Ask almost anybody you can think of, stab down your finger on a list of names related here in this tale and ask them, they can tell you exactly how much danger they are in, where it's likely to come from and what form it's likely to take. Almost anybody; you'll have trouble asking Quinn anything. Quinn is sleeping, and sleeping the sort of sleep that would worry a medical professional. After twenty-four hours or more of solid stress and paranoia, it is, quite simply, gone.
It wasn't easy to get away. It took careful application of the proper hugs and comforts, a slow convincing that began several hours before the descent into darkness itself, but it has gotten there. Balled up like an animal on the chaise longue in the gilt room (which Shirley Bassey definitely never sat on; it was Eartha Kitt), one foot twitches as it chases pint-size dinosaurs through a bowling alley in its dreams. You could ask Quinn anything you want right now. You could ask Quinn if it wouldn't maybe like to escape a raging fire creeping ever closer to its sharp little nose, or a slavering wolf just lowering open jaws around its skull. You could ask Quinn if it wanted next week's lottery numbers. You could ask, but you're not getting an answer.
Then a big hand asks. It wraps the little shoulder and asks softly, but insistently. With patience, asking over and over until, all twitches and flinches, Quinn begins to waken. Hating the moment, groaning, it keeps its eyes shut and prays to be left alone. When that doesn't work it analyses the asking hand. By its size and its shape, its weight and its scars, it knows soon and with certainty that it belongs to Petey.
Anybody else. Anybody else, and Quinn would be playing very, very dead right now.
"This had better be so good. I'm telling you this before I open my eyes so you can walk away if it's not. Also so I can tell you, before you start anything serious, that those goddamn velociraptors are too fast, and they say if you dream something more than once it must mean something, and I don't know what that would be, but I think it can only be a good thing that the dinosaurs are running away from me?"
The hand on its shoulder pulls it up to sitting. Another sweeps in and, thumb and forefinger, prises the lids of Quinn's left eye apart.
"You were the one who told me I needed rest!" but it regrets this outburst almost immediately. Petey wants to tell it to be quiet. To do this, he needs at least one hand, and chooses to use the one that was holding it up. Quinn drops back and knocks its head on the arm of the chaise.
After that, it is awake.
In a stage whisper, "Why are we being quiet?"
May – shorthand for Lula is the arcs of an M drawn bouncy across his heart – sleeping.Don't want Wilder – just by tapping the fading bruise by his eye – to hear us.
"Why not?" but he hushes it again. He stretches out a hand for it to take. Quinn thinks it's being helped up. Only when it stumbles does it realize it is being led. "Petey, where are we going?"
A step into the hallway outside, he turns, blocking it into the room. Hands together like a prayer, Please.
Quinn likes the kind of surprises that come in shiny boxes with pretty bows on them. Mystery destinations should be heavily trailed beforehand to work up excitement, unless there's a picnic basket involved. Quinn will follow a picnic basket through the gates of hell and not notice until the smell of brimstone overwhelms it. But there's no picnic basket, and it's the middle of the night. How many good surprises happen in the middle of the night? It starts to shake its head. On the very verge of digging in its heels, pulling its hand free of Petey's, insisting on the truth.
Then he says, Trust me.
'Trust' is both hands pulling away from his chest, grabbing fistfuls of air. The look on his face makes a query of it, asking if Quinn does or if it can or if it will. So bluntly and comprehensively put, the questions cut through its doubt. It grabs hold of both his clutching hands and breathes out soft, "Fine. But you owe me."
There's no acknowledgement of this. There's no gag, and that's what brings Quinn's worries surging back. Petey just takes its offer of compliance and starts to lead again. His grip on its hand stays tight enough to pile its fingers up against each other.
They stop only once on their way to the door, and this because Dylan Shrike appears on the gallery above. Pacing, carrying an old corded telephone with him, handset held against his shoulder. He has only just stepped out, as if the room above were choking him and he needed the space. But he reaches the end of the cord pretty quick, and when his back is turned, pacing the other way, Petey edges ahead into the darkness beneath the gallery. Both hands behind him, and the bulk of his body to deaden any sound, he is sliding back the bolts on the main door. He pauses, glancing back to find Quinn still watching Shrike. Holding its breath too, trapped high in its chest as if it might call out.
Petey waves, and signals again, Trust.
Quinn hesitates a second longer, then scuttles over to join him in the shadow. When the door opens Petey ushers it out first, as if afraid it will try again not to follow. That gives a second – not much but long enough - where Quinn is alone on the damp step in the glittering, starry dark. Its back is to the wall; the water moves against the toes of its boots. "No," before it even knows Petey is listening. "No. I'm not going anywhere in a boat in the dark. I'm not."
