Marvel Novel Series 07 - Doctor Strange - Nightmare Page 9

  The streets were clogged with cars, taxis and charter buses for blocks in every direction. It was obvious that the Garden would be filled many times over. As Strange and Clea got closer, they could see huge projection screens had been set up beside the marquee and three more had been erected on temporary platforms down the street.

  The crowd parted for Strange and his white-haired companion. No one called out in the usual rude New York manner. Their voices fell and they stared, moving aside without jostling, making a path before Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme walked confidently, in full cape and tunic, the horns of his unusual cloak rising above his head in crimson points. The crowd closed behind them and after a few moments their conversation continued. Not one person mentioned the pair that had just passed.

  The doorman waved them on, an expression of silent awe on his face, an unusual attitude for someone who had seen costumed rock stars, the world’s champions, politicians, and kings come through his door.

  “The Reverend Jacks is that way, sir,” the guard said.

  Strange nodded and continued through the passage formed by the outgoing equipment and scenery of the rock group, The Marvelous Madmen, and the incoming movable ring of the championship fight. There was a line of dressing rooms and only one was lighted. The entire backstage was quite empty, except for a few lounging stage technicians and several quiet television cameramen. There was a muted rumble from the direction of the vast main floor, where thousands of the faithful were filing in. Strange saw in the corner a row of card tables set up, with middle-aged men and women behind them, each with a ledger, an adding machine, and a metal box.

  “Doctor Strange? Oh, I’m so glad you are here!” Alicia Jacks hurried across the room. She glanced upward, at the filling auditorium. “We’re going on soon. Oh, excuse me; I’ve been with Billie Joe so long, we’ve done so much together, I still say ‘we.’ ” She twisted nervously at her wedding band. “Lately, I’m afraid it hasn’t been ‘we’ at all.”

  “Is he ready to see us?” Clea asked softly.

  “Well, uh . . .” Alicia glanced at the dressing room. “He’s taking a nap now. He always takes one just before, uh . . . he needs the rest, you know? He hasn’t been lookin’ well. Guess I told you that, I’m sorry.” She looked at her watch. “I better wake him. Come along.”

  Strange and Clea followed Mrs. Jacks to the dressing room, where she briskly knocked twice and opened the door. Strange had a quick glimpse of Jacks lying on the single bed, his body arched with tension, his fists knotted at his side, his face contorted in an expression of terror and fear, his eyes bulging. Alicia gave a gasp and instantly Jacks collapsed. His body thumped down into the bed limply, his eyes closed, and his limbs relaxed completely. He looked asleep.

  Alicia gave Strange a pleading look and went into the dressing room. “Billie Joe? Honey, it’s me, Alicia?”

  The man on the cot stirred and his eyes opened, one at a time. “Oh, hello, my dear. Is it time?”

  She gulped and glanced over her shoulder at Strange and Clea. “Uh, yes, it is, dear. Billie Joe, there’s someone here to see you . . .”

  Jacks sat up, yawning, a hand over his mouth. “Now, Alicia, you know I don’t like to see anyone before, not even the media people, not even Barbara or Walter. After, dear, after.”

  Alicia moved aside and Jacks glanced out the door and froze. “What’s he doing here?” He glared at his wife. “Alicia, I told you this man is a fake. Worse than that, he’s liable to attract the television people. Look at him! It’s a wonder he isn’t on the six o’clock news every night! Or locked away in some funny farm!”

  Jacks stood up and stepped quickly to the door, reached out and grabbed it, then slammed it shut in Strange’s face. He turned to castigate his wife when he realized the door hadn’t latched and was swinging open again. Angrily, he turned and did it again, this time carefully latching the door. Again the door swung wide and Billie Joe Jacks was face to face with Dr. Stephen Strange.

  “Strange—if that’s your name—I don’t want to have anything to do with you. You are the very opposite of everything I represent! I don’t like you. I don’t mean to be unChristian, you understand, but it is in us all to hate the Devil!”

  “Have you been sleeping well?” Strange asked mildly.

  “No, but what business is that of yours? I expect to make sacrifices for the cause! I’ll go on making sacrifices until we have triumphed! Until the Crusade for Change does something about this world we live in!”

