A/N: You may have noticed (or you may not) that I revised this story's description to something I hope better suits its tone. I welcome comments on the change and suggestions for its improvement. Does it emphasize Grace too much?


'How did you ever think of this place?' I asked, surveying the tower room. In the center of the ceiling was the electronic carillon, which had replaced the bells. Six high, arching windows ringed the wall, reaching from waist height almost to the ceiling. I could see the entire estate from there; the site of the manor which was being rebuilt, the formal gardens, the greenhouses, the lakes, and even the road beyond.

"I was holed up in a church basement for nearly a week once," he explained, unlocking a heavy-duty plastic storage chest, "and the only thing I had to read, outside of the bibles and religious stuff, was this guidebook to the Stately Homes of Gotham City, from something like 1964. The way the author wrote made me want to spew, but his book turned out to be, uh, an unexpectedly val-u-able little resource.

"Twice a week these places are open to the public, so the unwashed can see how the silver spoon crowd lives, and the guide told all about what to be sure and see, like the Picasso and the heirloom silver. It even gave maps of the grounds and the layout of the houses. Talk about asking to be ripped off! There's been several times I've taken advantage of that little book, and when Batsy burned down his house, I thought of this." He gestured around the room.

'I have to admit this is a sweet setup,' I told him. While the windows were unglazed, there were heavy wooden shutters to close out the wind and weather. He hadn't installed those; the cracked paint and worn catches told me they were at least as old as the book he spoke of. The wiring was new, though, as was the chest he was rummaging in. 'Does the carillon still work?'

"Nah. I disconnected it; deafness is not my idea of fun." He brought out a power strip with a surge protector and plugged it in; next came a space heater and a hot-plate. A pot and a kettle followed that, and on their heels, a sleeping bag.

'Why, Jay!' I exclaimed, pretending to be surprised. 'You're so well prepared—but you never told me you were a boy scout!'

He played along (I could tell from his thoughts that he didn't remember). "They taught me, uh, really important life skills, like uh, knot tying—and the use of pocket knives. Not to mention gutting, cleaning and skinning…"

'You ought to be doing promotional appearances for them.' I said, with feigned admiration.

"They keep begging me, but somehow I just can't find the time….Uh, sorry about there being only one sleeping bag, but it isn't as if you take up a lot of space."

'I'll forgive you for it—this time. But you're lucky I'm not flesh and blood in more ways than one.'

I moved to look over his shoulder at what else might be in the chest. Nothing that couldn't be brought up on a rope ladder, of course. There were several packages of the kind of food that could be made with boiling water: ramen noodles, instant oatmeal, and hot chocolate, a mug, a bowl, and a plate, plus a few utensils. Then a couple of towels—and a lot of money.

"One of my stashes," he explained. "A quarter mil. What do mean, I'm lucky you're not real?"

'Because there's no bathroom here that I can see.'

"Ah!" He beamed at me mischievously. "See those two buckets?" He pointed across the room. "The blue one's for clean water, and the yellow one's for everything else!"


Once the shutters were closed and the space heater was glowing, the tower room was almost cozy, in an Addams Family kind of way, given that its occupants were a deranged clown and a dead girl. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling gave off all the light it could, and Jay had a pot of (clean) water boiling on the hot plate, and he was rummaging in one of the bags he'd brought from the SUV.

Bringing out the broccoli and chicken breast, he turned to me and said, "Okay, sassy girl. You're gonna have to tell me what the hell to do with this, and if you get too complicated or I don't like it when it's done, it's going out the window."

Fortunately I'd advised him to get stuff that was already cut up and ready to cook. 'Dump the broccoli in the water and throw in one of the seasoning packets from a thing of ramen. Give it two minutes, then throw in the chicken. Did you bring the sriracha sauce, too?' It wouldn't be what I would call good food, but it should at least be edible and nutritious.

"You mean this stuff?" He brought out the familiar bottle with the cock (as in rooster) on the label.

'Yes. Put in no more than three or four drops to begin with, when the chicken goes in.'

"Why? What is it?" He broke the seal and squeezed a blob out on his finger.

'Be careful!' I pleaded, but it was too late. He'd stuck it in his mouth.

"Aaaaaaaaaooooowww!" He hawked, spat, swore, and grabbed for the fresh water bucket in desperation.

'Not water, it only spreads the fire. Bread or beer.' I advised him.

He had a six pack in his bag, so he grabbed one and drank half of it before he replied. "Damn, what's in that stuff? Rocket fuel?"

'I was about to tell you it makes tabasco sauce seem like ketchup. The active ingredients are garlic and chili peppers, but the rule with chili peppers is that the smaller they are, the hotter they bite. Jalapeno peppers are about the size of a finger, and I think the peppers in sriracha sauce are about the size of a fingernail.'

While I spoke, he chugged the rest of his beer. The sauce had made him break out in a sweat, which meant his make-up was starting to melt and slide off his face. "Huh. Y'know, I bet this stuff would hurt a lot if you got some in a cut--or in your eyes." He looked at the bottle speculatively.

'You don't even need a cut. If you leave it on too long, it'll raise blisters--and you don't want to let it come into contact with any mucous membranes anywhere on the body, so wash your hands carefully before you handle your...reflexes, voluntary or otherwise, next.'

"Good, uh, advice, but that wasn't what I was thinking about. You know how I like to come up with simple and cheap ways of, uh, committing mayhem—and I can think of some fun things to do with this." He grinned evilly at the bottle of sauce.