Without argument, without even trying, Petey steps into the light, bobbing boat that brought Shrike, and tries to pull Quinn with him.
"What part of no?" but he hushes it again. The rest is conducted in silence but for the swipe of hands flung around and the slap of interrupting each other. Tell me where we're going.
Can't.Please trust me.Help me.
Help you what?!
You did this before.You did it with Wilder.Not different.
Crazy different!Understood that!
Petey seizes. His grip turns, for just a moment, painful. Until now, 'trust' was never the problem. Seeing a flash of frustration go through him, Quinn quails. But then his hands turn gentle again. One over the other, very gently trying to reel it in towards him. There's one step it could take off the stone and into the boat but it can't. Petey, letting go for very brief seconds, says, Tell me about the dinosaurs.
No.
What kind of dinosaurs?
Quinn sighs. Its eyes are shut. "Well, I told you already about those fricking raptors, I never catch them. There's a diplodocus, I get him first because he's so big and fat, but he's gentle. And one of them ones with the bony Mohawk and the spikes on its tail. And a trike, but when you try and put the collar on him-" The world under its next step rocks sickly and Quinn keens. Petey pulls it close to help it sit down. "- Aaand I'm in a boat in the dark, oh God – you try and put the collar on and you can't get around the frill, so I can't get him on a leash and he just wanders away again…"
Quinn never knew it knew so much about the dinosaurs out of the stupid dream. It knows a lot about the bowling alley too. It knows what colour the balls are and how many lanes there are and which of the neon lights work and don't. Or maybe it doesn't and it makes all of this up, just to keep talking, just to keep its eyes shut and think about anything that isn't the hammock-sway of the boat and the stinking, stagnant canal all around, waiting to swallow it. All Quinn would have to do is touch the black surface of that water and it would be slurped under like spaghetti and never seen again.
"You shouldn't have done this to me," it says. "It's not even funny. I can't even inven-" But it stops. He wants it to pay attention now, little pushes at its shoulder. And the moment its eyes open, before they can adjust to new lights or recognize the surroundings, the first thing it sees is his fist, thumb stuck up a little, moving in quick, earnest circles in front of his chest.
Sorry.Really sorry, Quinn.Big sorry.
It doesn't get the chance to ask what he's sorry for. Applause draws its attention. Slow, wry applause which, so far as it is aware, it has done nothing to solicit, so Quinn looks towards it only warily. And there on their left, it finds itself looking into the same hooded alcove it stole away from earlier. The first pair of clapping hands belong to Pantalone, blocking all the light from the side door as he heaves himself through it. A half-step behind him and curving in against his waist as soon as space allows, comes a pudgy blonde Quinn doesn't recognize right away. Collie calling out, "Hey, Quinny-baby!" and Cap chuckling and, last through the door, grinning vaguely like he's wandered into someone else's party, Chase McKinney.
"Petey, what'd you do? Get us out of here. Why are they clapping? What'd you do?"
He doesn't even ask it to trust him this time. He says and does nothing. Over at the side of the Funhouse, the gathered audience are picking up a long hook used to haul in boats. But they are picking it up too high. The end of it only threatens the edge of the hull. Then it rises again and makes a quick, darting swipe at Quinn's arm. It yells and scrabbles away, only to freeze when the boat rocks. The crowd screams laughter. Quinn scuttles up to Petey, grabs tight hold of him.
"Please, get us out of here. What'd you do, I don't understand?"
Somewhere over its shoulder, the blonde is mimicking its terror. The curl of the hook presses its back, once, twice, before stroking the back of its neck. On the next heartbeat, Quinn can't breathe, suddenly snagged by the throat. Hauled back, it falls choking against the side of the boat. Almost ready to go limp, to slide over and vanish into the swamp, in the last second it pulls hard to the side. The end of the hook leaves a vicious bruise on its neck but it is free, and lies on its side, out of reach in the bottom of the boat.
The laughter turns to a collective, "Aw", all disappointment.
The end of the hook comes looking again, pawing and scraping. Quinn hisses again to Petey to help. But he does nothing. He doesn't even look, sits exactly as he was when he stopped apologizing. A close call with the hook and Quinn yelps, gives the watchers another giggle, but it's not enough. The blonde lifts her ugly, grating voice again, "Flip 'em!"
"Oh, yes, Columbina, my dear, do let's. Let's flip them."
"Wait." This last and most imposing voice is Pantalone's. And despite everything that has happened, everything it has so lately learned, Quinn's heart leaps. Old instincts; Pops is saving me.Pops wouldn't let them dunk me.I'll die and he doesn't want me dead. But Dad doesn't call out to Quinn. "Petey!"
