Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye Read Free Book Online Page A

mummified monkey head on top. As Milton scrutinized the figure, it twitched to mechanical life.
    “From the instant you are born to the moment youexpire, the clock is your executioner,” the automaton relayed in a deeper-than-expected voice. “There’s no escape from the great finale of life where each of you is destined to play your farewell performance.”
    More PODs huddled together around the robotic curiosity.
    “Or
is
there? Can one actually delay that final moment when the bony hand of death scrawls one’s name in his crowded diary?”
    The automaton’s mouth squeezed and scraped into a smile.
    “Of course there is, ladies and gentlemen, and that is why I am here….”
    The figure waved its arm toward the midway in a grandiose gesture.
    “I am Savage Bumble, and this is my Tragical Confusement Park!”
    Suddenly, three very large
somethings
landed on the roof of the tent. The fabric puckered dangerously inward. The creatures’ legs scrabbled for purchase, tearing into the canvas.
    Through the shredded canvas roof, one of the creatures dropped the lifeless body of a bewilderbeast onto Swami River’s Fortune-Telling Booth, smashing it to splinters.
    The phantoms around Milton screamed and slammed their shopping carts into one another in desperation. He gaped, stunned, at the roof above his headas it was slowly yet purposefully scratched to ribbons. Jack pushed his cart to the head of the line and waved his arms for attention.
    “Hey, cats, cool it,” Jack said calmly. “We’ve got to scatter. Take to these crazy tents and caravans and force those crazy bugs to hunt alone. Hurry.
Like now!”
    The edgy phantoms frantically broke off into clusters. Jack led a group of older, slower phantoms to a tent marked AMAZING CURATIVES AND SUPERNATURAL SALVES! just past an empty platform marked HUMONGOUS HEXED RABBOT . Milton felt like he often had back on the Surface during gym class after all the teams had been picked: shunned and awkwardly alone.
    “C’mon, boy,” Moondog said as he tugged him toward a pink and green caravan, “you’re my good-luck charm.”
    Milton grinned, and the two hastily wheeled their carts into the mouth of the horseshoe-shaped midway. They scrambled past a Loop-Die-Loop—a mechanical contraption composed of three eggbeater-like blades with coffin-shaped passenger carriages attached—and into a booth, identified by a sign as the MAUSOLEUM OF MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY-FELLOWS .
    Inside the garishly painted booth were rows and rows of jars—
soul
jars, by the looks of it—like the ones Milton had stolen from Limbo’s Assessment Chamber. These jars were smaller than the Lost Souls Milton had used to escape from Heck, yet the souls themselveswere similar, only thinner and far less substantial, like watered-down ectoplasmic broth. They were also strangely cheery.
    One jar held what looked like wisps of dull-pink cotton candy while another held glittery globs and speckled, purple-gray goop.
    Moondog was right:
Everything
is energy
, Milton reflected.
So why not imaginary friends? A child makes them as real as anything. And just because a kid stops believing in them doesn’t mean that energy just disappears. It moves on … ultimately settling here …
    A female phantom’s scream ripped through the air. Milton spun around toward the woman as a monstrous flea-tick sawed through the canvas roof above her with its harpoon nose. The creature fell on top of the Bury-Go-Round—a small roller coaster with an abrupt end at a mound of dirt—fifty feet away from Milton and Moondog. The pair dashed through the mouth of a spacious tunnel with hinged wooden doors at the far end of the carnival. Lurid orange letters declared it the KILLING TIME ZONE .
    The bloated, speckled flea-tick skittered toward the tent. Its amber eyes glowed weakly, like twin laser sights in the darkness. Its proboscis quivered until pointing directly at Milton. The jittery creature’s eyes flared.
    “Let’s go!” Moondog