House of Mystery V: "Welcome To My Nightmare..."

On a high and lonely hill, just outside of Gotham City, an ancient and noble house sat long neglected and forgotten. The cruel October wind rustled through grey, skeletal trees and caused wisps of cloud to scud across a moonlit sky. The house was called Shadowcrest Manor, and once it had been home to the great magician of his generation. But that was a long time ago.

The headlights of a car moved slowly up the road towards the house, coming to a stop just outside the tall, iron-wrought gates. A man in a long, beige trenchcoat got out of the car, and stared up at the house, adjusting the glasses on his face. “Stay in the car, Traci,” he said over his shoulder to the sullen-looking girl in the passenger seat. “Lock the door.”

As he walked up the drive towards the house, his shoes crunching on the gravel, he lit his pipe. The tobacco usually calmed his nerves, but the closer he got to that late Victorian façade, the faster his heart raced. It had been years since he’d last visited Shadowcrest, and if the master of the house had not been a friend, he would have never returned. The place made him uneasy, tried to convince him of things he knew to be impossible. But he had made a promise. And Doctor Terrance Thirteen lived up to his promises.

The paint at the front door was peeling, the knocker tarnished. Thirteen tried to look into the grimy window, but heavy curtains covered it. He was about to turn back when the front door creaked and opened.

“Tong!” gasped the Doctor Thirteen. Framed in the doorway was a stooped and wizened Asian man, holding a candle-dish.

“Ghost-Breaker,” wheezed Tong. “The master told me you would come. Welcome.” He spoke slowly and with some difficulty; he was approaching his hundredth year. He moved slowly aside, making room for Thirteen to enter. Biting down on his pipe, Thirteen entered, Tong shutting the door behind him.

“It is a cold night,” Tong muttered. “Come into the sitting room. I’ve made a pot of tea.

Thirteen followed the old caretaker down the dark passageways of the house, the occasional candle or oil lamp providing the only illumination; Shadowcrest Manor was not wired for electricity.

The sitting room was brighter for the logs burning almost cheerfully in the fireplace. It was a well-appointed room, as musty as the rest of the house, but here the shadows were confined to the far corners. Thirteen chose a plush velvet chair close to the fire and when he glanced around the room, his eye lingered on the portrait above the mantle. It was of a handsome man with a pencil-thin moustache, in top-hat and tailcoat. In his eyes was a stare so intense as to seem lifelike.

“His wife painted that,” Tong noticed his guest’s stare. “It’s a good likeness of the master. Sometimes we talk for hours.”

“Sindella is here…?” Thirteen was confused, looking from the portrait to Tong. “But I thought…?”

The old man chuckled over the tea things, shaking his head. “You purposefully misunderstand. Even when the wondrous is right before your eyes, your mind searches for other meanings. But that is why you have power, I suppose. In your own way, you are a very dangerous man, Doctor Thirteen.”

Thirteen set his pipe down and accepted the cup Tong passed to him. He sipped the tea as the old caretaker took a seat across from him. It tasted of spices he did not recognize, but it was warm and comforting.

“Because I don’t allow myself to be convinced by all this mystical mumbo-jumbo?” he asked the old caretaker, looking around the room with a wary expression. “There may be stranger things under heaven and earth, but I can usually find a rational explanation for them. I’ve exposed too many fakes in my day.”

Tong sipped his drink, staring at his guest for a moment before replying, “Skepticism is a stout shield against the sword of faith,” he muttered. “Tell me, then, why did you come here tonight?”

Thirteen pursed his lips, holding his cup and saucer chest-high. “Thirty years ago--- before I even met my wife--- right after we busted the Soul Carnival, John brought me here for the first time, and after a few glasses of wine, he fell into a trance,” He cleared his throat, clearly ill at ease. “He said:

When Thirteen years has Thirteen’s breed,
At Shadowcrest return again.
Come to see the captive freed,
And to a final deed attend.
The cedar doors all secrets keep,
Lost to magic’s highest price,
Loose what yet is still asleep
Or in vain my sacrifice.”

There was a faraway look in his eyes. “For years, I had no idea what this meant, but… tonight my daughter turns thirteen, and I remembered John’s words. I… I felt I owed it to him to come here.” He finished his tea in one long, awkward sip.

Tong nodded, his eyes narrowed. “The gift of prophecy is rare, but my master had many talents.”

“I’d hardly call it a prophecy,” Thirteen scoffed. “Still... I don’t know how he predicted I would have a child, or why he’d want me to visit Shadowcrest Manor when she came of age--- thirteen is a significant milestone for members of my family, as you might imagine--- but John was a good friend, so here I am.”

Tong’s head bobbed as he rose from his chair, his frail joints creaking.

“Where are you going?” Thirteen set his cup and saucer down and got to his feet, too.

“The words of the prophecy have meaning, Doctor Thirteen. I’m taking you to the cedar doors,” Tong raised a finger and stared back at his guest sternly. “But follow me closely, and do not stray. This house guards its secrets zealously, and for unwary guests, there is peril in the shadows.”


Outside, young Traci Thirteen sat slumped in the passenger seat of the idling car, listening to her iPod, a small plastic box on her lap. Inside the box was an iguana, and she tapped on the top to get its attention.

*Lamest birthday ever, Leroy. I should be at the Gotham Cemetery Halloween rave.*

The iguana balanced on the piece of driftwood in his box and stared, unblinkingly, up at Traci. *The police bust that up every year. Do you really want to spend another birthday night in jail?*

*Probably be more interesting than what I’m doing now,* she sighed and glanced out the window at the freaky old house. She had watched her father walk in several minutes ago, and mentally urged him to get on with whatever he was doing. Maybe she could make it back home in time to sneak out and hit the rave before it was broken up by Gordon and his goons. She’d have to be careful, because if her father found out, she would be grounded forever. Of course, the less her father knew about anything, the better.

