Chapter 14 #3
Nigel sighed. But, knowing Luna was waiting for her turn behind him, he continued down the hall.
He spared little attention for the terrors on display on either side.
Little vignettes of grim ghoulishness appeared suddenly through hazy curtains to give the impression of peering into Portals Beyond.
Perhaps enough to chill those who had never peered through Portals Beyond for real, but a poor substitute for those who had.
He gave credit to the effects team. The lighting, the sounds, the hard-working fog machines, and the puppetry on display were all certainly more impressive than one might expect for a traveling fairground attraction.
The fans pumping cold air through the corridors were giving their best effort, and he turned up his collar against the chill.
Hopefully Luna, in her cherry dress, wouldn’t be too uncomfortable.
The haunted passages led through a series of twists and turns, including numerous jump-scares, both from puppets and costumed fair workers.
Nigel blinked blandly at these and proceeded at a steady pace.
He came at last to a door, rather larger than the others, which swung open silently at his approach.
All was pitch-black within, but he knew better than to hope that would last. Blaring lights and noise would no doubt erupt the instant he crossed the threshold.
Still, the only way out was through . . .
He stepped inside.
Into a space which remained—most unexpectedly—pitch-dark.
After all the light-displays and pageantry, Nigel didn’t know what to make of this. He stopped dead and waited. Surely someone was about to jump out and utter some variation of a “Boo!”
But nothing happened. And went on happening for quite a long while. Was something wrong with the mechanism?
“Hullo?” Nigel called out. His voice sounded rather hollow. This space was larger than he anticipated. And those hidden blowing fans were doing their level best to freeze him like a side of beef. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “Hullo, is something wrong?”
A distant voice called from some location he couldn’t pinpoint: “One moment, sir. We’ve got a technical issue. Won’t be a tick!”
Clanking, hissing noises echoed from far away. Nigel sighed. He supposed with all these complicated mechanics and props, one had to expect the occasional breakdown. Still, he had better things to do with his time than stand here in the dark. Alone. With his thoughts.
Thoughts which began to venture into territory best left untouched.
Perhaps it was the darkness. Or the chill.
For Nigel found himself casting back to days of yesteryear.
Days when he had walked the Dire Realms unafraid, the magic of the Ancients accumulated in his veins.
He’d encountered his share of unrestful spirits.
There were plenty of gruesome hauntings in the lower levels of Nocturnus Tower, where some of the Old Masters’ more grisly experiments were conducted long ago, back when there were no sanctions against such doings.
Those were the experiments which Jastira had resurrected for the modern age.
Applying her own wicked twist on the archaic theories.
Nigel’s skin prickled. As a rule, he made it a point not to think back, not to remember.
Particularly not those ventures into the dungeons of Nocturnus.
There were things he’d both seen and done while saturated in sorcerous aura (and halfway pickled on absinthe), which an ordinary mind could not contemplate with sanity.
But in this sudden darkness, he found himself remembering . . .
. . . the narrow corridor, smelling faintly of mold . . .
. . . the cries rising hollowly from fetid depths . . .
. . . that chill across the soul when the layers of reality peeled back to reveal the deeper, truer, darker reality waiting beyond . . .
. . . the knowledge that one small misstep would mean damnation . . .
For the most part, he’d avoided those regions, purposefully turned a blind eye to what Jastira did. But he’d known. He could pretend otherwise all he liked, but in his heart of hearts, he’d known. And he’d done nothing. Not until it was almost too—
“LOVE ME! FEAR ME! WORSHIP ME!”
Nigel choked on a cry and clapped his hands over his ears as the voice boomed suddenly over the thaumatic speakers.
In the same instant, an apparition appeared before him—larger than life, made up entirely of pale fog and artificial lights.
It swooped down from some unknowable space of darkness straight toward him.
He had enough time to consider, She doesn’t look anything like, Jastira. Not really.
It was as though someone had been told about the Shadowbane Lady, maybe even glimpsed a blurry photograph taken from a great distance, all in shades of gray. There was none of Jastira’s vivid, colorful, life-pulsing essence, none of her great and terrible beauty. And yet . . .
And yet Nigel froze under the glare of that projection, like a rabbit caught under the snake’s hypnotic eye.
It filled up his vision, filled up his mind.
