Somewhere Else, Years Ago

"You don't understand, you don't understand, you don't understand . . ."

Pop-top seemed to be stuck in some sort of mental loop. For a long moment Joy considered hitting him the way he might've hit a malfunctioning television to restore the picture a lifetime ago. Not much chance of that, he thought sadly. If a good, solid smack was ever likely to unscramble that brain, it would've been administered long ago. Chances are that's just the sort of thing that got his gears loosened in the first place.

"Help us understand," She said softly. Her voice was gentle, delicate, a spider walking cautiously over the back of your hand.

Pop-top's long past understanding, too, Joy thought bitterly, turning his back to the pair. He had no idea what She expected to get out of the mental wreckage known as Pop-top, but he felt confident she was going to be disappointed. He reached a hand up to touch his smooth, cold mask, the fingers of his right hand straying absently over the left cheek. He didn't know why but he had a nagging feeling that there was a crack there -- or that there should be one -- but every time he examined it he found nothing. He hadn't quite reached the point where he was willing to remove the mask to study it with his own eyes but he was close, oh so very close now.

I wonder if I've finally gone insane and this is all in my head, he thought absently. Pop-top was still rambling, blubbering now almost, as She tried to pry loose the information she needed. Just watching the two of them together, her speaking in the warm flannel tones of a parent comforting a frightened child, him with his random sputtering, made Joy furious. He felt . . . what? He couldn't bring himself to even mentally articulate the word that first came to mind. Even the hint of it made him furious.

"--the knife-thrower is dreaming he's awake," Pop-top informed her, the words tumbling over themselves as he spoke so much so that he was in danger of tripping over his tongue.

Slow down, Joy thought, then realized he was actually laughing softly to himself. Oh shit! He stood perfectly still for a moment as he tried to determine if She had heard him. She was never very forgiving and an outburst like that . . . he quashed that line of thought before it went too far, but under his mask he felt his skin crawl.

"Go on," the spider-feet on skin again.

"Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Death's killer is watching, waiting, but the web . . . the web . . . the horrible beauty of the web. Blood and wire and Fate."

Joy walked a little further away from them, the nameless fury had passed but the stink of Pop-top's insanity was making him ill. And what if it's infectious? He touched the smooth, icy cold surface of his mask again before he realized what he was doing. With a start he yanked his hand down and forced it into the right pocket of his pants. What's the compulsion, though, he thought. That I can't stop thinking about the crack in my mask, or that I wouldn't dare take it off to look at it even when I'm alone? And what do I do if I find out there is a crack?

Joy had a feeling he had slipped into the realm of insanity -- not the overt, noxious style Pop-top sported, but some subtler and probably more dangerous type. Long ago. Maybe even Before.

"Dixon, dear," she prompted Pop-top gently and Joy thought he was going to scream. That voice, the motherly, cajoling one she was using now was worse than Pop-top's ranting, worse than his own crumbling sanity, worse
than the extended black outs he seemed to be suffering. That voice belonged to Belle Gunness, Madame Popova, or Lila Young.

Joy hoped never to hear his name pass through those full, perfect lips. Whatever remained of his sanity wouldn't survive the experience, he knew that at the very core of his being.

"Sleeping . . . dreaming . . . in my memory," there was a dull thudding sound as Pop-top rapped his fist against his own mask, trying to explain what he knew. "Sleeping, lonely, like Lucifer."

"Yes, we know that, we know the companion has left us," she said with a touch of sadness in her voice. The emotion was so false, so hollow it made Joy want to retch. "But he left us a prize, didn't he?" her tone lightened as if she were reminding herself to look at the bright side of a summer rain shower.

"No, no, no, nononononono," Pop-top was losing it. Joy could hear it even from his place well outside the cold grey-green light of the fire. She had managed to tease a bit of sanity out of him, but that was all she was going to get, just a taste.

"Yes," She cooed at him. "Yes, he did. And you can find it, can't you, Dixon, dear?"

There was a muffled grunt of protest but Joy couldn't tell if there was supposed to be anything intelligible behind it. He looked briefly over his shoulder at the two figures silhouetted against the sepulchral flame. He was just in time to see her tear Pop-top's mask from his face. There was a terrible ripping sound as the mask came away from the
unfortunate's profile trailing something behind it. Pop-top let out a howl that, had he still been alive, would have surely shredded his vocal chords. At the same time his hands flew to cover his exposed visage and he began to flop around on the ground like a fish out of water.

"Dixon, dear," she repeated softly and now her voice sounded to Joy like a metal wire snapping. It was almost musical but the implications of that music left him feeling sick. "Show me, please," She may have phrased it like a request, but Joy knew the negotiations had come to an end. Pop-top made some gurgling, warbling sound from behind his hands that could have been anything, but apparently She was satisfied. She leant down and touched her face to his. There was a repulsive suckling sound and then a moment later the two of them stood up.

"We're leaving," She called to Joy. "Pop-top has agreed to help us find the doorway our friend left for us. Tell the others."