For instance, he had no idea she could talk to her iguana. And that wasn’t the only trick Traci Thirteen had discovered she was capable of.

*Traci…*

She looked down, but Leroy was busy chewing on a leaf, oblivious.

*Traci Thirteen… Come to me…*

The new voice in her head was ethereal and sent a cold shiver down her spine. She turned off her iPod to get a better listen. It was coming from somewhere within Shadowcrest Manor.

*Come to me, Girl 13… I neeeeed youuuu…”

Goosebumps rose on her flesh. She was creeped out, but there was something compelling, something seductive about the voice. There was a promise implicit in it, a desperate need that traversed time, space and dimensions.

What to do? Stay in the safety of the car or…? She glanced again at the house and made up her mind. She snatched up the iguana box by its handle, left the car and trudged up the walkway to Shadowcrest Manor.


Obeying the imprecation not to go unescorted around the house, Doctor Thirteen followed its caretaker to a large room filled with the accumulated memorabilia of a long career in magic and entertainment. There were racks of costumes, capes and cloaks, models (at least he thought they were models) of skeletons posed on stands, a number or rather large and ornate mirrors, boxes of handcuffs and straitjackets, crates of stage props from comically oversized saws to cups and balls and playing cards.

“This was the Master’s workshop,” Tong moved slowly about the room, lighting the dozen or so oil lamps bolted to the walls. “Herein, he crafted many of the illusions with which he astounded the world.”

“Sleight of hand and misdirection,” Thirteen nodded, staring at a poster for a stage show from the 1930s. It read: “The Aztounding Zatara!” and depicted the young magician in an arabesque temple, confronting a giant, rearing cobra. Another nearby proclaimed: “Zee the world’s new Zensation: Zatara the Zorcerer!” and gave the dates for a London exhibition in 1937.

“Yes, my master never cheated his audience,” Tong agreed. “He gave them what they paid to see. But he was also a delver of deeper mysteries, as you well know, Doctor Thirteen,”

Thirteen turned towards Tong, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trenchcoat. “If by that you mean he was a scholar of the arcane and esoteric, yes I knew it. There was much more to John than he ever revealed to the world. Or to me, for that matter.”

“Than you concede my master was a magician in fact, as well as reputation?” Tong fixed him with a quick stare.

“I never concede to the impossible, Tong.”

A sigh escaped the old man, and he shuffled away, leading his guest deeper into the room. “I envy you your conviction. But beware, in the end, the armor of skepticism may prove too heavy a burden to bear.”

Thirteen followed him.

There was a stage set up in the back of the room, complete with footlights and a heavy red velvet curtain that draped across the length of it. Tong lit the footlights and explained, “I have waited many years for one to come along and claim Shadowcrest Manor for their own. It was my special task, given me by the master himself when he left it. He knew his was not the hand to tame it. I… I always thought it would be another to take the keys from me, but…” A heavy sigh. He climbed the steps to the stage and began pulling on the cord to part the curtain. “Alas, that is not to be, it would appear. But if you are to be the new Master of Shadowcrest, Terrance Thirteen, than I suppose you must reckon with the prophecy.” The curtain opened to reveal a single object on the sawdust floor: a tall cedar cabinet with ornate molding, elaborately carved and sumptuously painted. Tong stepped forward, his face fierce in the glow of the footlights. “You must open the Cabinet of Giovanni Zatara!”


“Trick or treat…?”

The front door was not locked, and made a loud creaking noise as Traci Thirteen walked in, clutching her iguana cage close to her. The hallway was lit by an oil lamp, but all it showed her was a gray, dusty house, tatty sheets draped across the furniture and cobwebs dangling from corners.

“Where is everyone?” She took a few tentative steps, peeking around corners and into rooms too dark to see within. “Dad…? Scary Old Asian Guy…?”

A loud bang behind her caused her to jump and whirl around in a fright. But it was just the door blown shut. The wind rattled a window then subsided.

*I don’t think this was such a good idea, Traci.* Leroy told her.

*What do you know, you’re an iguana?*

*Hurry, Girl 13… I neeeed youuuu….* Came the eerie, spectral voice, drawing her deeper into the house.

Traci swallowed and crept forward, moving deeper into the house.

Something she could not see brushed her cheek. When she turned to look, there was nothing there. There was a sound like deep, rumbling laughter, utterly lacking in mirth, that she felt deep in her bones, but after a moment, she doubted she had heard it at all.

*Dad says there’s no such thing as spooks,* she sent to Leroy, more to reassure herself.

*Your Dad also hasn’t seen you levitate off your bed or conjure Goth sprites to give you tattoos. Has he even seen your tattoos yet?*

*You’re not making me feel any better.*

*I didn’t know that was my job.*

*You’re the worst pet ever. I’m sorry I gave you the power to talk.*

The old house was laid out in a confusing manner, but Traci had no idea where she was going anyway. The more she wandered the more confused and lost she became. Except that she felt the mysterious voice coming from a particular direction, and she did her best to follow it.

Before too long, the rooms she found herself in did not have their oil lamps lit, so she conjured her own flame, a tiny blaze she cupped in one upheld palm.

*Yessss… You have power enough… I need you, Girl 13… Come to meeee…*

Traci looked around; the voice seemed very close at hand, now, but she was starting to have second thoughts. In fact, she was wondering why she ever thought this was a good idea when she came upon the room with the mirror. It was a small room, and the only thing in it was a tall mirror on a swivel-stand. Voices were coming from it, and she could see images flashing across its surface, like it was a television. She looked into it and was surprised to see--- not her reflection--- but her father, standing on a stage, facing a stand-up wooden box with double doors on its front.

“You must open the Cabinet of Giovanni Zatara!” came the reedy voice of the Scary Old Asian Guy through the mirror, muffled by the glass.

