The Further Adventures of The Joker Page 3

  It was better that I chance some rest, then refreshed, go and stay by Jim’s side. And once I made that decision, laid myself down, my mind let go.

  First I thought of the Joker; thought of when he was part of the Red Hood Gang and I had accidently caused him to fall over a railing and into a vat of toxic waste that transformed him physically into what he was today.

  Had it been an accident? Or had part of me wanted to do him in even then, before I knew what he was capable of? Do we sometimes sense our greatest adversaries? Taste the bitterness of past life experiences? Or is it something else? Something even more primitive, like a sense of smell that tells us that here is a predator. Beware!

  All I know is that, in a sense, I had created him and was indirectly responsible for every murder he ever committed. Perhaps, without my interference, he would have become nothing more than a petty thief.

  But I was too tired for guilt. I began to sink down, down, away from it all, and . . .

  The dream is technicolor and I’m wearing my 3-D glasses and holding my Scratch and Sniff card. I am the camera eye and the CAMERA goes CLOSE ON the JOKER sitting in a huge chair as if it is a throne. The chair is upholstered in regal purple and there is a series of great, green gems screwed into the top of the chair’s backrest. They glow as if filled with phosphorescent pus.

  He’s wearing a green, ruffled shirt trimmed in bright yellow, a deep-purple dress coat and pants, highly polished green shoes with purple laces, and socks with purple and green clocks on them.

  He looks as he always looks. Skin white as flour, hair heaped high, the texture of seaweed, the color of fresh lettuce. His lips are blood-red and he’s smiling, as he is always smiling: a wide, ugly smile showing plenty of nice, white teeth.

  He laughs suddenly. Wildly. Quits.

  He’s a happy kind of guy.

  Behind him, a heap of corpses percolate with rats and maggots and decay. I recognize many of the bodies as his victims.

  One of them appears to be a huge bat.

  The Joker JERKS FORWARD SUDDENLY, and the 3-D glasses make it seem as if he’s coming out of the screen. He merely pokes his head into my space and says softly, “Boo.”

  SLOWLY, he resumes his restful position, continues to smile.

  FLASHING LOGO at the bottom of the screen says for viewer to SCRATCH CARD. I do. I sniff, and am overwhelmed with nausea. The card lets forth ODORS of DEATH and ROT and CORRUPTION.

  CLOSE ON THE JOKER. CAMERA FILLS with his smile.

  HOLD THAT FRAME

  (beat)

  Edges of frame start a SLOW BLEED of BRIGHT RED BLOOD, and gradually it flows toward the center of the dream screen until the screen is FILLED and the dream darkens and—

  FADE TO THE DEEP DARK PURPLE OF THE JOKER’S COAT.

  I awoke knowing I had discerned a truth, even if I was unclear what that truth was. Exhaustion had allowed me to rest for an hour, and I felt better. An hour’s sleep to me is like eight for some.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and put my head between my hands and went over everything I could remember about the dream. It had been presented as a film, and I felt that that presentation was my subconscious trying to tell me something. Trying to alert me that I had been looking around the answer to all this, instead of right at it.

  I pulled on my robe and went down to the Batcave and played his tapes again. They were riddled with film and stage references. I had noticed them immediately upon hearing the tapes, but deduced they were there for the purpose of surrounding the nonfilm references so that they would stand out and provide clues. For those of us (Alfred) who had the savvy to perceive clues, that is.

  I was thinking of waking Alfred up, putting him on the case, when I decided to run it all through my head again: the John Wayne routine, the cowboy movie talk about six-guns and hoosegows and ponies and Stetsons and jail breaks. Titles like High Noon and the Big Trail slipped in. Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy’s tornado, “All the world’s a stage,” a handful of stooges, four and five star ratings, serial installment, spotlight, call it entertainment, a cowboy song . . .

  “Heaven’s to Mergatroit,” as that cartoon mountain lion Snagglepuss says, it hit me.

  Obvious.

