Read Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Online
Authors: Dale E. Basye
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (21 page)
“Terrible production values, wooden acting … no wonder it’s dead last in the ratings,” Van sneered. “Not that anything really has a chance against
Teenage Jesus
!”
Milton rolled his sister’s eyes as the camera turned away from the demon on the screen and showed the cover of the
New York Times
splayed out on the sand:
DIE-HARD FANS CLASH AS T.H.E.E.N.D
.
FINALES DRAW NEAR
By Dexter Filkins
Sporadic incidents of civil unrest continue to plague much of the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East as unruly mobs take to the streets after watching their favorite T.H.E.E.N.D. shows. Whipped into a mass religi-tainment frenzy, zealous fans roam cities seeking to trounce fans of rival shows,
proving that their show—the one true show—deserves to be renewed, if not in this life, then in the next.…
The wind blew the paper away, revealing an open copy of
Entertainment Weakly
underneath:
PURE FANDEMONIUM AT PURPORTED
SIGHTING OF TABOO TWOSOME
By Jeff Jensen
Hunky son-of-god Teenage Jesus, played by presumed-dead-yet-hotter-than-ever heartthrob Van Glorious, was reportedly spotted—according to unconfirmed innuendo—leaving a tony Beverly Hills nightspot with perky Muslim muffin Nafeesa Shabazz of rival hit
Allah in the Family
. News of this rumor resulted in violent fan-fueled fracases across the globe as T.H.E.E.N.D. zealots stop at nothing to prove that their favorite show is ‘the one.’ …”
Van shook his blond head and snickered.
“Do I have a great publicist or what?” he chuckled. “She has me clubbing
up on the Surface. Classic.
”
Milton shushed Van and wedged his sister’s body between the pseudo Son of Man and the limo’s TV screen.
This all has to mean something
, Milton thought as the
camera trained back upon the robed creature, rubbing a nail file swiftly against his slender fingertips.
It’s just too weird to
not
be real
.
“You hired Goemon, the legendary samurai-thief, for my uncannily sensitive touch,” the demon replied, gazing at the camera. “Though you never told me who
you
are … or why you keep your identity concealed so …”
“Thou art correct,” the man behind the camera replied.
“I did not.”
Goemon splayed wide his long, elegant fingers, and carefully touched the air around him.
“It is no matter,” the lithe creature murmured as he rose, feeling his way around the desert air with his finger pads, like a blind man hoping to catch a gnat. “Your money is good, even if your intentions are not. Though, I am curious … why are you sending the humans so far? And do you really think you can pull this off without the Galactic Order Department getting wise?”
The man behind the camera sighed a weary, ancient breath.
“Ever since the Non-Interventionist Act of AD 33, the Powers That Be hath not overtly interfered with the day-to-day affairs of the humans, something I could never understandeth myself,” the man explained bitterly. “Why go through all the bother of creating imperfect creatures only to leave them to their own destructive devices? If the Big Guy Upstairs was so ‘rah rah uppeth with humans,’
why not provide their maddening species with basic survival skills, such as—oh, I don’t know—
the ability to not drive themselves to extinction?
! They are but children, only their toys have outgrown
them
.”
Goemon delicately thrummed his fingers on a specific patch of air.
“Konnichiwa … the interdimensional seam,”
he murmured as he carefully squatted down, his outstretched finger never leaving the spot, while scooping up a cloth satchel with his other hand.
“So I am hurrying the inevitable while doing the humans a favor by merely relocating them,” the man behind the camera continued while Goemon removed a tiny crystal pick and hammer from the satchel. “The Powers That Be should have seeneth the writing upon the wall—or the writing in sacred books left in hotels—for ages now. It is as if humanity wrote a suicide note thousands of years ago and the Big Guy Upstairs has ignored the classic warning signs: emotional detachment, irrationality, not respecting your home, etc.”
Inga yawned loudly into Milton’s ear.
“As much as I hate to agree with my costar—”
“Star,” Van interrupted. “Just …
star.