*Yessss… Open it… Free me at last…”


Doctor Thirteen gave it little thought. He stepped up on the stage, and with both hands opened the doors of the cabinet.

Inside was a shallow compartment of unvarnished wood. It was empty.


Traci watched her father reach for the handles of the door and a sudden foreboding came upon her. “Dad, no!” she cried.

The doors opened and she saw a blast of white light burst forth from the cabinet.

*Come to me now, Girl 13! Quickly! Before it’s too late!*

Without hesitation, or without time to consider what she was doing was the impossible, Traci leaped into the mirror.


“Well, Tong, for all your dramatic pronouncements, that was a bit anti-climactic, don’t you think?” Doctor Thirteen did his best to hide the smug self-assurance in his voice as he took out his pipe, packed it with tobacco and lit it. “I must confess, though, I’m baffled why John thought this was so important. I see nothing inside this cabinet but dust and memories.”

But Tong was gaping wide-eyed, as if tracking something around the room. “Careful, Ghost-Breaker, for often it is the unseen we should fear the most…”


Traci Thirteen emerged into Zatara’s workshop through the portal of the Mirror of Sindella, and instantly realized she was not quite in the same reality as her father and Tong. She moved in the spaces between, her vision slightly blurred, the sounds less distinct. Except for what was coming from the open doors of the Cabinet. That was crystal clear. White haze billowed out from the cabinet, like the breath of a giant, filling the room, and curling around everything.

“Dad, what’s going on?” she called to him, but watched as her father lit his pipe and carried on as if he hadn’t heard her or seen the freaky things going on all around him. Tong, however, looked frightened.

“Can you see me, Scary Old Asian Guy?” she asked. But Tong was staring at a point just beyond Traci. She turned, afraid of what she would see.

And all the fear left her. Before her was… well, she wasn’t quite sure what it was. It was an amorphous mass of shifting shapes and colors. Tendrils undulated outward, reaching tentatively towards her, wanting to hold her, engulf her in warmth and love and beauty. Tears formed in Traci’s eyes. Strange and wonderful new feelings welled within her; she wanted nothing more than to give herself, body and soul, to this thing that had escaped from the Cabinet. This thing her father had released. She moved towards it, slowly, inexorably.

*No, Adored One…* came the voice that had lured Traci into the house. It was loud and discordant next to the misty haze that now beckoned her forward. *The Girl 13 is come at last, but she is not for you!*

Traci tried to block out the voice, wanted only to step inside that bubbling, frothing and multichromatic ooze.

Than another voice, her father’s, coming as if from the reality next door: “Nonsense, Tong! Like the Bard said, ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ The so-called ‘unseen’ only has power over us if we believe in it. I reject it utterly. I banish it back under the bed--- or into the closet, as the case may be.”

This pierced the fog of adulation in Traci’s head. The swirling thing in front of her was no longer lovely and dear, but outré, weird and menacing. It throbbed with a darker intent, throbbing and spreading throughout the workshop. With a start, she realized there was danger here she had never known was possible--- and that she had power, too.

She lowered her head, her eyes falling on Leroy. The iguana stared up at her. “Even nightmares have nightmares,” she whispered aloud, and with a wink, transformed her pet. Leroy swelled rapidly, bursting his box, growing into enormous size within seconds. He unfurled wide, membranous wings and a tail ridged with spikes flailed about the workshop. *Go bump in the night, my brave little lizard,* she commanded the dragon.

Leroy the dragon snaked its head around to face the formless Adored One and roared a challenge through a maw filled with fangs and fire.

*Hurry, Traci, please!* Urged the voice that had brought her to this moment. *While the Adored One is distracted, pull me from the Cabinet!*

Leaving Leroy to face off against the Adored One, Traci turned and jumped up on the stage. Dodging around her father, who behaved as if he could not see her, nor the dragon fighting the monster-from-beyond, Traci reached into the smoky confines of the Cabinet, casting around frantically.

From the depths of the shallow compartment, something grabbed her hand.

It tugged on her, pulling at first, but not trying to yank her within. Whatever it was, it was trying to pull itself from the Cabinet. With all the strength of her thirteen-year old body, and with all the faith of the child who believed in magic, Traci pulled back and dragged the prisoner from the Cabinet.

“Dreoda Eno, enogeb!”

The woman in front of Traci had long black hair tied in a topknot, and a stare as piercing as Giovanni Zatara’s. She wore skintight and sleeveless blue spandex, with a high-flared collar and a plunging neckline. A small red cape billowed behind her as she gestured grandiosely at the demonic cloud of malice.

The Adored One emitted a high-pitched, keening wail and was sucked back into the confines of the Cabinet, leaving only an echo and trails of color on the air. The young sorceress slammed the doors shut.

Then she turned back to Traci and her dragon, and with a whispered word, the three of them vanished.


Doctor Thirteen puffed smugly on his pipe, facing Tong, and expounded on the virtues of science and reason. Through it all, the old caretaker did not seem to be listening, but rather looked around the room, seeming to follow action only he could see. At one point, his eyes opened wide and his grim expression was replaced by a look of such joy and surprise that Thirteen was a bit taken aback.

“Tong, is everything alri---?”

The doors to the Cabinet slammed shut of their own accord, startling Thirteen. He turned to regard them with a dubious eye, peeking around the Cabinet, testing the levelness of the floor with his shoe, certain there was a trick involved.

“Hmh!” He stared at it, puffing on his pipe.


The tree of them re-appeared in a dusty room on an upper floor of the house, the furniture draped in sheets, cobwebs dangling from corners. The moon could be seen through a tall, floor-length window, providing plenty of illumination.

“This used to be my father’s study,” mused the sorceress, going to a small velvet-covered table, trailing her fingers over the crystal ball sitting atop it.

