Inside was a manikin, a wrinkled, leathery-looking homunculus whose skin seemed about five sizes too large for his body. He had both hands clamped over his nose and mouth, and tried to stifle another sneeze. It came out with a tiny blatting noise. He wiped his nose on his arm and stared back up at the huge face looking down at him.
"Oh, shit," he said.
5.
The city was afire, though it did not burn.
Brennan had never felt such heat. The air shimmered with it. It rose off the pavement in waves, licking his face like the fetid tongue of a great panting beast. It crawled over his body, sending tendrils of sweat trickling down his back and legs. If he had been of a religious bent, he'd suspect that this was hell. He remembered the motto commonly found embroidered on jackets favored by combat vets in Nam: I'm going to heaven when I die 'cause I've already spent my time in hell.
Maybe this wasn't hell, but it was the city of Brennan's worst nightmares. He moved on down the alley, stepping over the bubbles of asphalt oozing through the cracks in the pavement. The buildings surrounding him were decaying, the streets buckling and choked with uncollected trash. It was a ghost town. No one but Brennan walked the garbageinfested streets.
He emerged from the alley and looked up at the rusted and bent sign hanging overhead from the streetlamp: Henry Street. The Crystal Palace, then, should be…
Brennan looked down the street, and there it was. The Palace still stood in this place. And if the Palace still stood… Brennan found himself drawn down the street like a sailor pulled helplessly to siren-infested rocks.
The door to the Palace was unlocked. Inside it was dark and cool. Brennan felt a shiver go through him as the sweat running down his face and body suddenly evaporated, leaving him cold and clammy.
Maybe it was the coolness of the Palace's interior that caused the shiver. Maybe it was the sight of her sitting in her customary table in her customary high-backed chair, barely visible in the dark, her customary glass of amaretto sitting by her hand.
"Chrysalis," Brennan whispered.
She looked at him, the expression on her fleshless face as unreadable as ever. Chrysalis was a woman of blood and bone, her skin and flesh invisible, her muscles mostly so.
Some found her hideous. Brennan had been fascinated by her.
"Is it really you?" he asked.
"Who else would be sitting in this place, in this body, drinking amaretto from a crystal glass?" the spectre asked. Brennan shook his head. She hadn't really answered his question. Perhaps the rules governing this skewed dimension didn't allow her to. Or perhaps she was forbidden to speak clearly by the rules that governed his skewed subconscious. "You knew everything that happened in Jokertown," Brennan said. "What about in this place?"
"I know you," she replied. "I know something of that which goes on in your mind."
"Can you help me?" he asked. "Can you help me find Jennifer?"
If the spectre was upset by his mention of her rival, she didn't show it. "Look in the center of things," she told him. "You will find that which is most precious to you in the arms of your greatest enemy. But be careful. You are not alone in this world."
"Is this place," he asked her, "real?"
"It seems real enough to me," she replied.
"Me too," Brennan said in a small voice. He hesitated. He wanted to touch her, but somehow he didn't think that was a very good idea. He was afraid that she would dissipate like smoke. Worse, he was afraid that she would feel warm and alive, like solid flesh. "I have to go," he finally said. Chrysalis nodded. "Another quest," she said as Brennan backed out of the room. "Be careful, my archer. Be very, very careful."
It seemed to Brennan that she looked sad, but there was nothing he could do to cure her sadness. He just took a piece of it with him as he left the Palace for the last time.
Outside, the sun was so bright that he had to blink against its glare. It hadn't gotten any cooler, either, and he broke out in an instant sweat as he stood outside the Palace considering his next move.
If he was to take Chrysalis's advice, he should look for the "center of things." That, unfortunately, was a rather nebulous description. He started up the street, thinking about it, and then he noticed that another part of Chrysalis's prophecy had come true.
He wasn't alone.
There were people on the street. Most were wearing the blue satin jackets of the Immaculate Egret gang, or the face masks of the Werewolves. They stood singly or in small groups, in front of, behind, and all around him.
Brennan reached for the Browning holstered in the snug of his back but came away empty. His gun, it seemed, hadn't been translated to this place with him. Then he suddenly realized that it might not matter whether he had his gun.
Add the men surrounding him were already dead.
Add were bloody. All had open wounds. Most had arrows sticking in chests, throats, backs, or eyes. Their faces, as Brennan watched them approach, were mostly familiar, and he realized that these were the men he had kidded since coming back to the city.
There were a dot of them.
Brennan was momentarily frozen, unable to decide upon a plan of action as the dead men approached. There was a sudden movement, a sudden flicker of motion that Brennan caught out of the corner of his eye. He whirled to face it head-on and, saw a ghastly-grinning man with a horribly tattooed face tanding within arm's length of him.
It was Scar, the teleporting ace and gang deader who Brennan had kidded when he'd first come to the city. Scar's face was tattooed with the scarlet and black whorls that were the mark of the Cannibal Headhunters. He was a sadistic ace who took vast delight in utilizing his power to help him slowly slice up his victims with a straight razor. "I'm back, asshole," he said in a ghastly whisper through the throat that Brennan had crushed with a bowstring. "And this time I've got help." He gestured at the company of dead men slowly surrounding them in the brutal heat.
"You'll need it," Brennan said with a confidence he didn't totally feed. "I already kidded you once."
Scar hissed in rage, disappeared, and reappeared right in Brennan's face. He slashed out with his straight razor. Brennan ducked and half blocked the blow, but not before the razor cut across his chest, slicing his sweat-soaked T-shirt and scoring the flesh underneath. Scar disappeared, then flicked back into existence half a dozen feet from Brennan.
"Time to play," the sadistic ace said.
Brennan felt blood mingle with the sweat running down his chest, and he suddenly realized that he could die in this place. He looked around quickly, spotted a narrow gap between two dead Egrets who were closing in on him, and sprinted for it. Brennan stiff-armed the Egret who moved to intercept him and pushed his way through.
"Run, you bastard, run!" Scar screamed with crazed delight. "You'll never get away, never! You're meat-dead, rotting meat!"
Brennan ran, the dead men on his trail, Scar watching and laughing horrible constricted daughter.
Rick and Mick held up the pickle jar and looked at it intently. Brutus stared back at them, his face forlornly pressed up against the glass, bruised and swollen. Blood trickled from his nose, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to cradle his broken right arm as Rick shook the jar and watched the joker bounce around.
"Why are we bringing the little geek with us?" he asked Kien.
Kien glanced down at him as he drove carefully through the flurry of fat damp snowflakes. "Ultimately, as a receptacle for Captain Brennan s soul. After we've captured them, I've decided to have our jumper allies transfer me to his body for a while and him to that thing."
"Cool," Rick said. He gave the bottle another shake. "Better take the did off and give the geek a little air," Mick said. "He's starting to turn blue."