'Um, yes, and I can see these all too clearly in your mind.' Like the business with the cheese grater—and the ice pick—and ugh, ugh, no, the ginger-beer trick, which was much too much like the Pudding Incident. 'But I think sriracha sauce should be saved only for those who are very, very guilty, like the mastermind behind it all. It's too…good to waste.'

Smiling at me fondly, an effect which was ruined by the disintegrating make-up, he shook his head and said, "Gracie, Gracie, what am I going to do with you and your scruples? Never mind. What was the first thing that goes into the pot?"

'The broccoli.' I told him.

"You know," he said, when the food was ready—and it smelled better than I expected—" this stuff isn't, uh, it isn't half bad. Nothing to compare to the Flower of Bangkok, but I'm not choking on it. I've eaten better these last few days than I have in—uh, in a while."

'Somebody seems to have done a decent job of keeping you fed the first twenty or so years of your life.' I commented, watching him. 'You are over six feet tall, after all, and apart from the scurvy you seem healthy. That argues for good nutrition while you were growing up.'

"I don't remember a thing about it," he shrugged. "What about you?"

'Me? No. Except…' Something about the orangey glow of the space heater, and the way he was sitting was familiar. 'Silver. I remember watching someone work with silver, using hand tools. Or maybe I'm remembering a documentary off of public television. What about your story? I'd much rather hear about fear night.'

"Okay—let me get the kettle on…" He dipped up a few cups of water from the clean bucket, and put it on to get hot. "Let's see, I told you about how I'd planned to shake down the Chechen's collectors, but what I didn't tell you was that I was just another chickenshit hood back then—okay, so I had all the same basic components, but I never figured out what to do with them. I mean, I used to worry about getting caught!" He laughed. "But that was before. Before Fear Night.

"It all just came too, uh, too easy. Much too easy. After a while, you can read mob guys and other hoods like a book. You know who's gonna, uh, squeal, which one'll fight when he's cornered, which one'll cave, which one's a psyyyycho—and you pick your marks by what you read. I'd have a little fun here, pick up some easy cash there—but what was the point of it all? It got so bad, sometimes I'd cut myself, just to feel something."

He picked up his mug and took two packets of hot chocolate mix from a box. "One packet isn't enough for a whole mug, it's like drinking dishwater…" Shaking them down like a thermometer first, he ripped them open and tapped the contents into the waiting cup. "Then it all changed. I don't want to go giving you flashbacks again—."

'I don't think that will happen.'

"No? Okay. The fear gas came up from the sewers, clouds of steam everywhere, and all around me the Narrows was going on one mother of a bad acid trip. But what about me? What was happening to me, while people were screaming and running?

"The answer: not a whole lot."

'I know I read once, something about how Hell is empty and all the demons are here.' I put in.

"Yeah," he nodded. "That's about right. Afterwards, people talked about how the world had turned to Hell, full of demons and fire and everything ugly—well, all I can say is that finally they were on the same page as me. But there was a riot going on, and there's hardly anything I like better than a good riot, so I joined in for all I was worth. I grabbed a crowbar and started bashing.

"Events, uh, kinda swept me along to the police barricade blocking Merrell. I got caught there for oh, five minutes. When they fired first, it wasn't a warning shot—it was straight into the crowd. I wound up wearing the head of the guy in front of me all over my shirt—he just exploded into strawberry jam and splinters of bone. I had to 'wash that man right outta my hair', too, later!" He sang the last phrase, which I remembered from an old shampoo commercial on TV Land.

"So I ducked down this alleyway and ended up outside of Vaccaro's Authentic Old-World Bakery. It was right off the Pinckney Drawbridge ramp, but of course they had pulled it up. We were sealed in like bugs in a killing jar.

"That was when it happened. When it all started making sense. When the Batman came out of the night… He was the Angel of Death. He was… a gargoyle come down off a cathedral, the Thing that lurks under the bed at night. He was Dracula. He was twelve feet tall with a wingspan of seventeen, no, bigger. You know the movie Fantasia?"

I nodded.

"Then you know the part with the demon on top of the mountain, the demon that's part of the mountain. That was the Batman…and I was an ant. He would just have passed me by like a tornado that takes out one tree but leaves the next standing, but I was—I was so, uh, offended that I had to make him stop. I had to make him notice me."

If I had breath, I would have held it, so as not to break his concentration. The kettle was sending out a great plume of steam, much like the sewers had on Fear Night, but he wasn't paying attention. His make-up had almost all washed off from sweat, making him more a fallen, damaged angel than ever, in this stone tower which was like a medieval chapel.

"So I went for his head with the crowbar, and I connected. I felt the impact travel all down my arm—and I could tell I rang his bell for him, by the way he staggered. He was human, after all, only a man, and I was nearly disappointed. But then he spun and laid one on my chin, and the world as it was went supernova behind my eyelids like a million fireworks—and I saw.

"I saw a new world full of colors like a box of new crayons, all fresh, unbroken, not even peeled down. It was weird and flat, like an illustration, and then it wasn't. I saw him, the Ultimate Policeman, all serious in his black and grey, and I saw me, the Ultimate Clown, all happy happy colors, and we were fighting, upstairs and down and all around Gotham City, over the rooftops and under the streets, with giant magnifying glasses and typewriters and the Dish ran away with the Spoon."

He was weaving a picture with his hands in the air. "There were huge question marks, and a redheaded babe dressed all in leaves, a penguin that talked and a scarecrow that walked, a prettypretty kitty with a nasty whip, and so many others. It only lasted a moment, my vision, I mean—but it went on forever. And I knew. I knew who I was.

"I was the Joker. And did it ever make me smile."


A/N: Whew! I think I have to collapse now…