Traci bent and scooped up Leroy, who had reverted to his original form. “You called me here,” she said, like an accusation. “Yours was the voice I heard in my head.”

The sorceress turned and nodded, giving Traci a measuring look. “Yes. I sensed the presence of an extremely powerful homo magi. I’d been trapped in the Cabinet for months, and I needed help getting out.”

“But what were you doing in there?” A small furrow creased Traci’s brow. “And what was that… thing. The Adored One?”

The sorceress shivered. “The Adored One is an other-dimensional entity, a very nasty, and very powerful being captured long ago by Zatara the Magician and imprisoned in that specially made Cabinet. My father knew the Cabinet could not hold it forever, so several months ago, I embarked on a quest across the Astral Planes to find a way to destroy the Adored One before it could escape and wreak havoc again. But I… I was waylaid. The Adored One has disciples I had not counted upon, and I found myself imprisoned with it.” A wave of fear and revulsion came over her, and she fell into a plush chair by the window. “The last several weeks have been… horrific. So when I sensed you had come, I was desperate. I called to you. I’m sorry I put you in danger.”

“It’s alright,” Traci shrugged, not sure what else there was to say. “At least we destroyed it now, though, right?”

“The Adored One has not been destroyed,” the sorceress sighed. “It took every ounce of power I’ve been storing up for the last few weeks to send even that faint manifestation of it back into the Cabinet. It will rise again. And next time, I better be ready.”

“Who are you?” asked Traci, both thrilled and freaked-out by the story.

The sorceress stood and glanced around the room, as if settling a responsibility upon her shoulders she had long-deferred. “I’m Zatanna Zatara, the Mistress of Shadowcrest Manor.”


In the car, on the drive back home into Gotham City, Doctor Thirteen and his daughter sat in silence, reflecting on the night’s events. On her lap, Leroy slept and dreamed he was a dragon again.

As the lights of the city came into view, and Thirteen steered the car onto the highway, he noticed the look on his daughter’s face.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She stared out at the passing cars, contemplating a stranger reality. “Things aren’t always what they seem, are they, Dad?”

A small smile of pride lit her father’s face. “No. Never accept a thing at face value. Traci. What might be easiest to accept is sometimes simply just not so.”

Traci Thirteen gave her father an exasperated look that turned into a fond snort. That hadn’t made her feel the least bit better. But she supposed that was part of growing up. Reality was mutable and immutable, often at the same time, and paradoxically not exclusively so. The universe was weirder--- and scarier!--- than she had ever imagined. But Zatanna had offered to help her understand it a little bit better. And one day soon, she would return to Shadowcrest Manor, and the thought thrilled her.

“Happy birthday, pumpkin,” Doctor Thirteen smiled at his daughter.

Girl 13 smiled back at him, settling in for the long ride. “Happy Halloween, Dad.”

The following takes place after DC2 Special #1: An Arkham Christmas Carol, Written by David Charlton

I never wanted to come back to Arkham. Not after the first time. Bringing him in.

Somehow I get the impression Loeb knew that. Could see it reflected in that greasy smile. Like all rats men like Commissioner Loeb will gnaw away at anything soft.

He’s playing on my fears. And that’s why I got the Arkham case.

"Officer Gordon."

"Lieutenant." I correct him, for all the good it does. Being a lieutenant in Gotham’s police force isn’t exactly a commendation. The balding man in the fur lined coat clearly agrees with me.

"Warden Sharp," I say, with a short but firm nod. The man returns the movement, leaning heavily on his cane. I met him the first time here, but only briefly. I can’t say I blamed him for staying in his office that night.

"You made good time. The preparations are almost complete."

"Warden, I’m here to investigate a murder. I thought I made it clear on the phone that I won’t be taking part in your..."

"Lieutenant, please. You come here in search of answers, and that is exactly what I intend to provide tonight. You must take a seat for the proceedings. The numbers would only be five without you...and five is a most portentous number in matters such as this one...yes, most portentous indeed. Think of the sinister pentacle, the five wounds in our Lord’s body...no, lieutenant. You must attend."

I fumed, saying nothing. Wordlessly, he walked me through the twisted wrought iron gates and under that hideous lettering. ARKHAM ASYLUM.

Séance. I won’t be taking part in your séance. Damn.

The house - angular and leaning, covered in a shell of ridged rooftops and spiralling towers - loomed large and dark at the far end of the gravel path.

Whoever made the place probably deserved a room there. From the old colonial foundations what seemed like a growing cobweb of extensions grew outwards, corridors and wings of varying materials, styles and ages, all stretching out at odd angles. At some stage the division between the Arkham family home and the mental institution had been blurred, the asylum’s growth left ungoverned.

"Officer."

The sour expression at the door was Doctor Gretchen Whistler. I had met her the first time around, and we’d talked sports. She’d reminded me of my mother. Haggard looking, masculine features, but with a gentle voice and easy familiarity.

The files I’d seen afterwards had shocked me. Whistler had been accused of...doing things to inmates. Or of arranging for others to...the case against her had never gone anywhere. From what I could get from Murphy, it had been quashed somewhere along the paper trail. Big names were floated round, but nothing ever came from it.

I shake her hand and exchange pleasantries. The three of us go in, into an entrance hall that’s bigger than my apartment.

"The crime scene has been left undisturbed since your boys went over it. Chalk’s not even smudged."

"That’s good to know, Doctor Whistler. I’d like another look over it, before you...ugh...begin your...proceedings."

"I believe I sense a sceptical mind, lieutenant," Sharp wheezed, coughing into a gloved hand.

"It comes with the badge."

Sharp smiles, and I think I see his last meal stuck somewhere. "The séance has long been an Arkham tradition...fallen out of favour in the interim, perhaps. It was once held at Yuletide, by...my illustrious predecessor, Doctor Amadeus Arkham. Given the recent killing, and with this being All Hallows, I thought a change of season would not go amiss."

