The Order of Odd-Fish (32 page)

She pretended to be asleep. Ian laid the tray next to her bed. He gently touched her face and said something soft, something she couldn’t hear. Then he was gone.

Jo watched the ceiling as another sleepless night dragged on. It was so late it was nearly morning. The sun sulked beyond the dark horizon. Jo was listless but twitching with an energy that would eat her up if she didn’t do something. She felt as if she were full of squirming baby mice.

Jo got out of bed. Her head tingled with needles and ice and tiny fires. She wandered the halls of the lodge restlessly. Nobody else was up and about. The lodge felt as deserted as the very first time she had entered it. Her duel was in less than three days, but she wasn’t thinking about that anymore.

She was thinking about the Belgian Prankster. She couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life awake, forever terrified of him. She burned to kill him—and her father’s message may have told her how to do it.
If you cut off his stinger and turn it on him
…was that what her father meant? Could she trick the Belgian Prankster? Could she go to him, pretend that she
wanted
the Ichthala blood? And then…

Jo went to the kitchen. She opened drawer after drawer until she found a knife.

She was going to do it.

Jo opened the front door and stepped outside.

The neighborhood was deserted. Jo walked the dim streets in a daze. She rode an empty subway train for a while. The doors opened and closed, opened and closed, but all the platforms were empty. She got off in Flurd-Poffle, all the way on the other side of town, and started walking again. Here, too, the streets were empty in the dark morning.

She had come to the asylum.

Jo took a deep breath. She put her hand in her pocket and touched the knife. The Belgian Prankster had something that belonged to her. Ever since his return to Eldritch City, Jo had felt an ache, as though he had stolen part of her that night. The pull only became stronger the closer she came to him, the ache sharper. Jo pushed open the big glass doors of the asylum.

The lobby was empty, a large, cold room with glass walls. Harsh light highlighted the dark blotches in the gray carpet, the little rips in the furniture, the ashen pallor of the dead plants. It was still dark outside, and the lobby was reflected in the glass window walls like a shadow world. The only sound was an electric hum.

Jo looked for a guard or a receptionist. But nobody was there. She walked up to the door that led into the asylum proper, and entered. Nobody was there to stop her.

But she wasn’t surprised. Everything was unfolding with the logic of a nightmare. She was going to kill the Belgian Prankster, and the world seemed to hold its breath in dread. She could hardly believe she was actually going to him. She watched herself climb the stairways of the asylum, as if she were watching herself on TV.

Jo searched the empty white hallways for the Belgian Prankster. The silence was eerie. There were no doctors or patients. Jo wondered where everyone had gone. She had a hollow pain throughout her body. She felt like someone had stolen her heart, her stomach, everything inside her, and she was a walking empty skin.

She came to the Belgian Prankster’s cell, on the top floor of the asylum, in the maximum security section. There were no guards. The door was open.

Jo stopped. What on earth was she doing? Aunt Lily had told her to stay away from the Belgian Prankster. And the Belgian Prankster obviously expected her. Why else had it been so easy to get to him? The Belgian Prankster had probably killed all the doctors and nurses so that it would be that much easier for her to come. Why was she doing this? The Belgian Prankster had made his long-dreaded return, and hadn’t hurt her. Why seek him out?

But Jo couldn’t help herself. Her mind was cloudy with sleeplessness. She touched the knife in her pocket. She had to be calm.

She clenched her fists and slowly relaxed.

Jo passed through the door, and into a cocktail party.

The Belgian Prankster had redecorated his cell in the style of a swank bachelor’s pad. The white room was furnished with mod plastic couches and multicolored cubes, space-age art hung on the padded walls, and the centerpiece was a groovy sculpture of aluminum cylinders. Swinging lounge music crackled from the PA system.

Jo was baffled. She had braced herself for a nightmare; a cocktail party caught her off balance. If she had entered the cell to find the Belgian Prankster howling atop a bloody heap of dead doctors and patients, she would’ve been frightened, but it would have made some kind of sense. But this…

The cocktail party was so crowded that Jo couldn’t even see the Belgian Prankster. She was jostled on all sides by the asylum’s doctors, nurses, and patients, who mixed freely and chatted as they sipped cocktails out of laboratory glassware. The staff and inmates of the asylum all had a happy look in their eyes, and conversed exclusively in quips. There was a robotic merriness in the room that creeped Jo out, a desperate lightheartedness; she felt she had strayed onto the set of a sitcom that was about to be canceled and was only getting worse by trying harder.