  “Oh, I’m sure the world will not be the same if you succeed,” Strange said. An expression crossed the sorcerer’s face that Clea could not define. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you before a performance,” Strange apologized.

  Jacks glared at him with an icy expression. “It is not a performance—though perhaps you would not know the difference!” He glared at his wife. “Get my suit ready, I’ll change now. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” he said with heavy sarcasm and reentered the dressing room. This time the door stayed shut.

  Strange turned away and Clea matched his pace. She looked up at him, frowning. “Stephen? You sensed something?”

  “Yes, I did, Clea. There are strong forces at work here. But I cannot fully comprehend their direction. Jacks is a focal point; that much I know.”

  There was a flurry of activity at the backstage door and a big Negro entered, striding like a black king, with a number of people asking for his autograph and calling out his name. The big man walked on without paying them any attention at all. Strange pulled Clea into the shadows. The black giant strode purposefully to Jacks’s dressing room and knocked, then entered without waiting.

  “I know him,” Clea said. “That’s Joe Peerson, the heavyweight contender.”

  Strange nodded. “And the one I saw in Billie Joe’s dream.” Clea glanced at him in concern. Strange looked around. “The other? The dark, nameless one? Where might he be?”

  Sixteen

  The shadows were deep in the cavernous underground. Only a few lights had been lit, for only a few people were there. Billie Joe was a one-man show, a show with no more scenery than a plain lectern and a simple setting of platform and flowers. It was theater-in-the-round for the Crusade for Change. ’Round the world.

  They heard the murmur of the crowd above them, then a squeak as some stagehands began moving some of the rock group’s bizarre scenery. A castle wall was trundled across and set down, blocking their view of the dressing room. Annoyed, Stephen Strange and Clea started to step around the flat, but a second group of stagehands brought in the massive prize ring, set on edge, the canvas covering a tawny wall. Clea gestured at the “castle” gate just in front of them and stepped forward to open it. The painted oak panel swung easily into the blackness; Clea stepped through. At the very last instant Strange sensed something and cried out.

  “No, Clea!”

  It was too late. The door swung closed and although it was but a moment before Strange shoved it open, everything had changed. No longer was there blackness beyond, but simply the other side of the underground staging area: the dressing rooms, the scenery, a forklift truck, some television people swapping stories.

  Strange spun and closed the door after he had passed back through. Quickly, he put his fingers to the Eye of Agamotto hanging at his chest. “O great Eye, pierce the veils of mystery, reveal my student and love to me!”

  A light sprang out from the Eye, projecting a beam onto the fake castle door. He saw Clea, not in color, but in black and white, reversed like a negative, floating in the purest white space. He saw her hands gesturing, saw her lips moving but heard no sound.

  “In the name of the dread Dormammu! Open the way to the region of wonders!”

  The Eye blinked out. It seemed very quiet. The painted stone castle no longer looked painted. Strange reached out; the castle door was heavy now, creaking as it swung heavily open. Beyond was neither blackness, nor the dressing rooms, nor the pure white sea in which his beloved Clea was drowning. Beyond
was a medieval-looking corridor of shaped stone, gray and cold. The corridor was lined with archways and each archway contained a thick wooden door; on the face of each door was burned a cryptic symbol.

  Strange entered the corridor without hesitation. The incantation had not taken him directly to where Clea was imprisoned and there must be a reason. He was alert, strong spells of protection ready on his tongue.

  The first door opened easily at his touch, swinging away to reveal an emerald glade beyond. A well-trod path led from the archway through sunlit grass to a nearby forest of ancient gnarled trees. At the edge of the forest, just beyond a dusting of yellow flowers, a golden-haired woman, young and slim, held out her palm to a white horse with a long twisted spike growing from its forehead. The unicorn snorted and raised its head to look at Strange with a wild eye. The young woman shaded her eyes and frowned. Strange shut the door.

  The second door opened into another forest, but this one was dark. Black-trunked trees with somber foliage, shadowed passages between, a lightning-struck tree burned and twisted, rough gray rock, no flowers, only a little grass. Beyond the treetops Strange saw the broken tower of some castle. It was burning. He closed that door.