I can feel my nape prickling. Warden Webster Sharp’s record files say nothing. At all. When I asked, Loeb said he must have misplaced the folder somewhere. Told me not to worry.

Paperwork gets lost all the time.

"Yes. Well. As I said, I’d like to give the crime scene a look over myself."

"Of course. I’m sure Gretchen would be happy to show you. The Black Corridor, Doctor Whistler. You most certainly know the way."

Sharp leaves, that unsteady gait of his making the cane clack against the wooden flooring in sudden, jerky rhythm. He disappears into the gloom that seems perpetual inside, a darkness that has stained the rooms, blackened the walls.

Whistler tilts her head and leads me up a flight of stairs. She asks me something about the Knights game, but I miss it. The silence that we walk through is eerie. Madhouses should not be silent.

"You can’t seriously be going in for this...damn séance, can you? You’re a doctor, Whistler. Sharp may be some kind of religious nut, but you can’t believe-"

"I’ve worked in this asylum all of my professional life, James," she sniffs. "What I can believe has changed quite significantly with every passing year. What I can tell you is that I believe a séance to be a most revealing experience. If you wish to pursue your suspicions - that one of the staff killed the Puppet Master - then you will find the séance to be a most thorough exposure of our personal demons. Of course, you may find yourself exposed to us, too..."

I file away the expression on her face. That flicker of a threat. I don’t engage her on my suspects. She’s fishing, but that doesn’t mean I have to bite.

"Puppet Master."

Whistler frowns.

"I don’t follow."

"You said Puppet Master. That’s just the name the papers gave him. The victim’s name was Dmitri Roussos."

"Ah, but was it? He chose to adopt the name society branded him with, to make it his own. Not unlike many of our more recent inmates; Clock Maker, the Cavalier, the Mad Hatter. Even this 'Bat-Man' has chosen to take on an invented persona, to transform himself into something other than his old identity."

I can hear my muffled harrumph of irritation. "You don’t think you’re encouraging them?"

"Warden Sharp would agree with you. He thinks I tolerate their delusions too much. But he doesn’t see quite how...fascinating they are. How beautifully strange and brave their constructed egos are. How much more compelling an insight into their psychoses they are."

We seemed to be lost, turning this way and that through corridors, ascending stairs and descending them again. Through door after door, moving from old fashioned ornate wood to clinical stainless steel and back again. There are markings, black stencils labelling wards and wings, but none of them mean anything to me.

We stop, before a steel door that’s more like a bank vault hatch. The lighting here is somehow worse than in the rest of the labyrinth.

"The Black Corridor," Whistler says, and I note how the words catch in her throat. She isn’t meeting my eye as she gets out a heavy loop of keys.

"One of the asylum’s oldest wards. We haven’t used it since...in some time. The facilities are a little dated. If it were anyone but our new, special cases, then...well."

"The freaks," I mutter, as she hauls the door open.

The Black Corridor is cramped. Deep shadows mask the outlines of the walls, and failing overhead light fittings flicker, the dim strobing illuminating the thick glass tanks built into the concrete.

We walk along, our steps echoing. We pass empty cells, or cells that at least seem empty. It’s hard to tell. The glass is smudged and stained and the only light keeps on spluttering.

"Take your catch, for instance," Whistler says, and I’m grateful for the break in the silence. "Without his...colourful self-styled persona, he would be nameless. No records of him exist from before he became this. He would be a blank. A nothing."

I can feel blood rushing rushing in my ears. The yellow and black tape is up ahead, lazily tacked across one of the glass doors. I feel in my coat pocket for my torch.

"Here he is, James."

I’m turning right to inspect the crime scene, but she’s turning left, to the opposite cell.

She...no. That can’t...

"You put him opposite the victim’s cell? He watched it happen?"

Whistler raised an eyebrow. Her discomfort seemed to have gone. Like Loeb, she knew she had something over me. Something I could just make out, a skeletal figure sat motionless in the shadow of his cell.

"He did. But I’m afraid he would make a poor witness. He seems to be waiting, at present. Not doing anything at all. He won’t even speak to you."

I don’t look in. I don’t. "You haven’t moved him? Christ, how long did he sit watching the body for? Was he there for the forensics team?"

"Establishing a personal space that belongs to the inmate is important to us, James. It is his cell, and he should feel comfortable that he won’t be moved from it."

"This is insane." The words escape me. She seems to nod, but it’s too dark to tell.

"This is an asylum, James."

My eyes betray me and I look. He’s sat, hands on his knees, rigid. Even in this light I can tell that he’s drawn, emaciated. The shadows cast on his face are sharp, filling hollow cheeks and the loose folds of his faded orange coveralls.

His smile is there, in the darkness. Gleaming teeth wink, a shark’s maw. His eyes are gone, just empty voids beneath a curved brow. He might be looking back.

"He’s only been like this the past week," Whistler says, distantly. "Before then you couldn’t stop him from talking. Always telling those jokes of his. Always needling at the orderlies, playing his little games with them."

"How many orderlies work this corridor?" Crime scene. Ask the questions. Focus.

"None. Not the Black Corridor. The week before the murder they refused to do rounds here. There are stories about this part of the asylum, as you would expect."

"Stories they only heard about last week?" I’m not looking at him any more. I’m looking at the crime scene.

Whistler sighed. "There was an incident. I’m not sure what exactly. Most likely it was this one behind you, up to his tricks. Something happened and it scared off the few staff that would come down here."

He’s watching me. Watching my back. I click the torch on. Rap it against the glass until it flickers into life.

"Hmn. And the cells are all locked individually? Who has the keys?"

"Well, I do," Whistler says, unlocking the crime scene’s cell door. "The warden will, though he rarely interacts with the inmates. Doctor Kellerman, too, though he doesn’t work this corridor. None of the orderlies carry keys without a doctor’s consent, and none of them had that the night of the murder."