”
“This show is terrible,” Inga continued.
She reached to turn the VCR off. Milton batted her hand away.
“I, um, Mr. Welles needed me to preview the show,” Milton replied as Inga glared at him. “Besides, it’s almost over.”
Inga crossed her arms and fumed silently to herself.
On the screen, the samurai-demon drew back his small crystal hammer. “Now it’s just a matter of creating the split,” he muttered, “and allowing the sacred geometry laced beneath Creation to unfold.”
The elegant creature tapped the pick. A rainbow-hued spark materialized out of nowhere.
“So I am sending the humans far beyond His influence, beyond his loving, coddling embrace,” the man behind the camera concluded, “so they experience something far worse than death:
life in exile
. And after they hath suffered sufficiently, I will emergeth as their Lord, and get all Old Testament upon them, just like in the Good Old Days: inaugurating the first—unauthorized—heavenly franchise!”
Gossamer cracks of energy sprouted from the tapping point, spreading out across the sky until they formed a shimmering latticework. Goemon put his tools back in his satchel.
“It is done,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The humans need to congregate at the specific entry points located at various religious hot spots all over the world. At the exact point of eviction, another tap right
here,
” he said,
pointing to the dull sparkle throbbing weakly in the air, “should open up the gates to the Sirius Lelayme system. All you need to do is motivate them to pass through at
just
the right time.…”
The camera rose as the man behind the camera got to his feet.
“ ’Tis simply a magic trick,” the man stated in his faultless, resonant voice as he dusted sand off his immaculate white robes. “And, liketh a magic trick, the spectator so wanteth to be fooled that it’s just a matter of giving them something that seems
inevitable
and turning that inevitable something into something
spectacular
. But the spectacle that the humans will be watching—in slack-jawed monkey amazement—will be …
themselves. Their own demise.
”
The screen went dark.
Van and Inga snored on either side of Milton, like bookends with sleep apnea. He gazed out the window at the Distressway Tunnel whizzing past, feeling completely alone.
If I were Marlo
, really
Marlo
, Milton thought as he chewed on his sister’s thumbnail,
I’d know what to do, even if it was incredibly reckless and stupid
.
He sighed as a dispiriting, motionless parade of stalled cars and brake lights streaked by beneath the speeding Badillac.
I only hope she really did mean for me to meet her in the Furafter. Whatever’s going on is too big for one Fauster to handle alone
.
“Fascinating,”
the duck doctor whispered as he, Marlo, and Zane gathered around one of the wooden support beams bolstering the spacious Big Top, now darkened in the simulated night. “And you’re sure you weren’t just imagining the effect?”
Marlo shook her head.
“My imagination isn’t nearly that vivid,” she replied in a hush amidst the gentle wheeze of slumbering shrimp demons and sideshow freaks. “When the Truthador sang, the beam totally contracted. And when Vice Principal Barnum started blathering on about how he valued our opinions, the beam started to stretch out. Then I saw the Geppetto Lumber Company mark and thought—”
“The wooden bones of Pinocchio people,” Dr. Brinkley whispered with awe as he touched his webbed finger to the miserable facelike knothole.
“What’s up, Doc?” Marlo asked.
“Carlo Collodi, the author of
Pinocchio
, was said to have been inspired by Bavarian folktales of creatures made from enchanted wood that—when exposed to truths and lies—would contract or expand, depending. Like Pinocchio’s famous nose—”
A sharp snort from Tom Thumb stopped Dr. Brinkley’s story in its tracks.
“We’d better scarper,” Zane whispered. They crept down the grandstand aisle as softly as a roving herd of cotton balls pushed along by whispers. Marlo caught a glimpse of the unvarnished Box of Bitter Truth, forgotten beneath the bleachers during the Truthador’s last unwelcome broadcast. The sight of it made her dry-heave and shiver, but it also shook loose an idea.
“Help me with this,” she whispered to Zane.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Brinkley said as he entered the sawdusted ring.