  Crossing the passage he opened a third door. Howling wind sent a flurry of snow into the passage. The cold froze his face as he peered into the wild whiteness. Something huge and dark rose out of the snowdrift and made a lunge toward the door, snarling, hairy hands extended. Strange yanked the door shut but the clawed paws grasped it and wrenched it open again. It bellowed and started through but met a burst from Strange’s outstretched hand. The creature was blasted back, its chest on fire, and threw itself into the snow. Strange slammed the door shut.

  He approached the fourth door with even more caution. It was well he did, for the moment the door opened, something wet and splotched heaved itself against the oak. Stephen Strange shoved back with all his strength, but pseudopods of blotched protoplasm flung themselves through the crack and attached themselves to the stone floor. These tentacles split and some curled toward Strange while others extended themselves and stretched toward the farther walls. The door sagged inward. A massive blob of the stained protoplasm bulged through the door.

  “By the supreme Satanish!” exclaimed Strange, his fingers moving. Flames suddenly enveloped the tentacles, which jerked, then contracted swiftly. Other tendrils of protoplasm came through the door, but they, too, started to burn. The blood flowed back out, followed by the extended tentacles. There was a thin high whine which wavered and disappeared when Strange slammed the door closed.

  The fifth door Strange eyed with apprehension. He looked down the long corridor. It seemed to go on forever. There were hundreds of archways with their recessed doors, each an opening into some odd dimension. It might take him forever—but there was no other way to do it. He opened the fifth door.

  Blue sky. Nothing but blue sky and a few faint, distant clouds. Strange looked down. The door opened into the side of an incredibly high cliff. The mountainside dropped for thousands of feet, a fluted granite wall without vegetation, ledge, or sign of human habitation. The origins of the cliff were lost in a thick white mist far below. Strange started to close the door when there was a horrendous screech. A pterodactyl came slanting out of the sun, its long beak open, its long leathery wings flapping. Strange swung the heavy door shut but it shook with the assault of the prehistoric beast as he closed it.

  The sixth door opened into desert. Nothing moved; there was the trail of a snake wiggling across the slope of tawny sand.

  The seventh door exploded with tons of water the moment Strange lifted the metal latch. He was slammed back into the opposite wall and the water poured in with a deafening roar, spreading out, filling up the corridor swiftly, pinning Strange against the wall.

  “Crimson bands of Cyttorak!” he shouted, his mouth filling with foul-tasting water. A green tentacle, one side covered with pulsating suckers, came in and reached for him. “Banish this flood!”

  There was a sizzling as scarlet bands arced across the stone archway. Water squirted through the slits, but the bands closed upon themselves, severing the massive tentacle, which lay twisting and writhing on the wet stone as the rest of the water swept on down into the drains and scuppers. The bands sealed themselves across the arch and no more water entered. Strange stood up, weak from the physical assault of tons of water, and closed the door. The corridor was a mess. Strange spiny fish twisted and gasped. Purple seaweed lay in long sinuous lines. The watermark on the walls was almost above Strange’s head.

  “Flames of the Faltine!” he exclaimed. There was a searing flash and the long corridor was dry. The bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam were seared and fell into powder, including the big severed tentacle. Strange’s clothes were dry. He stepped wearily toward the eighth door.

  “Clea, Clea,” he muttered.

  The oaken door swung open and Strange looked into a treasure chamber in a natural cavern. Ancient rectangular chests had round golden coins spilling from them. Fistfuls of pearl necklaces and armloads of golden bracelets clogged other caskets. A strange six-sided box was open, revealing thousands of tiny glowing octagons of blue metal. A crown studded with emeralds, far too large for any human head, lay atop a shattered crate that held an Aztec statue of solid gold. A spear of transparent crystal was topped with a long metal point carved from a ruby. A cask of silver globes was next to a rotted bag of 1888 U.S. silver dollars. A Wells-Fargo strongbox was next to a studded bronze chest with the graven symbol of King Sumuabi who had ruled Babylonia in its first dynasty more than 4,000 years before.