I step into the cell. Shining the torch around, it’s pretty spartan. Metal bed built into the wall. Thin, easily torn bedding. What might as well be a hole in the corner for a toilet. A cubby hole cut into the concrete back wall above the bed.

I point the torch and reveal three wooden dolls, propped up along the shelf. One has the hands bent over painted eyes, the next over the ears, the last over the mouth.

Puppets. His carved wooden puppets. They’re unclothed, naked.

"Was he allowed to carve these in his cell?"

"No," she says, quickly. "These were his from before he was institutionalised. We checked them, no edges or points. The strings are practically nothing."

The body had been gutted. One long cut, neck to bowels. Stabbed, too, repeatedly. Something long, slim.

Not puppets.

"Alright. I’ve seen enough."

"Are you sure, James?" She’s smiling, in the dark. Damn her.

"Yes. And it’s lieutenant."

We leave, but she takes her time about locking up the cell. Making sure I get enough of him to rattle my cage.

I try to cover it with a scowl. Light a cigarette, bury the nerves in the routine action. Thumb the wheel, spark the flint, light the tip. Inhale.

We start to walk away, down the Black Corridor. Away. I flick ash into the shadows.

The laughter comes scrabbling down the linoleum behind us, slithering up and rattling in my head. That awful, maddening laughter.



"oh jim. youre leaving too soon. you havent got it yet."

Whistler says nothing, but she’s watching me, closely. I don’t turn around.

"That so? Well, Joker, what exactly didn’t I get?"

"what you never get of course. the joke. you never get the joke. and this ones a doozy."

I turn, but just barely. That pointed, grinning skull has craned forward, poking itself into the dim light. His neck looks pencil thin from here.

You don’t see his body move as he laughs. It just comes, gurgling out of that rictus grin. Escaping from that lipless jaw.

"the mad run the madhouse and you cant seem to join in."

A chime sounded, crackling over some hidden PA system.

I had to fight the urge to jump as Whistler’s bony hand closed around my arm.

"The séance is about to begin. Come. I can show you the way back, but there’s some preparation I have to do first."

I look back, but the Joker’s face has gone. He’s not laughing any more, either.





"This is insanity."

We sit, Whistler, Kellerman, a bulbous squat man who is clearly Sharp’s grown son, Quincy, and the idiot cop, around a round wooden table.

Leant back, bolt upright in an ancient looking cage shaped to fit his body, is the Joker. His puckered white skin makes me think of the morgue. So does the boney figure that his coveralls hang from.

He’s grinning. But his yellowed eyes are blank. Staring vacant.

"I have to add my protest, Mr Sharp," Kellerman said, catching my eye through a haze of pipe smoke. "This cannot be beneficial to the patient’s already fragile mental condition."

"Fragile," the elder Sharp repeats. "Yes, fragile. Let me tell you something about that...patient, lieutenant. He is a snake. A serpent in the garden, who sheds his skin, changing his airs and manners every other crime spree, but always, always he is the same, evil, snake. His forked tongue has been quiet, hasn’t it? He’s plotting. His mind is turning over the next wicked face to wear. The next ’game’ to play with innocent lives."

Joker doesn’t blink. Doesn’t seem to breath. I’m not sure it isn’t a wax dummy Whistler wheeled in.

"While the warden has more...vitriol...than I would care for, I would concur with his diagnosis," Whistler said, placing a hand on the iron cage. "Modern psychology has yet to advance far enough for a truly thorough analysis of the Joker’s fractured mental state, but it does seem that he reinvents himself on a frequent basis. You yourself will have dealt with him as a serial murderer, a diamond thief, and a chemical terrorist, all within the space of a very brief criminal history. He has been very dark, and oblique in his humour, and then lively, playful. He adapts himself according to factors known only to himself."

"Why is he here?

Sharp cooed, shushing me like an errant schoolboy. He was big, hefty in a melting lard kind of way, and I didn’t miss his adult son’s flinch as he brought out the fatherly tone.

"The séance is intended to bring us in contact with the deceased. To traverse beyond the mortal coil is treacherous, and we must have familiar anchors for the departed’s spirit. This snake may have been the last thing seen by Roussos. He will be kept silent, if that is your concern. He must be kept silent."

The Joker’s head rolls against the iron cage that surrounds his head, yellowed eyes staring at me. His mouth is lipless, his cheeks hollow. He hasn’t been eating, they said. Hasn’t done anything. Just waiting.

I sit, between the pallid thing in the iron cage and the younger Sharp. The chair creaks. It’s old, rickety. Everything in this little dark chamber is old and rickety. I think we’re in old Amadeus’ dining room...or library...I’m not so sure where exactly. Deep in the madhouse maze.

I fold my arms. Gun is under my jacket. Shoulder holster. I won’t forget where that is.

"Let’s get this over with, warden."

This never happened in Chicago. But I’m quickly learning that Gotham is a contrary creature. Men of science preaching ritual superstition.

Sit and watch. Watch carefully.

"Six. Not five," Sharp counted, approving. "A good number. Now, to begin the proceedings."

At a nod, Kellerman dimmed the lights. For a moment, we sit in darkness.

I can hear him breathing.

Then a match flares, and a candle is lit. Sharp adjusts the candlestick on the table, placing it at the head of a chalk cross.

"To the westerly arm of the cross, the Bible, open at the book of Samuel. The verses on communion with the dead, to give divine grace to the proceedings."

I can just make out the skeletal bars of the standing cage to my left, the flickering orange light etching the outline in the dark.

"A bowl of oil to the south arm. A pact sealed in blood."

I see the knife. The blade is steel, and as long as my forearm. Sharp winces, then opens his palm. The blood lands in the bowl, lost into the shadows.

