The Queen of Heads

© 1998 Ignatius Fischer
All rights reserved.

March slouched on the couch. The TV flickered in the living room's late-night gloom, pixilated inanities thudding into his eyes at light speed ... soundless, his thumb having inadvertently touched the MUTE stud. Sitcom here, videozine there, commercials like blips of false life on the other side of a mirror. He drifted off, collared shirt loose at the throat, sleeves rolled up. Kathryn was out at her monthly security meeting at the bank, Maggie was tucked away in her pink bed. The TV strobed over his heavy eyelids.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Maggie's voice screeched loud and sharp like a breaking icicle in the gloom. Chaotic patter of little feet, running into the room behind the couch. "Daddy, the boogie man's under the bed! Under the bed, Daddy!"

March sat up straight, shaking his befuddled head. "Huh?" Working at a dry mouth.

Maggie jumped into his surprised arms, sobbing and yelling, writhing like a hooked fish. "The boogie boogie boogie man! Under the bed, Daddy!" She began to cry in earnest then, hugging him tight.

March petted her head, soothed her with soft words, the sound of his voice the only important thing right then.

"Saint," Maggie sobbed into his chest, "Dog under my bed. Save me, Daddy! I don't want to sleep with Saint Dog!"

March froze, arms bands of steel. Ice turned out on his forehead and his left cheek began to twitch, a tic of fear in rhythm with his galloping heart.

"What? What did you say, honey?" His voice strained, cracked.

Maggie looked up from his chest, face red and streaked, sweat and tears matting her curls into wet swirls. "The boogie man, Daddy. His name is Saint Dog. He told me. Do I hafta sleep in my bed? I don't wanna."

March set her down on the couch and stood there looking down at her.

"Where did you hear that name, Maggie? Where?" Tension.

"The boogie man told me, Daddy. In my room... in the dark."

"Are you sure? You didn't hear that somewhere else? Are you sure?!"

Maggie shrank under her father's shout. She shook her head and sobbed again.

March shivered once. "I'm sorry, honey, Dad's sorry for yelling. You come with me, and we'll check your bedroom."

"No, Saint Dog... Saint Dog's there..." she moaned. But March took her anyway.

He stalked down the hall, eyes darting four directions at once, knees trembling, threatening to collapse under him at any moment. He turned on the hall light as he passed the switch. At the door to Maggie's room, he paused to set her down. She clung to his pantleg until he pried her little fingers off.

"Wait right here, honey, Dad's gonna check your room, okay?" He reached round the threshold and flicked on the light. He stepped into the room — half-crouched, ready to backpeddle. But everything was in order: bed covers tossed aside, closet door shut, books on the bookcase all lined up. Dropping to a prone position, half in the hallway, he scanned the floor beneath the bed. His biceps shook with trepidation and his lips pulled back in a half-snarl.

Empty. Of course. But she knew its name.

It wasn't there.

He stood up.

"It's okay, Maggie. Look, Saint Dog," involuntary shudder, "is gone. Nothing there. Daddy won't let the boogie man hurt you, sweetie. Look." He placed a protective hand on her slight shoulder as she came around for a peek. "It's okay, now. You can sleep in Dad's bed tonight."

By twelve-thirty the girl was snuggled deep beneath her parents' sheets and March sat in the desk chair watching over her. A small halogen on the desktop shed a pool of hot yellow light on the wall.

Saint Dog, he thought, and shivered. He hadn't heard that name in thirty years. In fact, the lasting memory from his childhood ended with the utterance of that name. Saint Dog and the King of Faces.

Oh God, they aren't coming back! They can't be fucking coming back!

He glanced at his bureau, at the trio of framed photographs standing atop it: one of Kathryn in wedding white, one of Maggie in playroom pink, and one of old Aunt Jezebel ... in ballroom black.

Auntie Jezebel. The gypsy. He shut his eyes against the flash of memory, but it took him nonetheless. Seven, standing at the threshold of his closet with a plain silver ring clutched in his little hand. A demon in purple laughing at him from beneath his hanging clothes in the depths of the dark. White face, teeth like glass needles, ears sharp like the Devil's; not Saint Dog but another. The ring ... he threw that ring with all his young might. Silver explosion, deafeningly silent. .. Aunt Jezebel smiling proudly ... more rings off her fingers onto his ... parents still alive....

Broken contract...

Having scorned medical science, the old woman had lived out her last amongst family and friends. Strong woman, he now knew. Very strong. He wondered if he had her strength. He would need it to protect his family, if they came again.

Shuddering, he rocked himself in the chair, arms drawn tight around his knees, feet well off the floor, fingering the pewter cross hung round his neck. He repeatedly checked the closet door, thinking it might be opening in his peripheral vision. Just his mind torturing him.

Kathryn found him like that two hours later.

Eggs sizzled in the non-stick frying pan; cinnamon rolls swelling in the oven filled the blue kitchen with a sweet aroma. March hunched bleakly over a mug of black coffee at the round Formica table.

"March, dear, you can't be serious. This boogie man thing is just something all kids get scared of in the dark. I was when I was a kid. Maggie'll get over it in time." Kathryn stood at the stove working eggs with a plastic spatula.

"No, she said its name, Goddamnit. I knew its name back then, and now she does. Did you ever know its name? Did you ever really see it? Did you?"

"Jesus, March!" Kathryn spun, glare slamming into him from across the kitchen. "Get over it. The boogie man is not real. Hear me: it isn't real. No matter what kind of trauma you went through as a kid, and I'm not slighting you in the least, but whatever you went through and are blocking out, the boogie man was as much a figment of your imagination as it is for Maggie. Even if you gave it a name. You know what the therapist says about all this."

"Kathryn, Maggie told me its name last night. She said it. I've never told her its name, you've never told her, and she didn't hear it from a friend..."

Kathryn sighed, finishing her husband's sentence for him. "Because if they knew it, they wouldn't be around to tell her. That's what you always say, March. Jesus, you're a morbid son of a bitch sometimes. Drink your coffee." She set a plate of eggs in front of him and a fork, then turned to retrieve the browned cinnamon rolls from the oven. "I don't want to hear any more about it. It's not healthy, for Chrissake. And if I catch you filling Maggie's head with a bunch of your warped bullshit...."

March frowned and looked at her. She grinned at him then, to set him at ease.

"I'm kidding, sweetheart, you know that. Just don't frighten her. I love you both to death. I'm sorry to be such a bitch... all of this makes me... I just want you and Maggie both to be okay." She leaned down and kissed him.

The sting from her words melted beneath the touch of her lips, and he could hardly have loved her more at that very moment. He apologized himself, and added, "Don't worry. I'll deal with it."

He sipped his coffee and thoughts of Aunt Jezebel came unbidden once more. She had been the only one to believe his tales of boogie men. Smiling absently into his mug, he saw auntie's faded smile and her broken front tooth in his mind's eye.

Have us a little gris-gris, Marchie Madness, tha's a good boy. No devil's gonna get ya wit' ole auntie here for ya.

Strong gypsy woman with amulets and charms and wardings, like she'd never grown out of the circus life she'd led for near forty years.

Three days later came March's turn for the late-night board meeting. By eight, Kathryn was toweling Maggie off from her bath and running the kid to her room to put on a nightie.

"Did you brush your teeth, sweetie?"

"Yes, Mommy, with the blue toothbrush."

Kathryn smiled, hopped her into bed. "A story?"

"Yeah, yeah! Peter Pan!"

Maggie had been asleep for an hour and a half when Kathryn finally finished on the den's computer. She arched her back, stretching, and kneaded her temples. A shower, she thought, would be absolutely wonderful right now. She shut the computer off and went into the bathroom, turned on the tap.

The water roared and for a half-second she thought she heard something. Looking up, her glance briefly caught the mirror and she did a double-take. She could have sworn there was ... but there wasn't. Her hackles raised and she squinted into the bedroom. She shut the water off.

Silence. She leaned in to turn the water on, shaking her head, and the cry came again, a terrified shriek in the back of the apartment. Kathryn's skin crawled at that stark cry and she bolted from the bathroom.

"Maggie!" she called, running down the hall. "Maggie, what's wrong?!" Her hysteria was plain in her own ears.

Maggie screamed again, appeared in the hallway as if thrown bodily from her room. She tumbled onto her knees and looked up at her mother, sobbing, eyes wide as eggs. "Saint Dog! He's under my bed! Mommy!"

Kathryn swept the girl up in her arms. "What? What?!"

"The boogie man, Mommy, the boogie man's under the bed! He's gonna get us! Where's Daddy? Daddeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Kathryn's heart slowed as she assimilated the situation. She patted Maggie's hot little head, stroked her.

"There, there, sweetie, Daddy's not home yet. It's okay, I'll check for the boogie man. It's okay, stop crying."

"N-no, Mommy, Saint Dog says h-he's gonna get us. H-He's under the bed." Her tiny voice hitched.

Kathryn stroked her softly. "It's okay, angel. Let Mommy check under the bed, let me show you there's nothing in your room."

