Dead Mans Hand

"Sorry," someone said. "Sometimes it's difficult to judge the strength of the dosage."

He smiled reassuringly and all of a sudden Bre

"That's better," Quincey said approvingly. He smiled, and withdrew his hand from Bre

Bre

"The caterpillar on the mushroom," Bre

"Yes," Quincey said. "One of my favorites. Cost me a fortune to hire the animatronic engineers away from Disneyland, but if one can't have what one wants in one's own pleasure dome, what good is it?"

Bre

He closed his eyes. It had all been so real. A

"So what did you want?" Quincey asked. Bre

"Oh my," Quincey said. "Well, you won't find such a person here. This is my pleasure dome. Violence rarely intrudes."

Bre

"I'm afraid, though," Quincey said thoughtfully, "this is going to have to be one of those times. I'm putting the finishing touches on an important project. We can't have you nosing about. Excuse me while I make a call."

The needles extruded smoothly from his fingertips again. They were white as bone-which they probably were-Bre

"It'll only hurt for a moment," he confided.

It seemed very quiet in the house as Jay headed back to the wake. He was surprised to find that Jory had abandoned his post by the door. Instead Waldo Cosgrove stood there, wringing his damp little hands and looking very sorry indeed. Jay went past him, stepping into a strained, icy silence. The mourners had backed off discreetly from the two men in the center of the room, but everyone was watching them.

Jory stood in the aisle between rows of folding chairs, his face dark with anger. "What did you say, sir?" he asked.

A newcomer stood over the casket, looking like death incarnate. Tall and slender, he wore a hooded cloak over a black wool suit. At first glance Jay thought he was in a mask; given the occasion, a singularly tasteless mask, too. Then he spoke, and Jay realized that the death's-head-yellowed and noseless, teeth bared in an eternal grin-was his real face. "I said," the joker repeated in a deep, chilly voice, "that this is not Chrysalis," He waved a gloved hand over the young woman in the casket.

His words made Jay's stomach do a sudden lurch. If it wasn't Chrysalis in the coffin, if somehow he'd been mistaken about the body he'd found, then maybe she was still alive somewhere, and the voice on the phone…

"I don't recall asking for your opinion," Jory said, his accent deepening under the stress of the moment. "Sir, you're causing a disruption, and I'd thank you to leave."

"I think not," the man in the black cloak replied. "I came here to see Chrysalis one last time, to make my farewells. And what do I find? Some nat fantasy lying in a coffin, and a roomful of people forbidden to speak her name."

"Her name was Debra-Jo Jory, and she was my daughter!" A vein in Jory's neck had begun to throb.

"Her name," the joker replied coldly, "was Chrysalis." Father Squid moved close to him. "Charles, he's from Oklahoma, he knows no better. We must respect his grief."

"Then let him respect ours."

"He does not mean to give offense," the priest said. "That makes this charade no less offensive." The joker's eyes, deep-set in his skull face, had never left Jory.

Waldo Cosgrove hurried forward nervously. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, please don't quarrel. This is not the time or the place, is it? Our dearly beloved Chrysalis, oh, ah, Debra-Jo, that is, well, surely she would not have wanted-"

"What I want," Jory said suddenly, "is for you to throw out this ugly sonofabitch, Cosgrove. You hear that? Either you call what passes for the law hereabouts, or I will, but either way this asshole is going out onto the street." Waldo looked helplessly around the room, searching for some way out of this mess. Jay felt sorry for him. Finally, meekly, the funeral director turned to the joker and said, "Charles, please, it's customary in these matters to honor the family's wishes."

"Yes," Charles said. He made a gesture that took in all the jokers in the room. "And we are her family, Waldo. Not him. He doesn't even know what her name was." He turned his back on Jory and walked to where Cosmo sat on his chair. Cosmo looked up and adjusted his round, wire-rim spectacles. There was fungus growing on the back of his hand and a gray five o'clock shadow beneath his jaw. He said nothing. "I want to see her, Cosmo," Charles told him. "Show her to me. Show her to me the way she really was."

"No!" Jory shouted. "I forbid it!" He stormed forward, jammed a finger at Cosmo. "You hear me, boy?"

Cosmo looked at him, said nothing, looked back at Charles.

Someone gasped. All eyes went to the casket.

The color had begun to bleach from Debra-Jo's soft skin. "Goddamn you," Jory swore at Cosmo. He spun around to face Waldo. "You there! Call the police! Now!"

Waldo's chin trembled as his mouth worked silently.

In the casket, the smooth pink flesh and hints of rose had faded. Her skin was bone white, as smooth and pale as milk. Here and there, it began to turn waxy and translucent.

"I'll do it myself then," Jory said. He started for the phone.

There was a sound like a stack of two-by-fours might make if you broke them all at once. Everything stopped. Jory looked up, and up, and up. Into red eyes that stared down from beneath a huge, swollen brow ridge. From his nine-foot vantage, Troll gazed down at Jory, cracked his knuckles once more, then closed his huge green hand into a fist the size of a country ham. "I don't think that would be such a good idea," Troll said, in a voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of the world's deepest gravel pit.

All around the room, the mourners mumbled agreement. Her skin had gone all the color of wax paper, and you could see the tracery of veins now, and dark shadows of bones and organs beneath the fading flesh.

Jory whirled back to the casket and slammed the lid down hard. "Get out of here!" he screamed, distraught beyond words. "All of you, out of here." He looked around at all the joker faces with loathing. "You people," he said. "You all stick together, don't you. Damn you. You did this to her, you rotten-"