"And to the east, the head of a lily flower. A funereal bloom."

Sharp moves back, disappearing into the gloom.

"On this side table we have the knife, the bell and a box of rock salt. When the time comes these will disperse the dead."

I shift in my chair. Remember where the door is. Listen closely. Floorboards give away everything, the lurching clatter of Sharp’s cane pacing back and forth.

"Place your hands flat on the table," Sharp says. "Only I - acting as medium between the living and the dead - can speak. And a warning to you...our grinning serpent...the dead cannot share mortal mirth. Laughter will not be tolerated. You will be gagged if necessary. To laugh during the communion would be to invite gross repercussions."

I kept my arms folded. One knuckle brushing the holster’s cheap leather.

There was a creaking, and the sound of laboured exertion as Sharp clambered into the wooden box behind me.

"I am now entering the spirit cabinet," his voice boomed, echoing as he lowered himself in. "From hereon in we have begun the rite. The séance with the dead."

The ’spirit cabinet’ was an antique wooden box pressed up against the wall behind me, fitted with a little hinged door that Sharp now closed behind him. Spiralling brass etchings decorated the casing, looping motifs that caught the candlelight in muted reflection.

My eyes having adjusted to the gloom, I scan the table. Kellerman is stony-faced, either as reluctant to be here as I am or trying to make it look that way. Whistler is watching me. She’s enjoying this. Does she believe in it? Hard to say.

The younger Sharp, Quincy, is sullen. His face looks blotchy in the low light, puffy stains beneath his eyes.

The Joker...the lipless smile is wider than ever. In the dark, with his emaciated figure, weird angular shadows run chaotically across his features. He’s shuddering, dry thumps as he hits the metal bars. He’s laughing, soundlessly.

The breathing begins. Heavy, droning breaths drawn in and out, rattling through the brass trumpets that had been built into the walls.

Sounding tubes to amplify the voices of the dead, Sharp had said. Undoubtedly connected to some stereo system. Given how old they are, possibly to a gramophone. Wax cylinders.

Whatever Amadeus had installed all those years ago for his own festive séances.

It sounds like its playing our own breathing back to us. Scratchier, louder.

"Dmitri Roussos."

Sharp’s voice almost makes me draw the gun. It sounds...off. Deeper. He’s suddenly hit baritone. Hard to place where it’s coming from, with him in the box behind me, and the only light struggling to reach beyond the circular table.

"Roussos, you have lived a wicked life. I do not doubt your final destination. Your final judgement. We petition your presence, be it taking you from Hell itself, come to us here in Arkham and speak, speak to us!"

The candle stutters, failing for brief, cloying gasps. I can’t make out the table’s faces any more. Whistler’s glasses flash and it looks like she’s smiling. Kellerman’s reluctance looks like anger now, and Quincy’s blotches like a violent rash.

The Joker is a black shape, a triangular jaw jutting back and forth from the darkness.

"Roussos! Speak the name of your killer! The name, Roussos! Let us know that you are with us now! Speak through Arkham!"

That’s enough. I can’t sit here through this. Sharp’s running a circus here. Why is Gotham so broken? Why does everything the city does turn so perverse?

I push back my chair to stand, and then the Joker starts laughing.

The dead cannot laugh. Sharp is ignoring him, and drones on, calling for Roussos. Whistler is sitting bolt upright, her face a twisted expression of...admiration?  Kellerman isn’t moving. Quincy is squirming, looking as though he would bolt if his hands weren’t planted on the table.

The laughter is getting louder. It sounds convulsive. Like he can’t...his cage is rattling, the metal rapping against the floorboards.

"Shut up, you damn maniac." I’m rising, knocking my chair back and balling my fists.

Quincy wails, and in his cabinet the father continues. Over and over. Demanding the dead come. But Joker...has stopped laughing.

He’s still. Perfectly still. And the voice that comes out sounds nothing like his...it’s calm, quiet. Collected.

"Butcher the doctors, James. They won’t help you. They can’t help anyone."

"Show’s over, Joker. Whistler, for god’s sake, get him out of here."

Whistler is staring, absorbed.

"Complete transformation," she whispers. "He really has no ego, just...a black mirror. The séance, the deaths, the asylum, he’s taking it all and regurgitating a whole new persona..."

Sharp is still droning, unheeding. What’s he doing in that box? What am I-

"You wanted to call the dead. But everyone in Arkham is already dead. We all died long, long ago."

"Oh god," Kellerman exhales, quietly.

"We are in Hell. The Arkham’s built Hell, and we are their captives."

"Who told him about the Black Corridor?" Kellerman asks. "Who told him?"

Quincy wails again, and the candle goes out. I draw my gun and grab for the Joker.

There’s a deafening crash and the iron body cage goes clattering to the floor. I don’t need to see in the dark to know that it’s empty.

Knife. Sharp put a knife in the room, for his damn...a body collides with me and I lash out, blind. We crash into the floor ourselves, and I roll. I’m disoriented, and Sharp is still talking from inside that box...

There’s a hand scrabbling at my leg, and I kick, not knowing whose bone my foot connects with. Grabbing the torch from my coat my fingers search for the familiar switch, everything seeming so wrong and confused in the darkness...

Laughter again. Joker. I throw myself upright and click my torch on. The pale yellow light catches leathery folds closing, a shimmering darkness that vanishes, then Kellerman’s face staring wide-eyed, blinking in the light.

Sharp is shouting now. There is a heavy knocking, and I turn the torch. The cabinet. I move fast, at a crouched run, gun and torch ready in sweating hands.

Sweep the room. Whistler is flat on the ground, underneath the table. She’s not moving. Quincy is gone. No Joker.

The knife is gone, too.

I yank open the cabinet and Sharp clambers out, red-faced.

"What the hell have you done, Sharp?"