Maggie just sobbed quietly. Kathryn put her down, looked at her standing forlornly with her long, rose-patterned shift hanging in loose folds and a thumb in her mouth. Kathryn sniffed and went into the child's room, flicking on the light as she went.

Maggie stayed in the hall sucking her thumb, eyes cast to the floor.

Kathryn walked a mite carefully, even as she scoffed at herself for doing so. There was a strange odor in the child's room, a noisome smell that brought brimstone to mind, though she'd never in her life smelled such a thing. Ducking down, she peered under the bed, saying, "See, honey, there's nothing--"

Her sentence bit off into a screech, long, stick-like brown arms flashing out from under the bed; hands, hard and pointed as if fashioned from bristly tree branches, snatched her shoulders and head. She wailed and struggled against the sudden indomitable strength grappling her to the floor.

"Got you now, woman!" The voice was low and hideous, as if the throat that elicited the harsh words was wooden. "Comin' with me, you are! Mine, mine, mine, mine! And your little rat too! Hee hee hee!" So tortured and convoluted the speech was, it was nigh unintelligible.

Kathryn wrenched herself about as the thing dragged her under the bed, into strange darkness. "No!" she screamed. "Let me go!" Her heart exploding. "Let me go!!"

"Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, into the dark we go, cross the dreams of children screaming, cross the screams of children DREAMING!!" Guttural, growling and snarling, the voice barked in her ears, in her head. The ridges of the beast's fingers creased her scalp.

She kicked and lost one of her shoes. She tried, oh God, how she tried to break the thing's hold, but it was futile. Saint Dog sang its litany of chaos in her head and she felt pain, lost in blue darkness.

March returned home with briefcase in hand, jacket on his arm, tie unknotted. Tired and frustrated with how the day had gone, he wore a scowl that would have booted the meanest mugger out of his way. For all that, he was careful not to slam the front door, not wanting to wake Maggie.

Then he smelled it. That smell ... a three-decade old stench rising from the depths of ... somewhere else. Unconsciously, he flipped his briefcase onto the coffee table. The slide and crash of magazines skittering off the mirrored table went unheard as he stalked through the room, into the hallway....

Maggie still stood quietly beside the door to her room, practically asleep on her feet, thumb hooked into a slack, drooling mouth.

"Maggie!" March ran to her, grabbed her up.

Maggie woke with a start, eyes blinking rapidly as reality asserted itself in her young mind. "Uh-oh, Daddy's home..."

March held her aloft, studied her briefly. "Where's Mom?"

The little girl shrugged.

"Saint Dog?" He felt his knees buckle at that, and he sank to the carpeted floor, managing to settle Maggie on her feet. "The boogie man took her." Statement.

Maggie nodded.

March stared at the threshold to his daughter's room. "Jesus."

Maggie shook her head. "Saint Dog, not the Jesus."

"I know, honey ... Jesus...." He had to go back. His growl pushed Maggie back a step, though she didn't look particularly frightened. "I'll get Mommy back, angel, I will. I promise."

He gained his feet, yhe tic under his eye jumping like it was under elctroshock therapy. "Christ, I don't want to go back ... there ... I shouldn't have to! Once was enough ... wasn't it?"

"Daddy?" Small hand tugged at his pantleg. "Daddy? Dad? I'll go with you. We won't be 'fraid if we're together, will we?" Then, after a careful pause, "You won't leave me here 'lone? Daddy?"

March choked back tears and insane laughter, gazing down at his daughter. She breathed strength into him, somehow, lifted his spirit above that awful stench pricking at his sinuses. "No, Maggie, we won't be afraid. And you know why? Because we love each other, we love Mommy ... and Daddy's been there before." To himself he added, "And you, angel, you're innocent — they can't touch you." With a defiant snarl, March turned and took three solid strides down the hall. Abruptly, he snapped his fingers and spun on his heel. When he faced Maggie again, he was different.

"Ooh, Daddy, that was neat!"

March looked down at himself. His loose suit had turned purple in color, the lapels and hem of his jacket lengthening, shoulder pads jutting out at sharp angles. His loafers had grown points at the toes and gleamed like wet blood. His pewter charm — an ornamental Byzantine cross, large as his hand and worked with minute scrolling patterns — pressed firmly against his chest under the snapped shirt. "Traveling vestments," he whispered to himself, smoothing the front of the coat. He'd seen them before....

To Maggie, "Stay here, kiddo, Dad has to get something before we leave."

And suddenly he understood: The King of Faces had bided his time all these years for a reason. The bastard had waited through March's college graduation, through his marriage, through the birth of his daughter. And then the fucker had given him three years more to feel safe, to forget, to think he was free. March had broken a contract — and the King would not settle for that which was initially bargained for; oh no, he wanted March's whole family now.

Renege, pay big. March ground his teeth.

In the bedroom, he removed the top drawer of his bureau, set it on the mattress. From the depths of bleached T-shirts and socks he pulled an ancient cigar box. It was stained yellow with time, graphics peeling up at the edges and two corners mended with silver duct tape.

From inside the box he took two plain silver rings and placed them on the middle finger of his left hand. "Used to be three...." murmuring to himself. On his right, he donned a fingerless gauntlet woven of tiny steel butterflies, chained wing to wing in a spiral pattern.

He touched the picture frame on the bureau. It was a faded photograph, the kind with the corners chopped off. She had given him the box and its contents from her death bed in the old house.

"Thank you, auntie," he whispered, glancing summarily skyward. The old gypsy must have known.... He hoped she was smiling at him from wherever she was.

Then he was back in the hall taking Maggie's hand and entering her room, where the stench of boiled brick and brine lofted strongest.

One of Kathryn's shoes lay on the rug in front of the bed.

March scooped Maggie off the floor. "Here, sit in the middle, honey." He screamed silently at himself. He didn't want to take his daughter to that place. But he needed her, and Kathryn needed them both. A child could see things ... a child could do things that an adult could not. Innocence lost could kill you in the end. And what if they came while he was gone? What if Maggie stood alone in a hallway while Saint Dog came to get her like it'd done for him three decades gone? He wouldn't be able to live with himself. Better to keep her next to him, better to fight for her when he knew she was alive to be fought for.

Maggie clambered across the rumpled sheets and sat cross-legged on her bed, waiting. March leapt deftly onto the mattress. She giggled softly, then pointed to the floor.

"Look, Mom's shoe."

"She won't need that right now, Maggie. Now, reach over to the corner of your bed and untie that colored string."

She frowned at her father. "There's no string on my bed —"

"There, right there."

Maggie followed March's finger, and blinked in surprise at the glimmering yarn affixed to the bedposts. "How do you know that's there, Dad?"

"Dad remembers." Even though he couldn't really see the lanyards, March's memory was exceedingly clear just then. There had been lengths of violet and emerald strings anchoring his bed to the floor thirty years ago, and somehow he was sure they'd be there now.

Maggie struggled at the simple knots of braided amethyst and emerald, picking each knot out with a child's focus and intensity. Within five minutes, she had rounded all the corners of her bed, freeing each of the tall bedposts.

"Ooh! We're floating up, Dad! Look, look!"

Indeed, the bed had become a raft of sorts, bobbing on unseen drafts, clearly unsupported and rocking slightly to and fro. March edged forward and peered at the floor, which was there ... sort of. Like a thin layer of angelic detritus filtered over a yawning chasm of browns and blues unseen, of depths and velocities unknown.

"We're going down, honey, sit tight in the middle of the bed. C'mon."

As Maggie sidled over beside her father, the bed began its descent.

The shaft had taken a long time to sail through, though March could have sworn it was only five feet deep. Time was twisted in that umbilical place, and visions of stark clarity had manifested, clothed in frightening realities, all swimming together in his head now when he tried to recall any one of them: circus of headless teddy bears, clown with bloody eyes in the back of its shaved skull, flags of many colors turned inside out, a box within a box called a shadow, a priest with eight legs, dogs with human heads, a doll with shark's teeth, a giant goldfish with holes in its sides that ate fingers, others, too many, too few...

The bed sailed easily, like a rowboat on glassy pond waters, over rolling hills dark green under a black and violet sky that seemed close enough to touch. A river ran along their course for a ways, flat and streaked with lightning, and a slight breeze picked up, at turns icy and warm like a lover's breath.

"I shouldn't have brought you, honey."

"It's okay, Daddy, I'm not a-scared."

"No?"

She shook her head.

"Well ... that's good, then." 'Cause I'm sure as shit ready to faint, he thought. "What do you think of this place?"

Maggie shrugged, so completely childlike in her acceptance it made March laugh. Albeit briefly.

"Like a storybook, huh, Dad?"

"Not quite, honey."

Father and daughter peered across a thunderous realm, eyes shot wide, mouths slightly open. Lines of ancient tension etched the corners of March's mouth, and his lips were unconsciously drawn back in a feral rictus of tight deja vu. The bed skimmed along, dank blue grasses nearly brushing the bottom of their bannistered raft at certain peaks, dropping far below down slopes littered with white and yellow shards.

