Daedalus and the rest of the Creeps watched as Tempest hesitated out of the farmhouse. As the front door closed, the Creeps’ manager brought his attention down to Pisces and knelt next to her. Her breathing was labored. Fragments of bone and teeth, flesh and blood, formed an ugly puddle next to her face. She was… unrecognizable.
She twitched, and a moan escaped her as she absently reached for nothing. Daedalus looked up at Montague and Kosnar, shaking his head.
“It really is a shame. This one had potential.”
He sighed and nodded at the magician.
“You and Kosnar take her down to the Underlook. I don’t know what else to do with her and I don’t want to smell her rotting carcass. We could really use a doctor, honestly. Write that down, maybe we’ll see what Wolfenstein or Satan’s prices are. We could get lucky, and be charged only hospitality.”
Montague responded with a confused look of contempt.
“But… I am a doctor.”
Daedalus put his hands on his hips, craning his neck forward.
“What?”
Montague smirked and threw his arms out to the side.
“I’m the Doctor-Professor.”
“And what do you have a PhD in?”
He craned his neck forward more as Montague thought for a moment, tapping his foot against the floor.
“I have a PhD in Voila!”
Daedalus clenched his teeth as he responded.
“What I meant, was, the kind of doctor who deals with this?”
Daedalus pointed at Pisces impatiently. Or, rather, what was left of her. Montague looked down doubtfully, then at Kosnar standing with his arms folded. Making a quick hand motion, he revealed Daedalus’s cell phone.
“Et Voila!”
He dialed a number and listened as the voice on the other end greeted him. Daedalus was inspecting the pocket he kept his cell phone in.
“Hey Cincy, do you still keep your medical bag from the service?”
Kosnar bent down and lifted the broken girl gingerly over his shoulder. Montague tossed the phone back to Daedalus, who first juggled it, then pressed it up to his ear to continue the conversation.
Kosnar turned and walked through the house to the basement steps, the Showman following him silently.
“We just have to figure out which room we should put her in. I wouldn’t put her in one on the top floor. Maybe the second floor down?”
Kosnar nodded. He knew what room he was going to put her in. He led the way past the top floor of the underground hotel that used to be called the Labyrinth, and descended down to the next floor.
He stalked past several wooden doors in the dirt before stopping in front of one and nodding for Montague to open it. He did. And Kosnar disappeared into the darkness. A low thud could be heard as he dropped Pisces onto the dirt floor, then came out without her. He slammed the door behind him as he walked past Montague without a word.
Cervantes looked curiously at the number on the door: 237. Shrugging, he turned on his heel and made his way back up to the farmhouse to rejoin his friends.
The farmhouse property was covered in leaves. Even the gravel driveway was hidden beneath the autumn blanket. The property sat seemingly idle under the gray sky. A bitter cold October wind warned Gnaw Bone of the coming of winter.
A red phone booth sat, isolated from everything else on the property. And crouched in front of it, wearing the Cross-Hemisphere championship over a shirt that read, “Mike Patton is God!” was Tempest.
He peered out from behind the mask, dead gray accusing eyes glaring.
“For ninety-six days now, I’ve held this. For ninety-six days, I’ve disposed of a legend, an iceman, an adversary, an angelic demon, or demonic angel depending on your perspective, and even a man called fear…”
He paused, dramatically rolling his eyeballs into his head, deeply considering.
“Well, I haven’t completely disposed of the last one… yet. But, I’ve disposed of them, seemingly all in the name of this treasure I have wrapped around my waist.”
He stood and let his eyes explore his property, then let them rest on his belt.
“They call this the Cross-Hemisphere Championship. Phrixus Deimos has a clear understanding of what I’ve done with this in my possession. Deimos has a keen awareness that’s difficult for anyone to match. Phrixus understands me. And I understand him.”
He sighed and looked up.
“If Mr. Yamazaki shares the same views as his mouthpiece, then he does not have an understanding. If he shares the same views as his manager, then Mr. Yamazaki will fail at Keeper of the Keys.”
He tilted his head and seemed to be genuinely curious.
“Are you so easy to distract, Mr. Hitmaker? Have our actions over the last few months really told you that we couldn’t care less about championship belts? Are you confused right now? I’m not supposed to care about this, am I?”
He tapped a knuckle against the faceplate.
“If you’d been paying attention, though, you’d see that I do, in fact, care about the Coalition’s Cross-Hemisphere championship. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t still be holding it.”
He held up a finger, his head twitching slightly at the itching of his skin on the disfigured side of his face. He scratched at it with his other hand.
“Phrixus is aware of that. He’s watched the Astro Creeps place their game pieces strategically around the gameboard of the Coalition. He’s watched us close in on the rest of you. He feels it is his responsibility to stop us. But he knows, and we know… it’s too late.”
There was a giggle behind the camera. The clown’s giggle.