"You broke the séance," Sharp breathes. He’s doubled over. Exhausted.

I flick the light switch. Nothing. Through the door is a pitch black corridor, stretching off further than my cheap issue torch will carry. I’m not surprised when the switch out there doesn’t work, either.

"Power’s out," I point the torch at Sharp.

"And that monster is out loose," the warden snarls. "Put him down, lieutenant."

I move to the table and reach for Whistler. Her body rolls with my touch, and her head snaps around.

The knifework is Joker’s. The extended grin tells me that much.

"He has my son," Sharp shouts.

"You made this mess, warden," I snap, checking my gun and heading for the door. Heart’s hammering.

"No-one told him about the Black Corridor," Kellerman repeated, softly. "He shouldn’t have known."

"Known what? Quickly, Kellerman."

Kellerman’s wild eyes meet mine.

"After the war, the Black Corridor was where we housed the soldiers that were...traumatised most. The asylum was...a bad place in those days. They didn’t understand what to..."

"The point, Kellerman." He needs to speak faster. I need to be moving. Why isn’t my radio working? I'd be suspicious if Loeb hadn't taken to arranging 'technical difficulties' to plague my cases. Hoping something would catch me alone one of these days...

"They were kept on barbiturates, quartered in that cramped corridor, never seeming to recover...what Joker said, he was citing the letters, the things they wrote..."

"Keep it together, Kellerman," I say, moving into the corridor. "Barricade the door. I need to get Joker."

"The orderlies would falsify dosages. Easier to just put them down, way they were going. None of them ever got better. Nobody does at Arkham. It's sick. Sick from the foundations up."

I close the door behind me.

And the torch is all the light I have.





I think about the soldiers. Veterans back from Europe...left in that Black Corridor. Shell-shock becoming real madness as the institution warps around them.

I think about the Joker. About this new breed of madman that Gotham seems to have unearthed. And how Arkham will twist and pervert them further.

We've lost control of this city. Civilization got too rotten, too broken. It just keeps growing new horrors, new diseases.

I can hear my heart pounding. Blood pumping in my ears. I can see nothing but what's inside the pale circle my torch casts.

Wailing. A squeal, I turn and the torch catches a body, stick-thin, silhouetted in the doorframe. I shout, and it disappears, skeletal limbs carrying it away.

I'm chasing him, the torch's light swinging so I can hardly see what's in front of me. Can't see him, just know where he's headed. Through the labyrinth, the mess of the asylum, I know where he's going.

The Black Corridor.

I step through the hatch. Edge my way in. There's a light. Flickering, candlelight. Down the length of the corridor. In his cell.

Voices, thin and reedy. Coming in over the PA system. Does it run on a back-up generator? Voices begging. Screaming. Reciting names. Reciting...reciting causes of death.

I advance, steady. Eyes and torch moving to each cell as I go. Left, then right.

Most are empty. In some a body is sprawled. Inmates. Just like Dmitri Roussos. Someone took a blade to them.

Joker couldn't have had the time to...

Movement, and I fire. The shot ricochets, somewhere, and the sparks light up the stick-thin man running at me. I thumb the hammer back, feel everything go numb as the thing leaps.

He's laughing. Laughing.

My glasses go flying. The torch spins away across the tiles.

I feel dried up, pruned fingers that are thin and spindly as needles clasp around my neck. Close up, knotting themselves and choking me. Can't breath. Laughter.

The torch's askew beam catches the long horns and cast the devil's shadow across the ceiling. My eyesight blurred, the scene is demonic, a nightmare sketched out before me.

There is a roar, and the Joker is lifted bodily from me. A punch that sounds like a hammer, the cracking brittle twigs sounding in response to every blow that the horned monster throws.

The thing in black rears up, holding the Joker's twisted form aloft, then hurls it against the glass tank of his cell.

I can hear his breathing. Controlled. Perfectly controlled.

The voice is a low growl, an angry baritone that catches in the thick air of the Black Corridor.

"Quincy Sharp is safe. The clown didn't kill these people."

Something glints before me. My glasses. Held in a gloved hand that I've seen break bones.

I take them, and pull them on, getting to my feet. He backs away, drawing his leathery wings closer to his chest. The white slits where his eyes should be narrow. He doesn't like to be looked at too closely. In the few cases we've found ourselves working on together, I've found out nothing about him.

I have no idea what he is. I'm not even sure whether I should feel glad he's here now, but I do anyway.

"No," I say, slowly. Things are connecting together, pieces and clues.

"Shoot him, Gordon," the senior Sharp snarls. He's behind me, stood in the doorway. He's brandishing his cane, the limp gone.

"You killed them, warden. You killed all of them."

"There's a passageway that leads here from the original house," the Bat-Man intones, stepping further back into the dark.

"The spirit cabinet. A sliding panel in that, pressed up against the wall...you had the sound system keep you talking through the séance. While you came here and did this."

"You were supposed to shoot the Joker, Gordon," Sharp snaps, rounding on me. I've still got my gun. The weight of it is still there, in my hand.

"The warden is as delusional as his patients," Bat-Man grates. "Like the asylum's founder, the madmen of Arkham were a black mirror that he lost himself to. Termination is the only cure he understands now."

"Like the founder?" Sharp shouts, lunging for me. "Amadeus never left! I have communed with his soul enough to know the true end for the Joker's kind! You should have shot him, Gordon! I gave him my son so that you would do the right thing!"

The Bat-Man is moving, but I don't need him. The butt of my gun clips the warden's jaw even as he draws a slender blade from his cane, and I catch his collar, dragging him down against the tiles.

I disarm him, stamping my shoe into his hand. Pull back his arms and close the handcuffs around the wrists.

He's shouting, bellowing.

I look up, but the Bat-Man is gone.

From the broken, bent body of the Joker, crumpled up against his cell, comes laughter.