Jo heard a familiar chortle. She froze—but then she gripped the knife, breathing deeply. She forced her way through the chattering crowd, pushing past the doctors and nurses, who blithely ignored her—until, finally, in the back of the room, she found him.

The Belgian Prankster lounged in a booth, surrounded by fawning psychoanalysts. He had just told a joke, and they were all laughing uproariously.

“Too true! Too, too true!” guffawed a venerable therapist. “Belgian Prankster, you hit the nail on the head!”

“You’re the toast of the town, Belgian Prankster!” cooed a spinster nurse. “Now what you need is the love of a good woman.”

“No, what he needs is a stiff drink! I’ll go get him one!”

“No, I will!”

“No, me!”

“Me! Me!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen…ladies,” murmured the Belgian Prankster. “Take it down a notch.”

“Whatever you want, Belgian Prankster!”

“You’re the boss—that’s what
I
always say.”

“You can take
me
down a notch any time you like, Belgian Prankster,” said the nurse breathlessly.

“Why, you’re a regular ding-a-ling ding-dang-doodle, Belgian Prankster!” chirped a young doctor. “A first-class, blue-ribbon, dippity-doopity ding-a-ling ding-dang-doodle, and you can take that to the bank! Huh, fellas?”

The Belgian Prankster grimaced at Jo in embarrassment. Then he cleared his throat (immediately causing all the psychoanalysts to go silent) and said, “Esteemed doctors—”

“He called us ‘esteemed’!” whispered a doctor excitedly—

“May I introduce you to my friend Jo Hazelwood,” continued the Belgian Prankster. “Jo Hazelwood, please meet the most eminent authorities on psychology in Eldritch City. I won’t introduce them individually, for they are interchangeable turds.”

“Score another point for the Belgian Prankster!” said a therapist giddily. “You got us that time, I’ll give you that!”

“That’s what I’d call a ‘zinger,’” another psychoanalyst said, nodding. “The Belgian Prankster’s got a lot of ‘zingers,’ I assure you.”

“They’re funny because they’re true!” added another doctor.

Jo said, “What have you done to them?”

“Oh, I host these little social mixers in the mornings,” sighed the Belgian Prankster. “It loosens everyone up for the rigors of the workday. Don’t worry, they won’t remember a thing when they wake up. But oh, the headaches they’ll have!”

The Belgian Prankster took out a cigar. At once a dozen matches and lighters blazed in front of him, held by eager hands. The Belgian Prankster picked one at random and lit his cigar, puffing contemplatively.

Jo stood before the table, uncertain. She bit her cheek, reminding herself what was real. Reality was outside this place. This was just another one of the Belgian Prankster’s jokes. Wherever he went, he warped everything around him into an empty jest.

“Doctors,” said the Belgian Prankster quietly. “I apologize. But please excuse me and Miss Hazelwood for a few minutes. Why don’t you all refresh your drinks.”

“Whatever you say, Belgian Prankster!”

“We’ll be here if you need us!”

“Need anything while I’m up, Belgian Prankster?”

“No, no; that will be quite unnecessary.” The Belgian Prankster smiled as the psychoanalysts drifted away, bleating compliments; and then they were gone.

The party was over.

Jo and the Belgian Prankster were alone.

Jo faced the Belgian Prankster at last. As always, he was clad in his dirty fur pelts, green ski goggles, and enormous rawhide diaper. His breathing was forced and shallow, making the fatty bulk beneath his revolting patchwork of furs rise and fall irregularly. Sweating and snuffling, slowly smacking his lips, the Belgian Prankster twitched his monstrous tongue in and out of his mouth and started to fondle his purple, runny nose.

Jo was more terrified than she had ever been. How could she have been so stupid to come here? The Belgian Prankster had her in the palm of his hand now. If he could brainwash all these doctors and patients, couldn’t he force her to do whatever he wanted? With all her might Jo resisted the mad urge to run away screaming—and the even madder urge to throw herself upon the Belgian Prankster and surrender. If there was some peace in letting him have his way, she was almost tempted to give in.

