness. Pure
insanity.

So what was this, then?

Her eyes widened in terror as Hyde
bent forward, leaning towards her open mouth, her motionless lips, tongue sliding
obscenely over his teeth. The image of toad skin had transferred itself to Hyde
and the repulsive organ thrusting at her, deliberately transformed as if he’d
intended to disgust her with it. And she was disgusted. Caught in his
half-dream state, Hyde was delighted by her reaction, by the fact that she was
powerless before him.

The warty, moist organ stabbed into
her mouth, rubbing across her lips, touching her teeth and pallet. She tasted
bitterness and tried to summon the strength to spit it out, or bite his tongue,
or something. Something!

His fingers tightened upon her
breasts, causing her to gasp in pain, to swallow involuntarily. Hyde’s inhuman
thumbs scraped their way across the smooth skin, jabbing and pumping more
toxins into her. She felt fire burning through her, felt it grab her heart like
an iron hand and stop its rabbit-quick beat, felt the tongue thrust down into
her throat and close off her breath.

Convulsions, body shaking and
writhing. Unable to move. Unable to stop … him…

White light.

Blackness.

…
blacknessssssss
…

The hiss died slowly in her head, her
brain coming back to the world like a drowning swimmer pulled back to shore,
ears ringing, eyes slow to focus, nose dripping blood.

“How are you feeling, Ellen?” Dr.
Chaulmers asked, his face interposed between her and the over-bright light. “Do
you remember where you are?”

Her eyes darted about the room.
Sterile walls of claustrophobic white. People dressed like the walls, staring
at her with feigned smiles of concern painted beneath indifferent eyes.
Practiced masks. They only pretended to care about her, but no one really
cared. No one but … no one but…

Empty, her mind fixed upon a
once-image that slipped away and disappeared without her ever noticing. There
was something about a place, a … a station? Maybe. And somebody. Somebody who …
somebody…

“Waiting room,” she mumbled, trying
to bring more of the concrete details out of the flashes of images pushing
through the overriding blankness in her mind. A white room, black curtains … at
the … at the…

“That’s fine, Ellen,” Dr. Chaulmers
condescended, lips pursed like a smug child who has earned himself empty praise
and a piece of candy for some immodest display of skill. “You were in the
hospital waiting room just before you came in here. Do you remember coming into
this room? Into the hospital?”

She felt her head nod, feeling
strangely distanced from herself, as if her awareness were invested solely
within her own spirit, and that spirit was standing outside of herself, looking
at her empty body in wonder.

“Good, good,” Dr. Chaulmers said in
his most soothing voice, practiced and insincere. “Now I’m going to say a few
things to you. I want you to tell me what you think of when I say these
things.”

Again she nodded, senseless, numb to
her own condition.

“Jack o’ Lantern.”

She felt herself stare stupidly,
trying to make a connection that simply refused to be made. There was nothing,
not even a face, or a name, or an image of a thing or a place. Everlasting
sheets of gray. Nothing.

“Lindsay.”

Nothing.

“Goose Man.”

Nothing.

“The edge.”

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Nothing—

“Nails.”

The image that hit her mind was as
sudden as a lightning bolt. Not just a dim recollection, but an actual picture
in her head. Beetle-browed, squat gargoyle of a creature with dragon wings,
lizard tail, compact, powerful arms and legs. A living weapon, eager and able
to dispatch anything that might attack from the … the…

Slipping. Going away. Try to hold on.
Try! Try! Gargoyle! Gargoyle from nails. Gargoyle from nails. Gargoyle. Nails.
Gargoyle whose name was…

“
Nail
.”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Chaulmers asked,
distracted.

“Nail was a gargoyle,” she declared,
the beginnings of a relieved smile upon her face. “From the Sanity’s Edge
Saloon. I was there. And Jack, too. Nail protected me and Jack and the …
others. He pr-pr-protected us from the people in the … in the … the Wasteland.”

She turned to Dr. Chaulmers, and her
smile faded.

He was openly frowning, his mask
fallen away to reveal cheeks gone red, his forehead white and blotchy. He
looked ready to scream; ready to accuse her of orchestrating some secret plot
to make him appear foolish. “No Ellen,” he replied sternly. “No, you are wrong.
There is no Nail. No Jack. No Cast Outs. And no saloon. They are only in your
mind. You have been living completely within a fantasy world, Ellen. One you
devised yourself. You were admitted into our care over a week ago by your
father, and you have been in one of our quiet rooms ever since, trapped in a
state of non-responsive catatonia occasioned by brief periods of manic
dementia. We had to restrain you to keep you from harming yourself or anyone
else. You failed to respond to the regimen of drug therapy I prescribed, so
this morning we began electro-shock treatment in an effort to break the dementia
and depression that led you to attempt suicide.
This
is what you are supposed to
remember, Ellen.
This
is what’s really going on.
This
is
reality.”