  My subconscious had known the answer from the very first tape, but it had somehow been hidden behind a wall of hate for the Joker. I was trying too hard. I knew now why I had seen my last moments as a child in the form of a film when I drove by the Gotham Theater. The hind brain was trying to tell me something. It was giving me yet another film reference, telling me that all these things the Joker mentioned had one thing in common (and the second tape should have made this even clearer). A place where once upon a time they were all represented.

  A place that had played revival films like Birth of A Nation and Gone with the Wind. Cowboy movies had shown there by the hundreds and cowboy stars had visited the stage and popped blanks into the air and twirled ropes. Some like Rex Allen, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers had sung songs. Horses had even been on that stage. The screen had shown the Three Stooges, cartoons, and feature movies. Even The Mark of Zorro.

  A strange and horrible warmness came over me.

  I knew where the Joker was hiding.

  Outside the Gotham Theater a shadow stepped out of the darkness, and the shadow was me. The October wind rose up as if surprised and blew a clutch of papers and leaves down the street. A soft-drink can rolled and clattered.

  I soaked up the night and remembered when the theater was still brightly painted and brightly lit and there were gaudy posters behind the poster glass; posters like The Mark of Zorro with a man in black wearing a mask, cutting down the bad guys with a long, sharp sword. I remembered my dad’s hand on my shoulder, my mom’s hand holding mine. I remembered Zorro. I remembered gunshots that echoed in the alley out back.

  I eased up to the door and tried it. It wasn’t locked. I opened it and went in.

  The lobby was surprisingly clean and there was a dim light and a mannequin in a clown suit standing behind the concession counter. The clown’s hand was outstretched. It held a playing card. Above and behind the clown on the wall was a long orange banner with TRICK OR TREAT, BATMAN written in black.

  Cautiously, I went over and took the card and turned it over.

  It was a Joker. Written in the margins was: Happy Halloween. You are expected. Compliments of the Joker.

  I went straight for the doors that led into the theater proper, pushed them open boldy, walked on in.

  It was dark in there except for the light of the projector shining on the screen, showing it to be yellow and stained from age, tossed food, and drinks. The huge stage where performers and stars had strutted their stuff had gone gray. The crimson curtains on either side of it had turned the color of rust. There were shadows at the ends of the aisles and they hung like black crepe paper and wove their way between the rows and rows of seats. Due to water damage, the ceiling drooped like an old woman’s bosom and cobwebs dangled from it like rotting gauze. The aisle carpets, once red, were blackened in the centers by years and years of spilled soft drinks and tracking feet. The blackness fled to the edges in little dark forks that looked like a sewage leak. The smell of mildew, rot, rat dung, and history hung in the air.

  A film flickered to life on the screen. A section from The Man Who Laughs.

  I sensed movement, glanced over my shoulder at the sagging balcony. A skeleton was gliding down from it, catercorner, floating through the darkness toward me, squeaking as it came.

  It was the sort of gimmick William Castle might have used to sell House on Haunted Hill. But this gimmick was holding revolvers and the revolvers were lifted and even as they spat fire, I dove between a row of seats.

  The skeleton continued to squeak down the wire, snapping off gunfire. Slugs slammed into the aisle carpet, followed me, smacked the backs and seat cushions of the chairs. One bullet tore through the heel of my boot, clean as a hot needle through a blister; I could feel the heat through the sole,
but it didn’t touch me.

  I sprang up from between the seats, put a boot on the armrest of a chair to get leverage, and leaped back toward the wire that held Two-Gun Bones.

  As he touched the carpet, I grabbed the supporting wire with my gloves and used it to swing myself around and whip both legs into his face. He took it with a grunt and a discharge of teeth, dropped the revolvers and went loose.

  It was, of course, one of the Joker’s goons dressed in a hood and black outfit with a glowing skeleton painted on it. The wire and the harness he was wearing continued to support him, even though he was unconscious.

  I kicked the revolvers into the dark between the seats, turned back to the screen.

  The film had changed. Excerpts from the 1930 The Bat Whispers stuttered across the screen. I guess the film segments were the Joker’s way of showing how he envisioned himself (The Man Who Laughs) and how he envisioned me (The Bat Whispers). Maybe he saw life as a movie. That might be an easier way to take it. As something without real substance. Flickering light and sound, nothing more.

