Graham Masterton - The Ninth Nightmare

Springer opened his eyes. ‘Lift up your hands,’ he told her.

Slowly, she raised her hands, and saw that attached to both of her forearms was an intricate arrangement of metal rods and pulleys, and that each of these mechanisms operated a huge metal claw.

‘Try them,’ Springer urged her, and she found that when she squeezed her hands, the rods and the pulleys opened and closed the claws, and rotated them, and locked them. Every movement was accompanied by a complicated clicking sound.

‘The power of each of An-Gryferai’s claws is over seventy-five thousand pounds, which is more than the jaws of life the fire department uses for rescuing people from wrecked automobiles. An-Gryferai can use her claws to cut through the roof of a car, or cut off a man’s head, even if he’s wearing armor. At the same time her claws are so finely controllable that she can pick a flower with them, or pluck out a single eyelash.’

Katie turned her head from side to side. The falcon helmet was handsome and streamlined and fierce, and it gave her an extraordinary feeling of strength and confidence. This is me, she thought. It’s unbelievable, but this is me. I am An-Gryferai. I am a Night Warrior.

‘Well?’ said Singer, with that faint, beguiling smile.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Katie told him. ‘I’m totally overwhelmed.’

Springer laid one hand on her shoulder. ‘Look out of the window,’ he said. ‘No — don’t turn around, because you’ll lose the illusion that you’re An-Gryferai. Look out of the window that you can see reflected in the mirror.’

Through the window, Katie could see the red-flowering bushes in her front yard, and the tall yucca trees outside Mr Tomlinson’s house opposite. She could see Mr Tomlinson in his baggy khaki shorts, trimming the edges of his lawn; and in the distance, at the intersection of North Bay Road and West Forty-fifth, a woman in a short yellow dress pushing a baby stroller.

‘Now focus on that woman,’ said Springer.

Katie narrowed her eyes and peered at the woman intently. As she did so, the woman appeared to come nearer and nearer, as if Katie were looking at her through a zoom lens.

‘Keep focusing,’ Springer coaxed her. ‘An-Gryferai can see for miles and miles, in the sharpest detail.’

Katie kept her eyes fixed on the woman, and after only a few seconds she could clearly make out that she was young and Hispanic, with a plump oval face and heavy unplucked eyebrows, and that she was wearing a yellow headscarf to match her dress and a necklace of large orange-and-green beads. She could also see the baby in the stroller, a chubby little girl in a pink gingham romper suit, waving a pink plastic rattle and furiously kicking her legs. She could hear the rattle quite distinctly.

She turned to Springer and said, ‘That’s amazing. It’s like she’s standing right outside the window.’

‘An-Gryferai’s eyes have an effective range of more than ten miles,’ said Springer. ‘She also has highly acute hearing. She is the eyes and ears of the Night Warriors, as well as a fearsome fighter in her own right. When the Night Warriors go looking for Brother Albrecht and his freak show, her natural abilities will be essential.’

‘What do I have to do?’ Katie asked him. ‘And when ?’

‘Tonight,’ said Springer. ‘Before one a.m.’

‘ Tonight ? But I have absolutely no idea what to do.’

Springer handed her a slip of paper. ‘Before you go to bed, read these words out loud. Once you’ve recited them, you won’t have any trouble dropping off. Then — once you start sleeping — your dream self will rise out of your waking self. I will be waiting for you, to guide you.’

‘But these claws… I don’t know how they work yet.’

‘You will, when you become An-Gryferai. You will have all of her knowledge and all of her skills.’

Katie kept on staring at their reflection in the mirror. She had never felt like this in her life. Excited, scared, so pumped up that she could hardly breathe.

‘Just tell me this,’ she said. ‘Is it going to be really dangerous? I mean, what if something happens to me when I’m An-Gryferai? What if I meet somebody like the Black Shatterer and he hurts me?’

‘It depends on how badly,’ said Springer. ‘I won’t lie to you, Katie, some Night Warriors do get seriously injured, and it can have an effect on their waking bodies. Some Night Warriors have been killed. Not many, but some.’

‘What happens then?’

‘Then, their real-life bodies never wake up.’

‘Ever?’

‘Never. It’s like they’re in a coma for the rest of their life.’

They sat and talked together for another half hour, until it was time for Katie to go to the retirement home in Coral Gables. She had to make a progress report on several of the residents, especially Mrs Gladys Sweetman, whose senile dementia had been worsening in the past three months, until she no longer recognized her own daughter.

Springer said, ‘Whenever he wanted new attractions for his freak show, Brother Albrecht used to send out his agents into the towns and villages of Swabia, looking for people to deform, especially women. Deformed women were always very popular with the crowds who came to his circus, particularly if they performed degrading sexual acts.

‘His agents would creep into people’s houses at night and commit the most atrocious acts of mutilation. Those women who didn’t die from shock or loss of blood would be carried away to join the freak show. There was no point in them trying to escape. Where else could a woman go if she had no arms and no legs, or if her face had been cut off and replaced with that of a dog, or if she and another woman had been inextricably sewn together?’

‘My God,’ said Katie. ‘How did Brother Albrecht get away with it?’

‘Because this was the Middle Ages and there was no law enforcement in the way we understand it now. Apart from that, Brother Albrecht’s circus was hugely popular, even if the Pope wanted to close it down. Before the Duke of Swabia came to break it up, it had traveled all over Europe, and as far as Russia, and it made Brother Albrecht a very wealthy man. Thousands of people flocked to see the Centaur who had the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a horse. She would be covered by a stallion several times a day for the entertainment of the crowds. Then there was the Human Cockroach, a young boy with six arms instead of legs, who would publicly eat handfuls of excrement. And so many more, each one more disgusting than the last.

‘When Brother Albrecht dreamed it away, the whole circus went into a kind of suspended animation, but I can only guess that his intention was to bring it all back to life one day — and sooner, rather than later. I doubt if he realized that it wouldn’t be revived for so many hundreds of years.’

‘But if the circus was so disgusting, why would anyone want to revive it?’

‘I don’t know, to be frank. Why does anyone stub out cigarettes on children’s arms, or beat women within an inch of their life? Why does anyone commit rape, torture, or homicide? Why do people spray graffiti on beautiful buildings, or throw acid at famous works of art? There’s a very dark side to human nature and whoever is trying to bring Brother Albrecht’s circus back to life has darkness in spades.’

‘How is he going to do it? Do you have any idea?’

‘Not entirely. But we’re pretty sure that the Griffin House Hotel has always been central to this revival. In seven of its bedrooms — yours included — nightmares of mutilations and murders are imprinted in the walls. Between nineteen thirty-six and nineteen thirty-eight, Gordon Veitch stayed in each of those rooms. What we don’t yet understand is what he was trying to do.’