And though that reasonable part of him continued to insist in oh-so-reasonable tones, She’s dead, Grimm.
She’s dead and gone. She’s never coming back.
Certainly not as a ten-foot giantess, his body did not hear, did not care.
He felt his knees giving way, as though trying to send him down in abject genuflection before her, even as he had done so many times in life.
The hollow recording cackled like an eldritch hag, nothing like Jastira’s smooth-as-velvet tones.
It didn’t matter. Nigel, staring up into that grotesque image of flashing lights and fog, heard her voice ringing in his head as clear as the night she hissed into his ear: “Without me, you are nothing. You were always nothing. When I am gone, you will be nothing again, and you will go on being nothing until—”
Out of nowhere, a pink missile flew.
Speeding with terrible accuracy, its glass eyes reflecting the haunted glow, its gold horn pierced directly between the apparition’s pale visage and shattered the illusion into pale twists of fog.
Cold fingers clasped his hand tight.
“Quick, Mr. Grimm! Run for it!”
Nigel just had time enough to turn, to glimpse Luna’s face in the weird lighting, to gasp a breath.
Then he was tugged nearly off his feet, dragged across the dark chamber, even as that voice recording continued to jeer, “I AM THE GODDESS OF THIS AGE! TREMBLE BEFORE ME, MORTALS!” Which, granted, was totally something Jastira would say, though perhaps with rather less cackling.
They reached the end of the chamber, and Luna swept aside a red curtain before ushering them both into a final passage.
The EXIT sign hovered at the far end, pulsing faintly.
But for the moment, though Nigel wanted more than anything to leave this wretched Wacky House far behind, he couldn’t summon the will to move his feet.
He sagged against the wall, heart thudding.
Despite the chill from the hidden fans, sweat beaded his brow.
“It’s all right, Mr. Grimm,” Luna’s voice spoke from somewhere close by. He almost couldn’t discern the words through the panic seeking to claw up his throat. “It’s all right. We’re out of it now. It was just a light show, remember.”
“Yes,” he panted, nodding furiously. “A light show. Yes. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course.”
He couldn’t seem to stop repeating those words. Not until Luna took hold of both his hands and squeezed his fingers hard. Then his gaze shot to meet hers in the eerie red glow of that room. She peered at him with great concern, her lips gently parted.
“It’s personal for you,” she said gently. “Isn’t it, Mr. Grimm?”
Nigel’s heart constricted.
“She’s like a bogey from a storybook to most of us. But not to you.”
Did she know? But how could she? How could she even guess such a thing? That he and Jastira . . . that they were . . .
“Because of your dad.”
“Oh!” Nigel let the word out in a single gasp of relief. “My dad. Yes.”
He’d half-forgotten he’d told Luna about his father’s confrontation with the Shadowbane Lady.
How she’d attempted to drain the magical force from Garden.
How the old man had defied her and received a shot of Dire Matter straight through the heart for his pains.
He’d simply neglected to mention any of the other details.
Such as his own romantic entanglement with Jastira.
Or what had happened when he arrived on the scene of his father’s murder.
Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. Nigel reached into his pocket, fishing for a handkerchief.
His fingers closed around a small scrap of fabric, and he pulled it out, applied it to his forehead, only to frown at the scratchy texture of lace.
He yanked the object away, peering at it in the harsh light.
It was a purple garter.
He gaped at it rather stupidly for a breath. “Oh . . . dear.”
Then he lifted his eyes again, meeting Luna’s gaze.
She bit her lip. Pressed a hand to her mouth, stifling a little gulping hiccup. Her eyes flicked down to the garter, then back at Nigel again.
Suddenly both of them were laughing. It was that kind of breaking laugh, that near-painful relief after a moment of terrible tension, when one realizes suddenly that life really is mostly made up of a series of absurdities, and one could always choose to enjoy the hilarity if one wished.
Luna’s whole face crinkled up until her dark eyes disappeared, and she fell against the wall beside him, her knees threatening to give out.
Nigel used the garter to wipe tears from his eyes, which only made her double-over harder.
His own laugh sounded rather strange to his ears, as though it belonged to some other man. Some man who had never heard of the Nocturnus Institute. Or Jastira. Or the Dire Dimensions. Like one of the Wacky House mirror-versions of himself, a warped reflection of the bitter truth.