In the distance, an emerald sward showed two armies coming forth to do battle. The figures were indistinct, merely flashes of odd color and glints of polished metal on one side, tall, thin banners fluttering in the winds. Opposing them marched lines of black, a single massive red standard — a hundred feet tall and half again as wide — heralding the attack. Horns began to sound, high, crystalline, lilting and sorrowful, emanations that tugged at the heart. And these were answered by hideous crashing drums, powerful and vibrating, cutting teeth.

Then from below: laughter. Tumbling, riotous, contagious laughter.

Maggie dove over the edge, straining to keep hold of the rumpled sheets as she dangled head-first overboard. "Wha's that? Who's down there?" She giggled.

March screamed. He grabbed his girl and wrenched her away from the edge of the bed. "Don't you ever — ever! — do that again! Jesus, Maggie, you don't know this place. Dangerous, dangerous!"

"Ow, Daddy, that hurts." A single tear glittered in one round eye.

March briskly removed his hands. "Sorry, honey. But you have to be careful. Okay?"

Maggie nodded solemnly. Then she brightened. "Who is that laughing, Dad?"

"Don't know," he shrugged. He peered surreptitiously over the mattress.

Giggling and running below them came a mad thing, a woman of sorts, but mismatched. Arms flopping in disjointed hip sockets, powerful legs pumping in swollen shoulder joints. Long blond hair whipped off her skull between svelte thighs. She caught March's curious look, laughed up at him.

"I remember you!" she cried, elegant hand pointing obscenely. "Knight of Hearts! Knight of Hearts! Knight of Hearts!" Shrieking like a banshee, she darted away, cartwheeling from March's confused visage.

"Tha's gross," Maggie grimly surmised.

March nodded quietly. Vacancy filled his eyes as they traveled onward.

"Lookit, lookit! Daddy?" Maggie poked her father in the shoulder, and failing to elicit a response, poked his cheek. When he blinked at her, she continued, "Daddy. Look there ... a castle!" This last drawn out in amazement.

March wiped his chin and leaned forward, eyes squinting into the roiling horizon. And of course there was a castle, how could he have forgotten. He slapped his own face with chagrin.

"Home of the Saints of Low," he breathed.

The sky vaulted overhead, rippling purples streaked with vibrant tines of blue and salmon. Woods advanced in from the right, stunted growths of decaying browns and reds skirting the thick forest, giving way to massive towering trees thick with green, steel needles that sang softly from afar like wind-chimes in winter.

"Woods of Despair," said March.

To the travelers' left, coning in on the castle opposite the forest, was a bank of shifting mists, translucent, wafting whites and sky-blues, a veritable cloud the size of Texas squatting in kinetic stillness on the horizon. Sometimes March could see shapes, small and giant, move about behind the cloud curtain.

"Wha's in the cloud, Daddy? Why does it move like that?"

"That's the Border, sweetheart. See how, if you look at it, it makes you feel all good and happy inside?"

"Uh-huh."

"And maybe it makes you think you wanna go inside there, too, huh?"

"Uh-huh."

"But we can never ever go in there. That is the border of Faerie, honey, and the elves live there, and other beautiful things ... things not like here. But us humans would get lost in the clouds, there, and we'd die from loneliness...." But we'd be happy, by God, he finished in his head.

"I don't wanna die, Daddy, we won't go there. Ever. Even if it makes us happy, okay?"

March tousled his little girl's head. Sadly, he told her, "That's good, honey."

Sprawling over the hills ahead like crenellated, rust-colored ribbon lay the City of Walls. Various towers and keeps dotted the ambling borders, some tall and sweeping, like majestic stone formed into swaths of silk, others squat and formidable, built of dark brick and river rock washed in the tears cried by the dreamers of nightmares. Those towers were eternally wet, seeping like sieves, muddied rivulets running from their thick bases down into soft dells and jagged gutters.

Amidst a jumble of canted cobblestone streets winding crazily up the tallest plateau, the wicked castle of the land rose, black and twisted and bright and shining with red on steel, aflame. Parapets listed savagely and octagonal towers jutted up to prick the sky's belly with patinaed copper spires. A trio of clouds whirlpooled around the three tallest spires, lashes of burnished mists coiling around the burning structures.

"Are we going there, Dad? To the castle? There's fire there, huh?"

"Yes, honey, we're going to the castle. But the bed will let us off at the gates ... it can't fly us over the wall, we have to walk. So when we get off the bed, you have to stay right beside me, okay? Right beside me, all the time, no matter what happens."

Maggie nodded.

"And even if someone calls you or tells you to go with them — don't. Stay by me all the time, close."

She nodded again, rolling her bright eyes in a parody of adult exasperation.

March nodded to himself, deliberately. He tore his eyes off the misty Border of Faerie and looked to the fore. He remembered the entrance to the City of Walls, a shadow of memory ascending to the surface of his mind like a shark bellying up through cloudy seas. The Silver Gates had been silver, once, eons back. He recalled thick blackened layers of tarnish built up in the channels and inscriptions, so much that only raised edges still offered the weakest of shines. There had been a boy there to greet him last time, and March shuddered at the thought of seeing him again. He'd had two faces, one on each side of his head. And of course Saint Dog would be there, somewhere. The boogie man, waiting. Again.

"Down, down, down you fall — come and see the show ... a-screaming, screaming, screaming caterwaul — in the chains you go!"

"Daddy, the bed stopped."

March glared about from under drawn brows. Outside, he looked mean, a man bent on arrival, menace in stride and posture. Inside ... quivering jelly, fear, fear, oh sweet gods, the fear! "Yes —" his voice cracked, but he swallowed and continued. "Yes, Maggie, here's where we get off-"

He was summarily interrupted by the twisted nursery rhyme reiterated in a full chorus of maniacal voices, alto and baritone together, all in the wrong places. And whipping thunks of rusted iron grappling hooks slapping into the mattress, one in each corner. Maggie gave a start, peering about at each in turn, her face trembling at the gathering knowledge of capture.

"Dad? Dad?" She looked around wildly now, faster, trying to see all the hooks at once. "Dad?!"

"Shush, honey," March murmured, putting an arm around her frail shoulders, "s'okay, don't fret, Dad's here. They're pulling us down, s'okay. Hold my hand, don't let go."

Her small, little-girl sob cut through his heart. How's it feel, not being able to protect your only child? His teeth clamped down so hard he thought his jaw must shatter. They can't touch her, he told himself. They cannot.

A mob surrounded the bed, disjointed limbs, floating faces both pale and dark, elven ears drooping to the ground, caricatures of beauty scrawled backwards; scarred, sunken madness.

"How's it feel?" High chittery voice, dancing on the edge of fingernails raking a chalkboard.

March looked to the speaker. "What?"

The little man wasn't so little, wider than a car, but shorter than March's waist, rolls of pale glistening fat undulating cross the ground, seeping flesh that could swallow him in two blinks of an eye. "Not being able to protect your only child?" His voice was insane, like breaking crystal, glass shards on glass. March winced, hard as he tried to maintain stoicism. "Hee. Hee. Hee. The Ides of March. Been a score and ten since last we saw the Knight of Hearts. Hee. Hee."

"Shut up, fatty." March dismissed him, or rather, made it seem as if he'd done so, peering studiously up at the massive Silver Gates. They were as he remembered, perhaps a little bigger, swooning hundreds of feet into a single, pernicious arch. Most of the toolings — pateras, coffering, and friezes — were completely blighted, only the cornices offering any remnant of once-bright silver edges.

"Ides of March," came a small voice, starkly normal in the periphery of chaos. "Boy returned as man. So the book said this time would come."

March tore his gaze from the vertiginous heights and glanced down. The boy approached from the depths of the dark demimonde beyond the Gates. Clad in glistening silver silks and a red sash that dripped over his shoulders, he walked inches above the ground, barefoot.

"The one allowed to touch not the ground, lest he break it asunder." March murmured the catechism under his breath, but the boy heard it anyway.

"Ah, the Ides recalls. Last I saw you, we were eye to eye." The boy's features were clear and pristine, blonde and pretty, captivating. "You wish to usurp me with height, Ides? I think not." With that, he elevated his position, rising further off the ground so he might look down his perfect nose at March. And then he turned about, slowly, tortuously. When he was but perpendicular to March, he looked like a figure parting from its own reflection. The face the boy presented on his other side was the same in every detail, save his pretty eyes were shut fast.

"Sewn over with the eyelashes of crying mothers. To one day set the world afire with a gaze of pure beauty," March muttered.

"Your mind has weathered time well, Ides."

"I'll never forget."

"You will, when you die. 'Course, you haven't remembered everything, eh? And who's this, little one with golden curls so fine, little angel?"

March gripped Maggie's hand hard enough to make her bite her lip, but she held her silence; she made her father proud. Stepping off the bed, he pulled Maggie after him. And looked back in surprise as she floated over his shoulder, still sitting cross-legged, in the air.

"How...." He peered curiously at her.

"Down! Down, down, DOWN!!" the fat man shrieked, even as the other nightmares shied away from the child. "To the show, in chains you go!"