  The wall to my right was rigged. A portion flopped open and two men rushed out. They were wearing masks, ghoulish glow-in-the-dark things. When I was a kid some of the movies had ushers dressed like that as a gimmick. When you’re eleven or twelve, it’s pretty spooky.

  These days I was the one who played dressed up, and I was a lot spookier.

  I moved, fast, incredibly fast. No brag, just fact, and met them halfway.

  They were quicker and better than the Joker’s usual muscle. For all his intelligence and stashed, stolen money, he has a hard time recruiting the right guys. No one wants to work for a homicidal clown.

  But these two . . . better than normal.

  But not that much better.

  I slid to the left as the closest one threw a short, snappy punch at my head, and the punch slid over my right shoulder and I slammed him with a forearm in the solar plexus so hard, blood spurted through the mouth slit in his mask.

  I kicked him in the face with the top of my foot, changed the looks of his nose. He went down.

  Two seconds gone. Maybe three.

  The other guy saw this, of course, and even though he had an automatic, he didn’t look too confident.

  Which was smart.

  I dropped low and used my hands to support myself, twisted around and swung my legs at his knees and knocked his feet out from under him. His gun popped once and off-aim, then I was on top of him. I snatched the automatic from him as easy as taking a rattle from a baby, tossed it away, popped two sharp punches into his face, and he took a siesta.

  I estimate it took about five seconds for all that. I must be getting old.

  On the movie screen was the Joker. He was sitting in a replica of the time-traveling device from the movie The Time Machine. It was little more than a Victorian chair with a wheel at the back, decorated with colored lights. The wheel was spinning, the lights were blinking. In front of him was a control panel and a lever. He was wearing a purple suit and a shirt of canary yellow with a scarlet scarf tied loosely in a bow around his neck. His smile was wide and white.

  His voice came through the speakers cold and high and crazy:

  “You were a bit slow this time, Bat Sap. Getting too old to cut the mustard? I assumed you’d work out my little riddles eventually and I’ve been ready for you all along. Kept a constant welcoming committee on alert, and laid my little plans. I had hoped to go through my victims in order, however. Gordon will have to be number five. It’s bothersome. But hey, I’m a flexible kind of guy.”

  I started moving cautiously down the aisle, ready for whatever.

  “This time, Bats, my theme is the movies, and right now Kung Fu movies.”

  More of his men appeared. They came from the front of the theater, from the back, from the balcony on ropes. They wore black Ninja outfits with swathes of black cloth across their faces. They carried poles and swords and knives and chains. There were ten of them. They surrounded me.

  That made it almost even. I was warmed up and not in a good mood and needed the exercise.

  I dodged a whirling blade, swept my attacker’s feet from under him, and side-kicked him out of the aisle and through a chair. He didn’t get up.

  Good. I was a little busy.

  I left-jabbed another, took his chain, hit him with it and he was out of the picture. I tossed the chain away, avoided the thrust of a bojitsu pole, then the pole was mine and I showed its former owner how to use it. A couple of times. He didn’t enjoy the demonstration. He went down and I broke the pole on the side of another thug’s head.

  Things blurred after that. I stunned some nerves, broke some bones, and when the dust cleared, the Ninjas had all taken a trip to the Land of Nod.

  I turned toward the stage and saw the Joker’s image frozen on the screen. A spot in the stage floor opened up and the Time Machine replica rose out of it and locked into place. The Joker was seated in the chair. His teeth flashed like neon.

  “Did you ever see the film Mr. Sardonicus?” said the Joker.

  I paused, wary. He wouldn’t show himself like that unless he felt protected.

  “Near the end of it, William Castle paused the show and appeared on screen to let the audience choose the fate of the ghoul, Mr. Sardonicus, who, by the way, was a man with a very nice smile. Not too unlike my own. But alas, a sense of humor is not always appreciated. The audience was asked to show a card with a thumb on it—you got this when you got your ticket—and to turn it up for Sardonicus’s survival, or down for his extermination. Those plebes voted he should be eliminated. I was quite crushed. I thought he was the hero of the piece.”