“A way to amplify your truth bombs,” Marlo grunted as she and Zane heaved the box to the edge of the paper-covered bull’s-eye floor, “while simultaneously busting up this horrible box.”
Dr. Brinkley rubbed sawdust off his spectacles and looked at the box.
“Undiluted honesty … bitter, volatile, and nearly impossible to swallow …”
Marlo and Zane crawled on their bellies to the center of the ring. Marlo peered through the punctured holes she’d made during her last midnight raid and saw the two ever-vigilant demon guards, seated hundreds of feet below at the center of the Falla Sea, dimly illuminated by the eerie silver glow radiating from beneath the ice.
Zane wriggled next to Marlo and peeked through the perforations.
“Blimey,” he gasped. “That’s a whopping great drop! And we couldn’t just climb down with ropes? We have to take the whole galumphing circus down to get out?”
Dr. Brinkley fiddled with the handle of a truth bomb, scrutinized the gauge, and placed it delicately inside the crate.
“To begin with, I couldn’t find a rope anywhere near that length,” he explained. “Next, those guards would catch sight of us well before we made it to freedom, unless we
plummeted
down and escaped by splattering ourselves across the ice. Plus, I had hoped that if we sent Fibble smashing to the ground, Barnum’s Humbugger machine—wherever he has it hidden—might at least be damaged, thwarting his plan.”
Marlo drew a deep, nerve-settling breath and worked her finger into the smallest of the target’s concentric circles. She poked a hole every inch until the entire circle was perforated. Marlo rose carefully and, motioning to Zane, grabbed one side of the box. Zane nodded and grabbed the other.
“One … two …
three,
” Marlo muttered as they threw the box onto the perforated circle. The Box of Bitter Truth tore cleanly through the paper. A gust of cold wind blasted from the hole.
The shrimp demons atop the bleachers on the far side of the Big Top stirred. Scampi scratched his rainbow wig and blinked his black eyes awake.
Marlo looked out over the hole, the wind whistling
up her nose. The box tumbled toward the brightly colored rings painted on the ice below. Time itself seemed to telescope—stretching long and smooth like taffy—as the Box of Bitter Truth bombs drifted down as slow as a feather.
Finally, the box smashed against the ice. A small silver “poof” spread out over the target, followed shortly by an audible pop. The demon guards scurried briefly before freezing in their tracks. Marlo turned to the doctor.
“It didn’t work!” she yell-whispered. “Now what—”
Fibble lurched violently to one side. Zane skidded across the paper bull’s-eye and through the torn hole.
“No!” Marlo screamed as she seized his calf, failing, in that heroic instant, to take into account that Zane was much larger than Milton. Marlo was pulled into the shredded hole, yet, before she could tumble into the abyss, kicked two toeholds in the thick paper and slowed her plunge. The paper began to tear.
“Hold … on,” Marlo called to Zane through gritted teeth as the wind roared in her face.
“To what?!”
Zane yelled as he hung upside down.
Upside-down tears spilled out of Marlo’s borrowed eyes, rolling over Milton’s forehead into his windswept mop of hair. Marlo saw that the truth bomb had damaged only one of the six support beams, which had made Fibble list to one side. Her feet tore closer to the lip of the hole.
I can’t let go
, Marlo thought as her ears buzzed with
her own pulse.
I got Zane into this. I’ll fall down with him, our guts splattered all over the ice, but I can’t let go
.
Then—just as Marlo was about to pass out from the throb of blood filling her head—Fibble convulsed, its weird wooden beams trembling, buckling, and then contracting. The frozen Falla Sea whizzed toward Marlo’s head, faster and faster, as the support beams of Pinocchio wood sent Fibble free-falling to the ice like a three-ring elevator with a severed cable.
21 • BAD BREAKS AND BREAKOUTSTHE FIVE COLOSSAL
Scarecrows interlaced their sturdy ebony wings in an impenetrable wall of feathers. Their gleaming black heads bobbed as they scrutinized their captives with darting, sideways glances. Annubis, his family, and Virginia Woof backed away slowly from the blocked passage, trapped inside the Kennels.