Now the big guy lifts his head and Quinn fumes. "Him, you'll listen to him." Reaching out to beat at his legs, "Turn the damn engine back on, you stupid big dumb Hufflepuff flump, get us out of here!"
"Petey, my son, you were always my favourite child. You knew that anyway. Quinn had pretentions, but you knew. I forgive you, Petey. We're all here for you. We're going to put that hook back out and haul you right back into the family. But we need you to do one thing first. So we know you're loyal, see? So we know you and that no-good sib of yours over there haven't cooked up some hare-brained scheme, as wayward children are wont to do."
The blonde gasps, and Collie's low laugh is only seconds behind. Both getting the idea at once, it's hard to tell who exactly starts the chanting, "Throw it in! Throw it in!"
Somewhere out in the world, Quinn hears itself yelling again, all the same 'No' and 'Help', but all of it is very far away now. There's only so long you can go without an answer before you start ignoring your own question. Its only nod to strength is to bite down the scream that rises when it sees Petey shift toward it. The struggling, it can't help, and doesn't want to. It kicks, it thrashes, fights and hard and connects too. Give him bruises to remember me by.Christ, I'm sorry I was so hard on Wilder, but by then there's nothing around it but powerful arms, nothing but thin air and wild, raucous laughter. Petey's audience are crippled with it, bent double. Quinn is a prop and no more. It's nothing. Feels like nothing too, the length of time it spends in flight, the endless drop, eternity in a half second before it hits the water, and disappears.
Panic opens you up. The scream it held back rips out of it too late to do anything but tear its pressed lips apart and let water in. That first flood and you don't even sputter, because the panic deepens. You only flail once or twice, none of that desperate flip-flopping just under the surface like you see in the movies. Then you start to sink.
The hook sweeps up under its chin. This has the added advantage of grabbing its mouth shut. Quinn almost bats it away with lashing to grab on to it.
They are screaming, hysterical, when it breaks the surface again, drawn in hand over hand by Columbina. Escaping the rank, sucking mire only to be beached among the people who put it there, retching, choking up lungfuls. This is all too much like reality for the audience. It isn't funny, and they look away. Quinn lies heaving on its belly while they hook Petey's boat in. A hero's welcome, all cheers and back-slaps and he has to step across Quinn to get it. The Captain leads him inside.
The rest start to follow. McKinney pauses, beaming, to take a picture of the dripping jetsam at his feet. The blonde's heels pick their prissy one-by-one way over Quinn's head, "Ew. Does that have to come in too? Panty, can't you leave it out here until it's dried up a little, at least?"
"…You know, I can, in fact." He puts one foot to the back of the boat and sends it warbling away, out of reach. That gone, and no others close, not even knowing if it can peel itself up from the stones, where can Quinn go?
Its only saving grace is that they don't quite close the door when they leave it shivering. It is most likely so that it can hear them still laughing, but it allows it some light. Quinn can take that. And it can make decisions too, like putting both its hands down flat. It will push itself up just the very next moment it knows it won't cry. Behaviour unbecoming of a clown, crying, and there is no excuse for it. The second it knows it will at least be able to rage and spit, that's when it'll push itself up.
Quite when that second will come is another matter.
Long before it is ever even a speck on the horizon, a shadow cuts the light behind it. Just the slightest roll, eyes turned over its shoulder, just to see who has come to gloat, Quinn finds McKinney standing over it. The strangest thing is, he isn't quite laughing. They've never met before, not face to face, but Quinn learned the Horsemen and their histories very well before it went to Paris. That's part of the job. Chase was part of the history and, in every picture, in every clip of TV news, the grin was in place. You can hear him laughing when he doesn't make a sound.
It doesn't quite see that just now. Barely even smiling.
He has brought a bundle and throws it so it lands in front of Quinn. With that, and not a word, he leaves again. Quinn reaches out and pulls soft folds closer. A towel, but it landed heavier than a towel when he threw it. And as it pulls, the folds open up, and Quinn sees strange weights inside. Now it pushes up. Sits straight and hides the bundle with its body in case anyone else should come to check on it.
Hidden in the towel, it finds a penknife, a narrow flashlight and a clatter of old deadbolt keys on a keychain shaped like a smiling octopus with eyes that bulge when you squeeze it. There's something else too, something smaller, which it misses until it picks the towel up to drag its face dry. A little envelope of dull green leather. The silver spade printed on it is all but worn off. Inside, a set of lockpicks, and a note folded up small. Third floor, it says. Last door on the left.