“Johnny, and perhaps his client, are already dead. And they don’t even know it. They’re dead because they think that I don’t care about something that I care very much about. They’re already dead because they don’t know the lengths I will go to, to keep this around my waist. Here’s the clincher, Johnny… Hide… and even you, Phrixus.”
His face remained intense. He leaned against the glass of the phone booth.
“I’m not going to those lengths because I feel like I need to in order to remain relevant. I’m going to those lengths because I want to. I go to lengths far beyond your grasp already when I step into the ring, without this belt around my waist. This belt simply intensifies it. It provokes my hunger. It calls to me, as if it was the only friend the Coalition ever sent to me. The Cross-Hemisphere championship respects me… and I respect it. Not because it has a long lineage of famous people before me that have touched it. I respect it because it drives me to HURT PEOPLE!”
He screamed the last two words and a murmuration of birds darted across the sky. They illustrated his outburst more than he could ever put into words. He gazed up at them in simultaneous admiration and fear.
“This championship belt has been the bait that I’ve used to hurt people for the last ninety-six days, and counting. When I defend it, it will be day one hundred. So when you say that I’ve been lying all this time about caring for championships, I know… that you haven’t been paying attention. And the monsters that you don’t pay attention to, until you have to, seem to sneak up on you in the shadows. I care about the Coalition’s Cross-Hemisphere championship.”
Clutching the championship’s front plate so hard his knuckles turned white, Tempest nodded empathically.
“And not just because it’s driven me… motivated me… seduced me… into its mysticism… but because it’s become my validation, that I am everything the rest of you wish I wasn’t: I am an overwhelming, powerful, undeniable entity, and I’ve given this championship belt a new meaning. Allow me to explain.”
He opened the door to the red phone booth. He caressed the inside of it with his fingertips, closing his eyes. He stepped inside and turned, his eyes as intense as before. Heavy breathing could be heard behind the camera and Tempest’s eyes moved from the camera to the camera… woman. Jacky snorted.
“Sorry.”
“The Coalition calls this the Cross-Hemisphere championship. Its history advertises that the warriors who go to war to be worthy enough to hold it, travel the world, and the seven seas.”
He winked, pulling another honk of laughter from Ragdoll.
“I find that that’s too easy. Earth is too easy to dominate from hemisphere to hemisphere. And it isn’t the world I’m interested in infecting. It’s your mind that I’m interested in.”
He reached in front of him and the camera met him halfway. He took it into his own hands, his face taking up the entire picture now. Behind the camera, he closed himself inside the red phone booth and slid down until he was in a sitting position. The sound of the wind was gone. Jacky’s intermittent giggles were gone. The only thing that could be heard now was Tempest.
“I cross from the left hemisphere of your brain, where I poison your logic and ideas first, into the right hemisphere of your brain. And that’s where I go to work on poisoning your creativity, your feelings, your imagination. When you think I reside there and you make adjustments, I’ve already crawled back into your left hemisphere and begun feeding on your perception, your planning, and your caution. As you panic and resort to your desperation, I crawl back to your right hemisphere. There, I begin consuming your impulses and your emotions.”
He laughed briefly, a joker’s maniacal laugh, before circling back to his point.
“The Dark Man calls me a Skull Crawler. It’s true. I’m a parasite. And the worst part of it for the two hosts that will share the ring with me on Monday? I know what I am. I have no illusions of what I am. I’m in touch with myself. The Cross-Hemisphere Championship is my representation of what I do to my enemies and my opponents. Phrixus has felt it already. Hide Yamazaki, soon you will feel it too, your mind rotting like a jack-o-lantern. Because I live there. Whether you know it, or whether you want to admit it, I’ve redefined this fucking belt. And you know what? This fucking belt has redefined me!”
He burst with laughter, and he drove his head backwards once, twice, thrice, and a hollow crack could be heard as the glass behind him spider-webbed out.
“This is my day, Phrixus. This is my season, Hide. And I welcome your challenge. I welcome the violence. I welcome whatever you contort into your mind to try to beat me.”
He set the camera down on the floor of the phone booth as he stood. He turned around, facing the back of it. He spoke quietly.
“You’re just like the rest of them, Johnny. You never gave me a chance to be me, or even a fucking chance just to be. You’ve engaged with the clown. You’re already dead, Johnny.”
He wheezed out a high-pitched laugh, soft at first, then grew into an obnoxious cackle. He bent over and looked upside down into the camera.
“You’re already the walking fucking dead.”
He cackled some more, grabbing the camera and moving it at a nauseating rate, before bringing it right side up. His face filled the screen once more.
“I am the Cross-Hemisphere Champion. And the hemispheres of the brain are so much more spacious than the world itself. Ta-ta!”
A maniacal laugh escaped him as he dropped the camera. He opened the door of the phone booth and snatched a croquet mallet from the waiting Ragdoll on the other side. He drove the head of the mallet into the phone booth and began destroying it. Glass shattered, metal bent, and finally, as the mallet drove down swiftly, the camera cut out.