"Do be quiet," the boy ordered, and instantly the cacophony muted itself. "You surprise us yet again, Ides. Didn't think you'd bring the young one on so precarious a journey. Or do you remember that innocence carries a certain weight of protection? Perhaps you haven't forgotten all ... And yes, the Silver Gates have grown, Ides, you are not mistaken. The swallowing of the world shall be done with in time. Inevitable. I do like that word."

"And what does your book say, boy, about my wife?" March took a single step forward. Maggie floated along with him. This single step nearer the Silver Gates allowed him to hear the faint song emanating from there, soaring hymns, wordless and glorious, imprisoned.

The boy shook his head slowly. "The Queen of Heads? That to take her back, you must defeat the King of Faces." He laughed. "But you cannot defeat yourself, that is truth."

"I will see the King then."

"Of course. There is a banquet in your honor."

March shivered involuntarily, regained his composure and stalked under the flying arch. The disembodied choir grew in his head, their lilting song lending strength. And it would be the last strength he would know in the Home of the Saints of Low, of that he was sure.

The angelic voices swirled about him as he walked through the arch, ascending, wordless song disturbingly akin to a despairing version of the Carol of the Bells he knew from Christmas time. As he strode out of the Silver Gates, into the realm beyond the walls, the song receded, leaving him cold and longing. Maggie's hand gripped his with painful intensity. The fear of being alone rode hard in that little grasp.

March looked over his shoulder at his daughter. "Don't worry, Maggie, I won't lose you."

She nodded.

The boy walked slightly ahead of them, treading air as if it were as solid as the broken stone March himself walked upon. The city within the walls began on a small scale, little houses flanking the cobbled avenue standing no taller than March's knee. Steadily, they grew larger as the travelers penetrated further.

The rolling hills had obscured many of the inner city's structures; miles and miles of twisting, coiling streets, thousands of buildings made from any number of materials: scorched brick, polished bone, charred timber, rusted steel, black iron. Things without names flew on gossamer wings in the shadows of crooked gables and jutting eaves. Rats with goblin heads skittered in corners, wearing baroque clothing from ages long past.

"Daddy?"

"What, honey?"

"Are we going to see Mom?"

"Yes, dear."

"Is she going to be scary?"

March contemplated that for a moment.

"I hope not, dear. Don't think about it, we'll be okay." If they've hurt her ... his own oath was hollow in his head.

"Okay, I won't. This where the boogie man lives? Dad? The boogie boogie man? Does he live here? In the dark?"

"Yes, Maggie."

The boy chuckled to himself. "Saint Dog, rabid beast that he is, always treats the young with care. Ha ha ha! You remember, don't you, Ides?"

March ignored the jibe, walked stolidly, one foot in front of the other, looking straight ahead. He fingered the rings on his left hand as he walked, clicking them together.

"What have you got there, man? Some gris-gris for your old friend Dog? For me, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

The boy frowned, looking March up and down. His fingernails blackened for a moment. "I can sprout teeth longer than your arm, you know."

March laughed outright. "You must be kidding me, boy. That's a hoot! I can slay you where you stand ... you know."

The boy grimaced and offered a final, sullen utterance. "But I'd come back. You know."

It was a giant green barracuda, the banquet hall, monstrous, bloated, and hollow. And quite dead. Beached eons past, when the Waters of Dream had risen and fallen away. The boy drifted off at the entrance, leaving March to walk with Maggie at his shoulder into the elongated open maw, the beast's ancient tongue laid out as the proverbial red carpet. Crags of teeth lined the path, glimmering yellow in dancing torchlight. The teeth above were longer, and curved like scimitars for sweeping morsels into its gullet.

"Daddy, are we going into a fish like Pinocchio? He made the whale sneeze. Tha's right, huh, Dad?"

"Yes."

The banquet hall, wide and open and ribbed, glowed with torches of red firelight lashed to the spine. There were no tables, all the attendants assembled in rings of various sizes, jittering and cajoling and roaring at one another. A band played noise at the far end, where the interior necked down at the tail. They played drums and steel and blew in horns hewn from huge blades of sapphire grass.

"It's loud here, Dad."

"I know," March shouted over the babel within the barracuda's belly.

A figure approached from out of the red shadows, a silhouette spindly and staggeringly tall, with stick-like arms and legs opening into huge elongated claws like stilled tines of lightning.

"He's here, he's here, lend me your ear!" it screamed, voice gnarled and scraping, guttural. "Good as cooked — fresh meat, good God — let's eat!"

"Saint Dog," March snarled, at the same time Maggie screeched, "The boogie man!"

Saint Dog ambled forward on crooked limbs, wizened, atrophied head swinging to and fro on its rope-like neck. It pointed one long, knife-like digit at March.

March hesitated not a single second. He dropped Maggie's hand, oblivious to her cry, wrenched off one of the silver rings, and threw it unerringly at Saint Dog. The ring flashed brilliantly in the red darkness, streaked into Saint Dog and POPPED like a flash bulb. Light exploded from the impact, but then eerily slowed to a sluggish rate of expansion. Shimmering shards of light pulsed outward, creating perfect, jewel-like rainbows that hung in the air and seared the throng's wretched, staring eyes.

All fell silent as Saint Dog was eaten by the light, right there before them. Not one thing uttered a word or breath while Dog collapsed in on itself. The light finally breached the antediluvian fish's ribcage and regained its velocity. With an abrupt coruscation, the light vanished. Everything seemed darker then.

"That was neat-o, Dad! You got the boogie man. Jus' like you said! My Dad got the boogie man!" Maggie was ecstatic and her small voice rang out like a silver bell in the rank dismay of the fish's gullet.

March told her grimly, "Only a little, Maggie. I only got him a little." Enough for us, though, thank you very much, he thought. Where are you now, boy? "If I had gotten him in our house, I could have finished him. But we don't worry about that now, angel." No, we don't worry about that now.

Maggie patted March's shoulder. "You're the best Dad ever."

He touched her hand fleetingly. "Thank you."

The cavern, so raucous seconds ago, now seethed with quiet rage and hatred ... and shock. Nothing in the congregation moved; not a breath uttered amongst the revolting crowd. And then ... a scraping, slithering sound, mulching, flopping.

March turned, saw the fat man rolling and sliding towards him, coming out of the banquet hall's stretched maw.

"'Tis of thee, chains you see ... ingrate, hunger sate...." In two of his four flipper-like appendages, which protruded from just below his third and fourth chins, he clasped lengths of chain weaved from spiderweb. Link after link regurgitated from his mouth, and as he spoke, more links issued. "We wish to feast, human beast..."

March ignored the inane chanting. "So, where's your ruler, fiends? Where's your liege? Where's the King of Faces?"

And all at once, everything with a voice, or reasonable facsimile of such, resounded with an answer. "KING OF FACES!! FACE OF KINGS!!" The band took up its demented clamor once more, pounding, pounding, and goblin gypsies flooded the middle of the hall, dancing. Gray bodies, bloated or shrunken, writhing with creaks and cracks under flailing sack-cloth sashes, eyes in the palms of hands blinking and staring.

A fly buzzed in close to March, hundred tiny wings batting away in a flurry of filth. Maggie grimaced and floated back as far as her touch on March's shoulder would allow. The fly was bigger than a Dalmatian, distended rounder than a barrel, and its giant, swollen eyes were human, one black, the other blue.

The boy's pet, March remembered now, was a fly. A nightmare from his six-year-old self came back to him: he'd dreamt that there had been a fly in his room, louder than most, and he couldn't kill it with the stupid, tiny, impotent swatter his parents had given him for the job. He'd woken bathed in the sweat of the chase, frustrated and edging on panic.

"Zee Knight of Heartzzz ... beckonzzz to zee Palace of Night, come with meeeee...."

March struggled to keep his stomach down. He nodded and motioned for the fly to lead on.

The travelers were followed out of the barracuda by the congregation's stentorian chant: "KING OF FACES!! FACE OF KINGS!! KING OF FACES!! FACE OF KINGS!! KING OF FACES!! FACE OF KINGS!!"

Maggie stared in awe at the castle they approached. "It's burning, Daddy."

"I know."

Indeed, the Palace of Night was crimson in the eternal twilight, glowing at places, outright aflame at others. The flames licking the air were orange and green, sometimes blue, sometimes black, and none issued smoke. They offered a biting cold rather than heat, and the closer the travelers came, the harder their bodies were wracked with tense shivers and chattering teeth.

"I don't like it here, Dad."

"It's okay, sweetheart. Inside, it's much warmer." He neglected to add that she might like the insides even less, though he himself had no clear memory of ever having seen the interior.

The fly swooped and dove in jittery movements, veering left and right and left again. March plodded stoically in its trail, boots ringing on the smoldering stone afoot. The Palace was hardly palatial, rather more grim than that, with slab-sided walls and wickedly arched parapets. Ahead, centered on their path, a drawbridge began to lower, for all the world looking like an iron mouth opening wide for consumption. The riveted bridge allowed the traverse of a chasm that had no end in this world.