  I had to make my play sometime. Had to get him to show his hand. I started to ease forward.

  “Ah,” said the Joker, “not so fast. You see, I lied. Your friend Commissioner Gordon is here with us, and you might say he’s a little wired.”

  A light attached to the ceiling came on, shined brightly on a seat in the front row. I could see the back of Gordon’s broad shoulders and silver-haired head. He was slumped forward, but I could tell he was wearing one of the Joker’s party hats.

  “He’s unconscious at the moment, Batsy, but quite all right. But soon, the lights in Gotham will dim, and Commishy Gordon’s skull will light up like a jack-o’-lantern with a big candle inside. Ah, not another step, or I throw the switch.”

  I froze, tried to come up with a plan while the Joker talked. It was his biggest weakness, talking.

  “Ever see the movie The Tingler? That’s where I got the idea. It’s the one about this thing that latches onto a person’s spine and stings them to death, or perhaps it would be better to say, tingles them to death, and . . . no, haven’t seen it? Oh, and now you never shall. Too bad.

  “But, as I was saying, when the movie came out, one of the promotional gimmicks was the seats in the theaters were rigged with a mild electrical charge and a voice on the screen would announce—the Tingler’s in the theater, and bam, all the chairs in the place got a harmless dose of Ready Kilowatt. Nice idea, don’t you think? Scared the piss out of me when I was a boy.

  “Commishy, however, will not only get a dose of Ready, he’ll get the old boy’s lifeblood. I flick this switch all the way, and bam, you get to see Gordon’s head fly off smoking.

  “Isn’t this something? I enjoy our chats so much, I stray. Movie history is such a fascinating thing. However, the thing for me to decide now is the fate of our Commissioner Gordon. And this brings us back to Mr. Sardonicus and the Thumbs Up, or Thumbs Down cards. What shall it be?”

  “Joker,” I yelled. “Don’t do it. Let Gordon go and I’ll let you strap me in the chair.”

  “I’m going to get you anyway, Bats. Now, about Gordon’s fate. I’m afraid there’s no audience to do it. You’ve beat them all up. And since Commishy is out for the count, and you have a definite bias, and I so much prefer my own bias, I’m afraid that the burden is left to me. Or rather, my image on the screen will de
cide.”

  The screen Joker came unfrozen and lifted up a large card with a fist and extended thumb on it. The Joker smiled and turned the card so the thumb pointed down. The screen froze again.

  “There you have it,” said the Joker. “Say good-bye to the Commissioner.”

  I knew then he was going to do it and there was no reason to try and stall. I started running, and he hit the switch. There was a crackling sound and Gordon’s head jerked and smoked and a lick of flame flashed off the side of his head and his hair and party hat caught fire.

  I yelled, “Bastard,” made the front row of seats, put a boot on the back of a chair, and sprang for the Joker, just as he pulled back the switch and threw it again.

  Kilowatts sizzled and more flames jumped from Jim’s body. He was dead. No one could take that kind of voltage. I could still feel the electricity crackling in the air, and could smell . . . plastic?

  Even as my hands grabbed at the Joker’s coat and I jerked him from the Time Machine, felt how light he was, I realized, too late, the Joker had once again made me a fool.

  He had used my rage against me.

  The plastic replica of the Joker with the mechanical mouth and switch-pulling hand, exploded. It was filled with assorted Halloween candy and a nerve gas.

  The explosion blew me off the stage.

  An armrest struck me in the back, knocked what air I had left out of me. I lay crumpled on the floor between the stage and the front row, amidst Halloween candy and the burned replica of Jim. The electric shock had melted the plastic Commissioner and burned its clothes and hair off. The head had melted off at the neck and lay under a seat near my hand.

  I was weak as a second-night bridegroom, but the explosion hadn’t done any real damage, and I hadn’t gotten as much gas in my lungs as I feared. I could feel its numbing effects, but it made me feel more slow than incapacitated.

  But that was bad enough. It looked as if the Batman, who was born out back of the Gotham Theater, was going to die inside it. The real Joker appeared at the edge of the stage and looked down. He was dressed the same as his replica had been. He held a large, air-compressed gun in his hand.