But Jo held her ground with the last shred of her fingernails, even as it seemed to be crumbling away from her. She was determined not to let this loathsome man get the better of her. He would not have the satisfaction of seeing her afraid.

“Please, sit down,” said the Belgian Prankster.

Jo remained standing.

“You like my little amusement?” said the Belgian Prankster.

“Subtle,” said Jo.

“Why the sarcasm?” said the Belgian Prankster mildly. “Just trying to make you feel at ease. But nobody ever really appreciates me. Look at me, Jo: I’m forlorn.”

“The heart breaks.”

The Belgian Prankster turned his head slightly, surprised. Jo gritted her teeth. She was sure he saw through her icy attitude and would come back with a nasty insult. But the Belgian Prankster only grinned.

“Where’s Aunt Lily?” said Jo, her voice close to breaking. “Did you kill her?”

The Belgian Prankster yawned, showing his enormous tongue. Jo could see it pulse grotesquely. He smacked his lips, leaned back, and spread his arms wide.

“Let’s talk about why you’re really here,” he said. “You’ve come to me in the dead of morning. You don’t know why you came, but you came anyway, at great risk. Who knows what I’ll do? You’ve been frightened of me for years. But here I am, as mild as a lamb. Who could’ve guessed? The truth is, I’m the only one who can give you what you want. You came to me because you want to know who you are.”

“I know who I am.”

“Do you? Please, sit down. You make me nervous. Who are you?”

I make
him
nervous?
thought Jo. But she sat down. So far, she was holding her own. At first she was just faking being brave, but now, to her surprise, Jo found she actually was almost brave. She said, “I am the All-Devouring Mother. And I am here for my blood.”

The Belgian Prankster grinned. “You didn’t come here for that.”

“Yes, I did,” said Jo, her insides scraping against each other.

The Belgian Prankster shook his head. “That’s not why you came.”

“I know why I’m here,” said Jo, more frantically than she intended.

“No, you don’t,” snickered the Belgian Prankster.

“I came here for my blood!” shouted Jo.

“No!” barked the Belgian Prankster. “You came here to kill me.”

A wave of dread crashed through her. Of course the Belgian Prankster knew she wanted to kill him. He knew everything. And how could she possibly fight him? The Belgian Prankster had all the powers of the Silent Sisters. She had a kitchen knife.

But she said nothing and just stared at him.

“But you don’t know how to kill me,” said the Belgian Prankster. “What do you have? A knife? Something small, something in your pocket?”

He took out a pistol from his diaper. Jo flinched but her eyes didn’t move from his goggles.

The Belgian Prankster shot a hole in his own forehead.

“You can’t kill me.” He smiled as smoke drifted out of the hole in his head. “But that’s not the real reason you came. You really do want the blood of the Ichthala. You couldn’t admit it to yourself, so you invented another reason to come. Any excuse to come see me. Anything to get your blood back. I have waited thirteen years for this, and I am ready.”

Jo forced herself to say, “I’ve been waiting for thirteen years, too.”

“Brave girl!” sneered the Belgian Prankster, rising and coming toward Jo. “You really
do
want the power of the All-Devouring Mother? What’s the matter? Eldritch City too much for you? Made an enemy? Fiona Fuorlini, I believe? When I give you this blood, none of that will matter anymore. It has ripped me up inside. But it is worth it. For thirteen years I have carried it for you, for this moment.”

Jo said, “You don’t really want to do it, or you would’ve already.”

The Belgian Prankster was behind Jo now. She heard his voice, tingling in her neck—“Oh, but I
do
”—and Jo gasped as he lurched toward her.

His face was right next to hers now. In the window behind the booth, morning light was spreading throughout Eldritch City. Their faces were faintly superimposed over it, side by side in the shadowy reflection. He was breathing hard, his hairy hands gripping the edge of the table. Jo felt she would crack any second.

Finally the Belgian Prankster drew back.

“So you
do
know why you came,” said the Belgian Prankster. “You do want your blood. It is part of you. It is you. I have
you
in here.” The Belgian Prankster tapped his nose. “And once I give it back to you, you will remember who you are.”

Jo clenched her fists. It was true. The Belgian Prankster had her true self locked up somewhere in his fat, repulsive body. She could almost sense it gurgling around inside him. But she didn’t want it; she was afraid of it; she was afraid of what she would become.