March's muscles were in a constant state of spasm, his cheek trembled bad enough to blind him in the one eye. Maggie shivered and shivered and shivered, one arm hugging herself tightly.

The fly spiraled about March and Maggie. "You go inzide. He waitzzzzzzzzzzz...." Abruptly, it veered off into the haunted sky.

March stood there, just this side of the threshold, looking up at the portcullis suspended above the drawbridge's maw. It shone white in the shadows, dagger points ready to stab downward with the weight of a hundred worlds behind them.

"Where dreams end," he said.

"W-what, D-dad? C-c-cold."

A deep breath, then he crossed the threshold and darkness came to them like an infant's mother.

Black.

Heat. It was warm here, but the cold took its lethargic time egressing. March could hear his bones creak with the temperature change. Maggie sobbed softly in the black. He couldn't see his hand touching his nose. No sound, except his breathing and his little girl crying, softly. He couldn't tell if his eyes were open; he hurt himself straining to widen them.

"I can't see you, Daddy!"

"It's okay, okay, it's okay. Just dark, like in your bedroom at night —"

"No Daddy, I can't see you! It's too dark, I can't see! Oh no, I can't see...."

"It's okay," he began again, but he heard the futility in his own voice. What could he say, how could he comfort? He couldn't.

Maggie cried and March felt her tears wetting his shoulder, his face. He reached up and patted the girl's head. Cursing, he fumbled at the ring still on his finger. He had wanted to save that one, but....

"Okay, honey, I'm going to make light, shush now." He hurled the ring down with a mighty cast.

A tiny glint in the dark, then the POPPING noise, same as before, and the frozen explosion of light. It looked like a growth of crystals, the sluggish light, sprouting tines of white in every direction. He stooped and picked the formation up.

He found he conducted light better than he might have electricity. The tine he touched coursed and pulsed and light striated his body, ran up his arm and through his hand into Maggie. Her eyes shot forth with light, as did his own; her hair scintillated, fingernails glowed, nose and mouth gushed with transcendent luminescence.

"Oh my God." He watched as the light winked in and out from her eyes as she blinked.

Their new radiance illuminated the keep's foyer, albeit in short splashes of brilliance here and there. A pile of marble stairs, a chandelier webbed across the vaulted ceiling, worked in an iron likeness of a sprawling, tangled rosebush. The head butler stock-still in the center of the chamber, dead on his feet, eyes sewn shut with silver twine and a sapphire rose pinned through the white lapel of his dinner jacket. Ragged dolls, hundreds of them, in a corner, all positioned in vignettes of horrible, archaic torture practices. A pedestal ten feet tall, standing on three jointed rods of brass thinner than Maggie's pinky, atop it a black telephone and a placard that read: 5 cents.

A voice creaked like old floorboards, scraped like rusted hinges: "Jack and Jill ran up the street, to fuck each other's meat." The butler's jaw snapped open and closed like a bear trap. "Jack came hard and screamed aloud, while Jill was spitting it out."

March frowned in the striated dark. The phone rang.

"Who is it?" Maggie said.

March glanced quizzically at his daughter. Her eyes were wide, beaming brightly like the caricature of a seraphim.

The phone rang again, buzzing in the European fashion. And again. Frustration contorted Maggie's features. "Who is it?" she queried a second time. "Daddy, they won't answer."

"Honey, the phone's on that table, you can't hear them unless you pick it up. You know that."

"No, Dad, I see them... but they won't answer."

BZZZ-BZZZ. BZZZ-BZZZ.

"Daddy!" Her voice cracked, eyes unblinking. "Daddy!" Screaming in the dark, staring vacantly ahead. "Daddy! Where are you? Where are you?"

"I'm right here, honey, right here!" He clutched at her frail hand, but it was slipping away. He didn't understand. "What...?! Maggie, I'm here, where are you going?"

"Daddeeeeee..." His daughter's voice faded as her visage did, slipping away into nothingness. Vanishing.

Frantic, March spun in a tight circle, eyelight sweeping across the foyer. "Goddamnit, where are you taking her?!" He searched each corner of the hexagonal chamber, the soiree of dolls, the stairs, bronze statues in an alcove, decapitated fairy pressed under a huge pane of glass, nowhere, everywhere. Gone. "Piece of shit, where are you?! King of Faces, my ass. King of Idiots. Idiot King!" At that moment he didn't care for his own life — he'd gladly have given it only to see Kathryn and his daughter right then.

He would have continued his ranting, but he heard something, faint, and cocked his head. Small final words from his vanished daughter: "It's okay, Dad, I found Mommy." And then a high-pitched tiny scream.

March sank to his knees, slowly, strength leached away in agonizing hopelessness. "King of Faces," he whispered to himself.

His star of light exploded and light filled the foyer, peculiar, rose-colored light, as if he peered out from behind tinted sunglasses. Drums began to sound, a driving rhythm that actually contained some sense of order, of purpose. March stood, glanced at the headman, but the butler remained still. He stepped towards the telephone, and the drums lessened. A thought occurred, and he headed for the stairs. He grinned a ruthless grin as the drums loudened, driving him onward.

The steps took him to a broad landing at which three spiral staircases awaited, each banistered in patinaed copper wrought into the semblances of howling faces. Using the drums as an aural guide, he chose the furthest left, angling upwards. He took the marble steps three at a time, around and around and around, dizzying. Violins bled into the drums' baseline, darting, soaring, high and deep, then faster.

March huffed, ascending higher until he thought he might not make it. Legs burning, feet throbbing, chest tight. He might just sit down and take a breather, he thought. Even if Maggie's waiting somewhere else, a few minutes could hardly matter —

"Aww, c'mon!" he screamed at himself. "Move, you imbecile, don't you fuckin' stop, not now, not ever!!" Up, then, higher. Hours later, days, a year perhaps, a long time through a haze of exhaustion, he flailed off the last step into a corridor longer than the world itself. It became a black dot at the end of his vision. Ten feet wide, eighty tall, hewn from a single piece of mottled green marble. A silver plague embedded into the glossy stone named it SLEEPWALKER BOULEVARD. He read it wheezing at the floor, hands on his knees. The music in his head enveloped him now, flutes having joined the harmony, fleeting and piercing. He felt the drums in his chest.

When he straightened again, he saw what he'd somehow managed to miss at first. The hall was full of blind, ambling people. Naked and from all walks of life, scarred, fresh, young, old, alive, dead, tall, short. Walking with arms extended in perfect cliche. Thousands, stumbling into each other silently, rubbing on the walls, drooling.

March smelled tulips as he started in. He forced his way through and around the first hundred or so, pushing, shoving. More than a few times he tripped, stumbling into one or more of the vacant bodies. "Christ, get outta my way!" Straight-armed past a few more, broke into a small pocket in the middle of the hall. And halted.

Six sleepwalkers came towards him shoulder to shoulder, perfectly blocking the way. Anger surged through him, impatience and frustration welling up like a fountain. With a savage snarl, he wound back the gauntleted fist, sprang ahead and belted the balding man in the center. The fingerless gauntlet of butterflies ran with a blue light and the punch not only sent the man sprawling, but knocked the sleepwalker so hard he sailed straight down the corridor, barreling over others and leaving a clear passage in his wake. A wake that extended oddly at least a hundred feet.

March snorted and began to run.

Something white flashed past on one wall.

March skidded to a stop, retreated. He glowered at the sign, painted on white paper in what looked like Day-Glo fingerpaints. It said: DON'T LOOK AT THE CROSS UP THERE. And a red arrow, sloppy and melting, directed him where not to look. Before he'd thought about it, he'd followed that arrow and looked upon the cross. Huge, ornate, gilded wood, painted with golds and browns, upside down.

"Huh?" Then he was inverted, cross before him right-side up. His feet tread only air as he looked down on the ambling sleepwalkers.

An inscription on the cross asked: WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOURSELF FOR THE LOVE OF NO ONE?

"Would you?" barked a gnarled, guttural voice.

March turned on Saint Dog, the boogie man clinging to the wall, long, raking talons clutching the stone. "You're gone."

"Not I, said the fly." Dog laughed, steel grating on concrete. "Climb on my back, I'll tote you like a sack. But don't bite, I might bite back!" That wizened, wooden face offered a rictus of chipped stone teeth.

"Tired," was all March could say. His eyes fluttered and he almost fell to the floor below, but he managed to climb awkwardly onto Saint Dog's stick-like body, hanging on for dear life to the fiend that had terrorized him as a child. He was at a loss for words.

Saint Dog scrabbled up the wall, talons piercing the marble like a cat's might a tree trunk. The thing's jutting, knobby elbows and sharp shoulders dug painfully into its charge's chest and ribs. March grunted and shifted about, eyeing the arched ceiling as it drew closer. Finally, Saint Dog gained purchase on a ledge that ran like a crack along the ceiling of Sleepwalker Boulevard.

"Let me off, miserable wretch," March ordered. He dismounted unceremoniously and shoved the monster away. "Lead on, 'fore I kill you again."