  Three skeletons lay disintegrating among the treasure. Only one was human.

  Strange shut the door, took a breath and crossed the passage to open the ninth door.

  Stars—but none he knew. A gas cloud loomed red and awesome before him, lit by the light of a million suns. Not far off was a red giant. Just before the door floated a pure-white cube. Strange looked at the cube thoughtfully.

  White. Clea had been in a white world, a negative world. The box was small, no bigger than might hold a hat; purest white, featureless, reflecting no starlight. Antimatter? Would that explain the negative whiteness?

  “By the seven rings of Raggador,” he said softly, watching the box carefully. “Fetch me that box.” He gestured and seven glowing rings flew from his fingertip, each no bigger than a finger ring, but they expanded to be large enough to contain the box. They wove themselves around the box in an intricate web and slowly tugged the white box closer.

  The rings set the box upon the floor and Strange expanded the rings to mansize, a cage of glowing filaments. “Open,” he commanded.

  The box opened, but not in the way he thought. The square lid did not swing up, but instead the sides contracted into themselves, until there was but a skeleton of white lines in the shape and size of the box. Within the box, floating in the exact center, was a white ball, smaller than a tennis ball, and featureless.

  “By the dread Dormammu, I command you to reveal your secrets!”

  The white ball pulsed and turned transparent. Within the ball was a universe of stars; pinpoint dots of light, millions of them, making the ball glow. Peering closer, Strange could see that the dots were not stars but tiny pinwheels of galaxies. It would take him a million lifetimes to search even a portion of it.

  “Return,” he said. The ball turned white. The sides of the box rolled down. The crimson bands returned the box to the unknown region of space, and Strange closed the door. He hesitated, and almost reopened the door. Clea could be somewhere in that pocket universe, he thought—but no; her prison was a negative universe.

  He stood before the tenth door. He opened it carefully. Beyond was a red-lit sky and a stony path leading over a hill toward distant spires. The road was lined with hundreds of human skulls. On the hilltop a dead woman hung naked, upside down, from an inverted cross. He closed the thick oak door.

  Eleven. A burned and ravaged landscape, black
ened and savaged by terrible rays which had cut deep gashes in solid rock. The ruins of a domed city still burned. A tall skeletal machine with six jointed legs turned glistening lenses toward him. One of its legs was bent and twisted. There was dust on its black metal carapace and rust at the joints. A turret on its rounded back swung a wide-snouted weapon toward him. Strange slammed the door shut just as the weapon spurted out a stream of liquid fire.

  Twelve. The air was a muted dirty orange. Thousands of people in shapeless gray clothing stood apathetically in endless lines. Featureless walls rose above them and Strange could see the bars of light that denoted buildings beyond, barely glimpsed through the thick murk. No one looked at him; no one cared. An old woman gasped and fell. No one paid any attention. Strange closed the hatch.

  Thirteen. A mystic number.

  Kong was atop the Empire State Building. The blonde woman screamed. The biwinged planes swooped and banked, their machine guns chattering. The great ape roared and swung out a hand, snatching one of the flying machines from the air, crushing it in his monstrous hairy hands. Spots of blood dotted his body. Red gore oozed down his black fur. The great creature reached down and lovingly gathered up the screaming blonde woman. She fought ineffectually against his immense strength. The ape swayed, bellowing. If he fell, he would take her with him.

  Doctor Strange was about to utter an incantation when out of the sky came a solitary figure dressed in checked tweed, his Inverness cloak flowing behind him like a cape. “Holmes!” the woman gasped. The hawk-nosed man rocketed around the giant ape, who turned in bufuddlement.

  A dark figure ran out onto the observation platform from the elevator, his slouch hat and black cape flapping in the wind. Two .45 automatics appeared in his hands. He began firing upward in thunderous blasts.

  The flying man in the deerstalker cap banked sharply and flew in close, pulling the screaming woman from the puzzled gorilla’s grasp. The extra weight pulled him off balance and they fell out of sight, the woman screaming hoarsely. The giant ape stepped down to the observation platform, squashing the shadowy figure with the blazing guns under his foot.