Each word was cast like a stone,
hitting and breaking her. She felt tears well up, blur her vision. She hated to
cry—hated herself for it—but could not make herself stop.
Please, no. Don’t end it like this,
Jack. Anything but this.

“It’s okay, angel,” a familiar voice
said, and someone was holding her face gently, thumbs brushing lightly at her
tears, hands warm and soothing upon her cheek.

And wrong! Very wrong!
No, not like this, Jack. Please not
like this!

“Daddy?”

“It’s me, angel.” The owner of the
voice leaned back, letting the light touch his face. Her father. He was here.
Not the abusive man she thought she remembered from her childhood—fuzzy and
gray, those memories, like photos borrowed from another’s album—or the
neglectful guardian from her adolescence—dim recollections like the memories of
a book read long ago where so much has boiled down into so little, and no
detail recalled true to context—but her father; her
real
father.

“Daddy?”

“You’ll be okay, angel. I know you
will. But you have to listen to Dr. Chaulmers. Nothing about that other place
is real. It’s like … like a dream. It seems real until you wake up, and then
its not. It’s not real at all. It’s just make-believe. It’s okay, as long as
you can tell the difference. You understand, don’t you?”

No! No, she did not understand! Not
anything, least of all reality. None of this seemed real. And the other world
did. This world made sense, but it didn’t seem real. The other world did not
make sense, and that seemed real. Only…

“You just have to let it go,” her
father continued. “Just let it go.”

“Jack, please!” she whispered, eyes
closed, praying against the confusion outside of her mind. “Not like this. Not
like this. Not…

… like this.”

She opened her eyes to find herself
back in the Saloon, Reginald Hyde still straddling her waist, whispering into
her ear: “Just let it go.” His one hand clamped painfully upon her breast while
the other reached past her, reached for something over her head, reached for
something in her raised left hand.

The last ticket!

*     *     *

Jack ran up the steps, Rebreather
close behind, the Cast Out beyond the point of pain or injury, his hatred
inhuman, a demonic machine fueled on rage. His breath rasped within the mask
like hydraulic vents, the cut of steel on steel. He was only a few steps
behind, closing quickly even as Jack’s avenue of escape looked to run out.

But Jack knew better than to count on
the Stairway to Heaven. Ellen might consider it a sign of hope, the leaping-off
point of all possibilities; an avenue to dreams.

Jack knew the stairway for what it
was: self-deception.

The Stairway to Heaven was the Tower
of Babel, the fool’s edifice built to reach out and touch the hand of God.
Incomplete by its nature, destined to remain so throughout the course of one’s
lifetime, it was the very definition of form and function; death was the only
means of achieving Heaven and only in dying would the stairway become complete.
It was built on a fool’s dream and like a fool’s dream, it was doomed to
collapse under the strain of its own improbability.

Ellen believed the purpose of the stair was to carry her up, and so it
never collapsed beneath her. But Jack knew otherwise. The only purpose of the
Stairway was to collapse under the weight of those who pursued it emptily.

Not only did he know it, he was
counting on it.

Somewhere, Kreiger was screaming, the
sound lost to the fierce wind of Jack’s flight, his own ragged, desperate
breathing, and the impossible slamming of his heart. It was one thing to know;
it was another thing entirely to bet your life on what you know. There was
always room for doubt, room for failure.

And failure assured one outcome only.

Jack never broke stride, simply
thrusting the spearheaded weapon down between a missing step and catching the
hook up under the wood. He’d wrapped the other end of the chain twice around
his other hand, fist tightened with fear.

And then he leaped, sailing out over
the precipice of madness.

*     *     *

Kreiger’s fingers shuttled with
blinding speed across the Jabberwock’s blood-soaked keyboard, the bone-colored
keys like the rows of teeth in a shark’s gaping maw.

It was not an act of choice, but
desperation.

Long barbs of jagged steel hooked
through his arms while thick spears of metal punched through the seat and base
of the chair with its living leather skin, skewering his thighs, calves and
feet, fracturing bones and splitting muscle like the great, jagged teeth of a
dragon…