Dog barked a chuckle as it galloped up the ledge. March jogged after it, pointedly ignoring the precipice he danced upon. Dog darted right and disappeared. March quickly gained the spot and saw a ramp leading away from the corridor, black marble stained with flowers of rust. Mushrooms grew in rings of various sizes and shapes on the sweeping ramp, pale tops colored with red and blue speckles, green and yellow splotches.

Dog careened away up the ramp, galloping on three zig-zagging limbs while one enormous claw raked the ceiling, eliciting a jagged, rasping noise that cut March's teeth. He watched it go, feeling like he could spit nails.

The ramp sloped upward, taking him to the mighty threshold of the Room of Storms, Antechamber to the Throne of Lily, the exact center of this realm, the place between sleep and wakefulness. March had never been here before, yet he knew what it was.

The threshold was ivory inlaid with obsidian, tall fluted columns on either side wider than the entrance itself. Bronze gargoyles gazed down at him from an ivory arch, metal eyes blinking slowly, randomly. The Room of Storms itself seemed particularly quiet for having such a grand title. Carpeted in herringbone silvers and maroons, the walls fell away from the eye, offering the merest semblance of enclosure. Massive tapestries depended on gleaming chains from the ceiling, twenty on a side, huge. Forty disturbing visages sewn out of millions of human irises gazed at him in more ways than one. The Saints of Low. Saint Dog was the closest to him, on the right, its tapestry self five times larger than the subject of the art. March could see, clearly, the brown and hazel eyes forming Dog's feet, and he wondered idly how the people could see without them ... wherever they might be.

He stepped inside.

"Time to sleep," rang a clear voice.

A bell sounded, and until that singular, crystal sound, March hadn't realized the guiding music had left him. As the echo of the bell rang out, a wind picked up, tousling his hair and snapping at his jacket.

"Enough with the theatrics! See me!" March roared at the ceiling, fists white-knuckled at his side.

The wind howled around him, whipped into a tight whirlpool that carried March off the floor, bearing him high into the Room of Storms. The ceiling gave way before him, coffering and lapis lazuli star mosaics receding. March's eyes teared in the fury.

The wind settled him down upon a glass surface, translucent white, shapes and shadows writhing beneath, unsettling in their strangely amorphous symmetry. He stood at the Throne room's center, looking upon a dais at the far end. The rose-colored light here was deeper, more velvet, red. On the dais was an obelisk of dark metal, riveted, heavy stairs converging on all four sides, and at the top, the Throne of Lily.

Sitting in a gigantic fold of white flower petal, the King of Faces. March had eyes for nothing other than that shrouded figure.

He advanced, fists at his side, anger bleeding from his very posture.

"Where's my daughter? My wife? Think 'cause you're the king of sleep you can bloody try me? Do you?!"

The King of Faces crossed his legs irreverently and picked at one long black fingernail with a golden dirk. His head was hidden beneath a silk shroud topknotted with lengths of fine gold chain. "Bah! Morpheus's got nothing on me, fool. I'm not the king of sleep. I'm the King of Faces."

"Shut up. Where's my daughter and wife? Maggie and Kathryn? Speak up!"

"Make up your mind, fool. Shut up, speak up ... who are you?"

March screamed with hate. "Where's my Goddamn family?!"

"God, ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha heh heh hee hee ha ha haaaaaaaaaa! I'm the only one who answers prayers here, Ides. Knight of Hearts. Why don't you bow and kiss the hand of your queen?" With a casual wave, the king motioned to one side.

March followed the motion to a great, free-standing wall protruding into the Throne room. It was coffered with large octagons, the whole of it pale alabaster in hue. The inset panels formed a crooked pyramid, widening from a single octagon, framed in cherry black, near the floor. A pair of polished brass tracks ran along the base of the wall, and at the King of Faces' beckon, two petite automatons built of gleaming chrome and burnished brass slid out on those rails, silent but for tiny, perfect clicks and whirs. Their heads were blind plates of chrome with minutely drilled holes where mouths might have been.

Articulated, oiled hands scrolled out on telescoping brass arms and opened the black-rimmed panel.

March sat suddenly, legs gone numb, when the interior of that panel was revealed. Kathryn's head looked out at him, obviously disembodied. She blinked in the red light and smiled beatifically when she laid eyes on March's stunned form.

"Ah, my Knight of Hearts," she murmured breathlessly. "You've come at last."

The King of Faces chuckled.

"Kiss my hand, dearest."

March squinted at her, wary, then glanced over his shoulder at a hissing noise from the rear of the chamber. There he saw a door opening and walking towards him came his wife's lovely body, clad in a sweeping, sheer silk gown, elegant and arresting in its stride. Maggie floated after her mother's body, laughing and running on air, blonde curls tumbling.

"Daddy, I see you!" she laughed.

Kathryn's body stepped up to him and proffered the back of one graceful hand. March, insanely, even in his own mind, made it to one knee before carefully taking that hand and lightly brushing trembling lips across the warm flesh of her delicate fingers. The nails were polished ebon, he noted.

"Rise, my knight," Kathryn breathed.

March struggled to his feet, turning to the Throne of Lily. "W-what ... what is —"

The king leaped from his royal seat, sweeping a hand wide. "My Queen! Of Heads!" he shouted. And every panel in the odd wall slammed open, revealing all the faces of all the Saints of Low. "Love it, Knight of Hearts! My love is yours!"

"You're a fucking nutcase. None of this means anything to me! It's not real, my wife said so. Not real."

The king made as if to spout some more, but March stopped him with a viciously pointed finger.

"And even if it is-- it doesn't mean anything to me! The hell with you and give me my wife back." He looked at Maggie — why was she laughing? Her mother stood before her BEHEADED, for Christ's sake!

"Daddy, look it. There's a home for me so we can all stay together. And play." Maggie pointed excitedly to a single vacant panel in the wall.

March bit his lip; his little girl was under a spell, had to be under a spell ... a glamour. . .

"Yes, deary, a home for Maggie." The king danced a little jig atop the obelisk, chuckling.

"Oh ... fuck you." March ran at the throne, ignoring Kathryn's pleas, Maggie's giggling.

The King of Faces somersaulted from the obelisk, landed neatly on his feet with more alacrity than Puss 'N Boots might have managed. He ripped the silk shroud off his head and March was suddenly running at himself. A leering, maniacal self, but himself all the same.

"King of Faces, face of kings, little nightmare world, you'll sing the same," the king chanted.

March slowed, staring hard at his nemesis. "What's this? Why — no, you don't have my face. Take it off."

The king pulled at his cheeks and lips and nose. Gleefully, he returned, "Can't, Ides, it's the real thing. No mask. I'm you, pleasure to meet me."

March shook his head, closed his eyes. It was more than slightly troubling to face your mirror image when it talked back to you. "You're not — I'm me. You can't be me, what would that mean. Oh, for God's sake, quit this. Give me my wife and child. We're going home."

"Not far, home. Not far at all. In fact, if you turn around, you'll be home. Nothing so simple as that." The king approached. "Now, Knight of Hearts, you have something I need." The dagger flashed in his gloved grip, spiking out in a streak of gold, becoming a sword in an instant as he bore down on March.

March fumbled back a step. His right hand hurt and he glanced quickly at it. The butterfly gauntlet was red hot, glowing brightly. "Aww, ow, ow! Jesus, get it off," he snapped, frantically jerking his hand about.

The King of Faces smirked. March hadn't known his features had the capacity for such cruel mockery.

"Goddamnit..." he muttered, still retreating with slow steps even as the king eyed him and advanced with a wicked slash of a smile. "Key-riste, get off!" His jerking hand got higher on him, and suddenly it was heavy, the fingerless gauntlet something more now.

"Ooh, that's neat!" clapped the king. He touched his blade to the glass floor in mock-respect.

March held aloft a shield of twined steel butterflies, circular and beveled, chained to his hand and arm in its concave side. He stared at it wordlessly for a brief moment, until gold flashed in his eye. Instinctively, he brought forth the shield and the king's sword clashed against it with a hideous scrape.

"Oh, and he's fast, too!" exclaimed the king.

"If you're me, then we're just as fast together. Neither of us can win this battle —"

The King of Faces interrupted March. "Oh contraire, mon fraire. We harbor the same selves, but utterly different points of view. Wouldn't you say? Of course you would, and you'd be forever right. Ha haaaa. We think not at all alike, and hence, we can do just battle. We've got the brawn, but I've the brains!" And with that, he struck again, darting in and cutting across March's knees.

But March got his shield there in the nick of time, banging away the sword that flashed like fire in the red of the chamber. He fell back under a series of blows, slashes that cut left and right nearly faster than he could maneuver that steel shield. The butterflies seemed to move and writhe of their own accord, though, lending his arm aid in motion and direction.

The king hammered down upon March, the noise of impact screechingly loud and unsettling, dull crashes that vibrated under March's ribs. And with every hit, March thought of his family. And with every thought of his family, anger pulsed through his chest.

"You have my heart, Ides! I'll have it out of you one way or another! You could just give it to me —" CLANG! SMASH! CLANG! "-- you know, and you could remain as my faceless guard of honor. Sorry I must take your face, too, can't have a lower man impersonating the King, now, can we." SMASH! CLANG! BANG!

BANG-tinggggg! "But if you must have it carved out by force, well then, I'll oblige. Ha ha hee hee hee hee..."

March caught a falling strike and shoved the sword back at its wielder. "Would you just —" He charged forward and swung while the king was off-balance. "-- shut. Up." He barreled into the king, bringing the shield down with all his might. The steel round caught the king full in the chest and the crack of a broken rib resounded through the room.

"Ahhhh." The king tumbled back, driven by March's blast.

March leapt forward, swinging again, but he'd fallen for the feint. The king rose suddenly, deftly turning the sword over in his grip, and a punch from him sent the blade along March's face. A line of red, paper-thin, appeared across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose and ... everything was still — The line exploded, blood fountained over March's nose and mouth, hot and thick. It splashed on the glass, droplets of crimson that caused the shadow shapes beneath to cavort and twist hungrily.

"Shit." March stepped back, off-handedly smashing away the king's follow-up while he gingerly touched his cheek with his left hand.

"Daddy!" shrieked Maggie. She agitated in March's periphery. "Bad king, you're not my Dad. You're a liar."

Upon hearing this, March turned on the king with a grimace so foul even the King of Faces was shaken. "You told her ... I want you to take off my face. You don't get to wear my face, you motherfucker." He lunged, batting away a feeble swipe with the shield and punching the king full in the face with his left hand.

The king windmilled backward, tripped and sprawled on the glass. The shadows beneath skirted away from him. The golden sword skittered out of his grip, pinwheeling across the floor on its quillons.

"Oh, drat," he snuffled from under a freshly broken nose. "I sh'pose I'll have to draw and quarter you for thish, Idesh. I can get a new Knight of Heartsh, you know, one not sho dishagreeable. I don't shink I want your fashe anyhow." He hobbled up on one knee and his nose quit bleeding. "But then I'd have to give up my Queen of Heads, and I've waited so long ... or ... yes, that's a good idea! I'll let you take her back, well, her body anyway, I'll keep the rest. The rest doesn't matter, anyhow, wouldn't you say? You're one of those men thinks women are just good for grabbing and poking now and again, aren't you, Ides? No...? You like your woman's brain — hey, I can show you that brain, if you'd like to see it? Would you?"

"Shut up." March stomped up to the king and batted him with the shield, a right good haul any boxer would have been proud to have executed.

The King of Faces flopped head over heels like a rag-doll, spread-eagled on his face. March picked up the golden sword and strode up to his quarry. The king began to rise, heaving himself off the glass and leaving a gnarly smudge of blood where his smashed nose had pressed.

March raised the sword high in both hands. "I'll take my face off you any way it comes..."

"Fool," the king snidely slurred just as the golden hilt sprouted thorns three inches long. They pierced March's palms as if his hands were made of butter.

Screaming in horror, March tried to drop the sword, but found it securely nailed into his grip. Still screaming, he watched the king rise, slowly, to his feet. Blood poured from his nose and from a straight gash across his forehead.

"Ah, what will you do, poor Ides? I've got your child and your wife. And you've got my sword! Tee-hee, twiddle-dee-dee, laughing so hard, I need to pee!" Shaking with mirth, the king danced across the floor, dark trail of bodily fluids pooling in his footsteps.

March stopped screaming, throat raw. The burning in his hands had turned to pure fire and he thought he might keel over sick any moment now. Gold spikes riveted into his hands. His arms trembled and he hazarded a brief, stricken glance at the wounds. Oh ... dear, he thought, falling over. Maggie shrieked.

The king loped up the stairs to stand once again atop his obelisk. "Who won, who won?! Who? Me, that's who!" He flounced backwards into the Throne of Lily, crossed his legs, and watched March writhe on the glass. The shadow shapes blackened the area beneath the bleeding man's body, each drop of blood causing a surge of chaotic swarming. The king replaced his silk shroud, deftly attaching the fine gold links at the top.

"Jesus," March breathed. He couldn't bring himself to tear his hands away from the sword; he could feel the spikes inside, feel his tendons sliding around the metal like he could feel the catheter floating in his vein during blood donation. "Aw, God...."

Maggie began to cry. Kathryn's body walked elegantly over to her and patted her head.

"It's okay, honey, Daddy's okay," March offered through gritted teeth.

The king scoffed from his high perch. "You call me a liar," he sneered.

"Shut up!" March stumbled onto his knees, pressing himself up off the backs of bruised knuckles. The pain whitened his vision for a terrifying second, and he teetered on the brink of fainting outright. Sweat poured from his temples and nausea swam in his gullet like oily green fish. With a biting groan, he gained his feet. "I don't understand. You want my face? That's all?"

"I want your heart. You are the Knight of Hearts. You pledged thus — under exceeding duress, I might add — a score and ten years ago. I take your heart, and you venture forth in your Queen's name to rip the hearts from others. From those unsuspecting and fertile sheep that tread the waking world. Understand? Do you want me to draw you up a contract? In your daughter's blood? I can do that. I can flay the skin off her back, tan it, and inscribe said instructions with a pen dipped into her eye socket. No problem."

March heard little of the king's ramblings, struggling as he was to tear free his own grip from itself. He succeeded finally with the left, wrenching it off the spike and howling feverishly as the fingers abruptly curled in on themselves. Blood fountained from the illusional wound, splattered onto the glass like thick wine. The shadow shapes cavorted in their eerie efforts to touch the steaming scarlet. Jaw compacting like a vise, he wrenched free his other hand, casting the blade away in a burst of furious hate.

"You should meet your enemy," the King of Faces murmured. With a wave, he called forth the gleaming robots once more. They scrolled out on their oiled, shining tracks, tubular arms telescoping three lengths, four, five. Polished manipulators clicked along the rows of coffered octagons, finally opening one of the panels, revealing an ancient face.

Kathryn's clear voice rang out in the glass and gold chamber, announcing, "The Troubadour, thirteenth Saint of Low! Come forth, Saint Horn, with your cloak of night, stand tall and be ... the slayer of light."

The robots, blind chrome heads rotating on silent coils, took down the face and offered it to the king. The king reached out with one suddenly elongated arm, stretching ten feet or more to snatch the unhelmed visage. He brought it to himself and, in a movement defying speed and time, traded his silk bag for the masked face of the Troubadour.

March, hands cradled limply in opposite arms, bled quietly all over himself. Saint Horn presented itself, tall and wide of shoulder, debonair, hands covered with black gloves tanned from the hides of kittens, boots tall and blocky with brass studs. Its face was a mask, wooden and painted with garish color in the likeness of a broad-lipped Mexican clown, paper-mache horns streaming with colored crepe paper. Its red cloak brushed against the floor with hypnotic SHUSH-SHUSHING, lining blacker than black. The spurs on its hard boots rang tinnily in the hollow chamber.

"What now?" March sagged against himself. "What do you want?"

Saint Horn said nothing. It stood before him, expectant.

"What?!!"

Silence.

He was answered by his wife, her voice somber. "The thirteenth Saint of Low has forever competed with the Knight of Hearts for the place of honor under the King of Faces. Their battle is —"

"Shut up, Kathryn!" Think, man, think! March screamed inside his own head. You've to get out of here, you've got to leave! Take Maggie and run — run! "Maggie?"

"Daddy?"

"Come here, honey, hurry, come see Daddy."

Maggie ran on air to her father. "I don't like that man's robe, Daddy. It's dark."

March reached out to touch her face, left a smear of blood on her cheek. "It's okay."

The Troubadour stepped back. It seemed to look at nothing and at Maggie at the same time. It was apprehensive about approaching the child.

And then March had an idea — the first in a long while, he thought. Something to do with the changing of faces ... what was it exactly? His gaze lit upon the throne, then, and he very nearly grinned.

"Maggie, go up to that flower chair, up there. Go get that gray cloth, bring it to me, please."

"Okay." Maggie floated across the chamber, blonde tresses curling in the air. "How come, Dad?"

"Just — just bring it to me, honey. I think this King must hide his own face in order to don a new one. That true?"

Saint Horn turned, tracking the little girl's movement. Its gloved hands clenched and unclenched, suddenly agitated.

"Oh, is this bothering you, you fuck?" March needled.

The Troubadour whirled on him, whipped its cloak in a broad swipe. It fluttered in the rose-tinted air, flashing red and black. March stumbled backwards, out of its path. The Troubadour stomped towards him, leering red grin, blue and white spiraled eye sockets, rustle of crepe paper.

"Hurry, Maggie!" March ducked around the stalking aberration, running towards the obelisk and Throne of Lily. "Throw it to me!"

"I got it, Dad. I got it. You want me throw it?"

"Throw it, Maggie!"

Maggie wound up and gave it her little-girl all. The fragment of silk shot out, then wafted to the floor. The shadow shapes darted away. March slid up to it, snatched it off the floor, wincing as his hand closed on it. He held it up in one bloody fist and chortled at the menacing figure.

"You need this, don't you? Haven't got a face of your own, huh? How's it work? You need to wear this — this non-face is you. You need this to command your Saints of Low, eh? Well, well, well. Come and get it then. C'mon, here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, here it is." He pranced sidestep towards the brass tracks. Sharply, over his shoulder, "Maggie, fly up there, where there's nothing inside. You can close the door when I tell you to."

The Troubadour balked, sudden apprehension and fear apparent in its stance. Then it leapt, gloved hands raking like claws, boots thudding on the glass.

March spun and tossed the silk bag, all thoughts focusing on a single prayer. The silk carried up over the robots and settled into the open octagon. Saint Horn, gripped in sudden shock, tripped and thunked face-down with a sharp CRACK! as its mask split. Something green began to ooze.

"Close the doors, Maggie."

Maggie, giggling at the Troubadour's antics, swept herself up over the gleaming automatons and slid shut the octagon panel. "I closed it, Dad."

The Throne Room was smaller. March glanced about, head brushing the ceiling. Maggie was easily as tall as the Throne of Lily herself. Peering down at his wife's body, high as his knee, he boomed, "Put yourself together, Kathryn, we're leaving."

"Ooh, look it, we're big, Dad! I'm a giant, but you're gianter than me."

"'Bigger', dear, bigger than I."

"'Kay."

Kathryn walked to herself and the image of her own delicately strong hands reaching out to herself was etched into her mind, to be suppressed under a thousand bits of tiny, irrelevant memories forever more. She put her head back on and very nearly died from the most insane vertigo ever experienced.

March supported her wobbling, freshly wholesome self with a giant arm. "Are you okay, baby?" March's concern racketed about the chamber, and the shadow shapes squirming under the floor jittered with its vibration. "Are you all right?"

Kathryn held her temples between ridged fingers. "I ... suppose...."

March reached up and pushed at the ceiling, strained against the solidity of it. With a grunt, he sundered it aside, great fissures spiderwebbing the stone before the whole of it gave way with a single massive CRACK! He thrust it up and over the side, revealing the tumultuous violet sky running with mercurial fire overhead.

"Here, Kathryn, step into my hand." He cradled her like a newborn dove, fragile and blind, up onto the parapets above. Cold fires licked at the sky and Kathryn shivered violently in the twilight. "Can you fly up here, Maggie?"

"Sure, Dad." And she did, rising like an angel out of the Throne Room.

March glanced at the Troubadour scrabbling like a beetle turned on its back, grimaced, and hoisted himself up onto the castle's roof. Thunder rolled, announcing his egress, and the sudden frigidity made his teeth chatter. They sounded like cannon shots, even to his own ears. Awkwardly, he stood, bracing one foot on either side of the gutted Throne Room.

The City of Walls stacked itself before him, rolling up the hills and down the vales in a broken-toothed pattern of rust-colored brick, blackened stone, and cold metals. Things moved in the fire-lit shadows, too many arms and legs, teeth and talons. Somewhere far off, a tortured faerie sobbed silently, its mournful cries drifting skyward in the form of glimmering glass bubbles that broke upon the clouds and rained down in a glittering shower of glass shards.

March allowed himself the smallest of grins as he looked upon the realm from heights unreachable even to the King of Faces. He touched Maggie's leg as she drifted back up to his shoulder, then stepped carefully off the shattered ledge onto a lower facet of the castle, flattening a dome in the process.

Bigger you are, harder you fall, he told himself. Caution.

"Come here, Kathryn." Hand held up like some Gulliver elevator.

Kathryn shuddered there on the parapets before clambering into his palm. "Why are you. .. a giant, March? Where are we? That monster — it drug me ... under the bed...."

"We're leaving this place. And we won't be coming back. Are you okay, babe?"

"God, my head hurts," Kathryn whispered.

March held her softly, stepping off the castle onto the shadowed ground. Shrieks and strangled cries rang in the darknesses far below. Soon, the City of Walls howled with fear and frustration, chittering yelps and ear-shattering whines.

"Stay close, Maggie."

"Are we going back to the bed, Daddy?"

"Yes. Yes we are."

"The bed?" queried Kathryn. "Where it t-took me?"

"I'm taking you to the top of the bed this time," March consoled. "Don't worry, I've got you."

He strode toward the Silver Gates, those bastions of hidden song that still towered far above his new stature. Six steps and he was face to face with their corroded carving and sooted etching. About to step through, he was halted by small words from the ground.

Looking at his feet, he saw the boy barring his way. "Ides, I think you'd better slow up. You're not through —"

"Enough, boy." March crouched and gently set Kathryn just outside the Silver Gates. "Maggie, take your mother to the bed. Wait for me one minute, okay?"

"Okay, Dad." She floated through, calling after her mother, who backed away from the hordes ringing the gates. As soon as Maggie passed beneath the arch, she regained relative proportions.

"Ides! Come down from there!" The boy sounded irritated, impatient.

And suddenly March stood eye to eye with the boy; not that the boy'd swelled to a height with him, but March himself had returned to normal dimensions. And standing inside the Silver Gates.

March frowned at the boy. "What?"

"You're not finished here. You'll never be finished here. You, Ides, Knight of Hearts, have sworn your life to me."

"What?"

"When you were six. You swore your life to me, so that I wouldn't have my then-Knight of Hearts carve out your parents' organs. You swore and then you backed out, using some trinket or other from your gypsy aunt's collection to fend off the one sent to retrieve you."

"What?" March exclaimed, perturbed, edging on nervous. "What are you talking about? Your king is floundering up in his Throne Room; I'm done with the lot of you."

"Hardly," said the boy. He spun about in the air, slowly, showing his other face. "I have the most faces in the world: two. Who better to be the king, eh?"

March stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Memory crashing down upon you, now?" The boy yawned, daintily covered his mouth.

And March collapsed to his knees, shaking. He remembered his aunt telling tales of sleepwalking. He remembered there having been three silver rings back then, and one had been used... to ...

"Maim the Violet Suit, eighth Saint of Low. Whose costume you currently clad yourself in. Nightmare of pointed shoulder blades and dagger-toed boots, stepping from your closet on the night of your seventh birthday. It died a horrible death weeks later, I'll have you know. Well done, I recall thinking. Well done, I say to you now. My new Knight of Hearts will be an undoubtedly fine killer. Of course, you understand now that you really cannot kill any of my faces here. In the world above ... I'm not there, yet. But here, we are eternal — as far as you are concerned, Ides."

"Lies...." March breathed. But he knew his own statement for the only untruth. He remembered it all now. His chest itched. Looking through the Silver Gates, he saw the King of Face's hordes swarming and clawing in a wall of creeping menace about his wife and child. Kathryn was crying, but Maggie made her father proud. She floated there, larger than life, the glow of innocence keeping the masses of black on black at bay. Metal and spikes, teeth and blades seething, chittering and yawning.

"Oh no, they won't come close to your girl, Ides, so the book decrees. But you are mine. And so is my Queen of Heads." The boy smiled, knife-like and feral.

March's chest burned. "I...." He glanced down at himself, at the purple suit he wore, the sharp boots and studs. And the burning Byzantine cross at his throat. "I remember something else too," he said under his breath. His aunt had told him the cross would protect him, so long as it touched his skin.

The menagerie of the hideous squirmed closer to his wife, tentacles layered with bloody scales lashing out beneath Maggie's drifting presence.

"Kathryn!" he screamed, ripping the cross off his neck. "Kathryn!!"

Kathryn turned, eyes red and wide, jaw clenched, knuckles white.

March threw the cross to her. It skidded in the dirt at her feet, ghostly orange flames silent and cold. "Wear it! Wear it!"

Kathryn hesitated a brief moment, long enough for the boy-king to utter an order. "Eat them."

The deranged roar drowned Kathryn's cry. She grabbed for the cross and thrust it over her head ... and the monstrous horde shied away from her on their last breath, clicking and skittering, growling and bleeding, afraid.

"Damn," was all the boy said. "You fouled me once, Ides, not again. Well, perhaps a little, seeing as your bitch auntie's little cross can turn my faces away. She'd better shit and sleep with that thing 'round her slim throat, Ides, for the minute she's apart from it ... eat, eat, eat!"

"Maggie, run to the bed!" yelled March. "Kathryn, go with her! Don't look back! Don't look back here, ever!"

"Come, Knight of Hearts, there's much to be done. Cleaning up my Throne Room, for one." The boy roughly yanked March to his feet.

March shouted finally, "I love you!"

They were gone, Kathryn running after Maggie, and the horde closed in behind them.

"Relax, Ides, you'll see the world up there again. Oh, you shall see it aplenty. Bringing me my hearts and all." The boy started off down the same road he'd taken March earlier, dragging the hapless Knight after him. "I s'pose I shall have you hunt me another Queen of Heads. Or we can wait 'til Kathryn sheds herself of that trinket. What do you think, Ides?"

March stumbled to keep up, tears obliterating his eyes. Little creatures with long noses like bleached trunks skittered across the street, walking on feet that were mouths lined with razors.

"Well, what do you think?" And the boy's twin faces laughed as the nightmare swallowed March.

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