DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapter Twenty-Seven"

The Sorcerer Supreme is triumphant (as shown HERE)...

...but there are still some loose ends to tie up...

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Stephen Strange returned to the dressing room in the auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia. Clea looked at him, concern on her face.

“Thank you,” Stephen said.

“I felt your call . . .”

“You were my anchor,” he said. They looked down at Billie Joe Jacks. “He’s dreaming.”

Clea looked at Strange. “And will it be a nightmare?”

He shook his head. “Nightmare fled. I don’t know where. The dream dimension vanished with him. I . . . I created another.”

“We need dreams,” Clea said, “whether they come in the night or whether we construct them with our eyes open.”

Strange nodded. They went out of the door, past the guards and television people, past Alicia Jacks with her worried look that Strange smoothed into a serene expression with a gesture, past the curious, and into the darkness of the evening. No one saw them, no one spoke.

They rose into the air smoothly. The city dropped away below and became a blanket of glowing jewels spilled across a black carpet.

Tomorrow, dawn would bring the dreaming back. They would want that change of which Jacks had spoken—some kind of change, some kind of difference in their lives. They would hope for it, and perhaps work for it. Some would die for it. A few would dream of it.

None would remember the disturbing dreams that had set them tossing in their beds as titans clashed in a place they knew of and denied was there.

Stephen Strange wanted it that way. They had to believe—to know—they controlled their own lives.

The two sorcerers flew northwest, toward home, toward the pleasures of love and the pleasures of the flesh. And when they slept they would not need a magical spell to keep out unwanted invaders.

There was only one last lingering thought.

Where had Nightmare gone?

We hope you've enjoyed this blogathon re-presenting the OOP first and only Dr Strange novel ever written until his first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in 2017.

Be here next week as we return to our usual weekly posting schedule.

DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapter Twenty-Five"

It's a battle to the death between Doctor Strange and Nightmare...

...so jump in and start reading...if you dare!

Chapter Twenty-Five

Blackness networked with crimson filaments. The red lines grew thicker until there were black lines across the scarlet sky. A speck of throbbing light appeared . . . grew . . . and Stephen Strange exploded into the mind dream of the sleeping man.

At once he noted another speck of light. With disconcerting swiftness, the speck grew to a pulsating sphere of sparkling light. The globe of expanding light exploded with a soundless flash and from it rode the devilish form of an immense black stallion! And on his back was the green-clad Nightmare!

The green cape flowed behind and the dark baleful eyes glared at Strange. The crimson world swirled around them, the red shrinking to a scarlet net and the black expanding; then the cyclic growth returned . . . The blackness shrank to a thin network of intersecting lines across the crimson world.

Strange knew that here, in the dream dimension, Nightmare was at his strongest and he, the invader from reality, was at his weakest.

Nightmare wasted no time. The silver hooves of the ebony mount struck out at Stephen Strange. Here, in the dream dimension, his astral body was not invisible and invulnerable, but all too fragile.

Strange evaded the hooves but made no spell. He needed to find out more. “You could not keep me prisoner in the negative world,” he said to Nightmare as the creature turned his mount for another charge.

“But this is my realm, Strange!” Nightmare trumpeted. “Here you will die! You are not fighting one of my lesser creations now, Mage—you are in combat with Nightmare!” His mocking laughter filled the air as the great black stallion charged again.

Strange again evaded the stallion’s attack. It was not too difficult and the ease of it disturbed him. It was as if Nightmare and his ebony charger were only a diversion.

Nightmare had always been Doctor Strange’s most enigmatic and most ephemeral enemy. He rode the paths no waking man could measure, to be seen only in dreams, and to vanish in a blink. He struck through the weakest point—the subconscious.

Time seemed to slow. The prancing steed moved in slow motion, Nightmare’s long cape swirled in graceful settling arcs. The monster’s mouth moved slowly, the words coming as an extended, distorted echo.

The subconscious . . . that dungeon in our mind where monsters were chained . . .

. . . The rusty doors opened . . .

. . . Dark things stirred in the blackness . . .

. . . A man in a medical gown and cap walked out; he had the face of Stephen Strange . . .

. . . Me, thought Strange, the me of years ago . . .

. . . by all the gods!

. . . The medical man, arrogant and haughty, sneered at the stumbling drunk who emerged from the dungeon . . .

. . . The broken Stephen Strange, the doctor who floated on the tide of self-pity and liquor . . .

. . . The surgeon held out something in each hand . . .

. . . life and death; the ankh and the skull . . .

. . . The skull chattered; the derelict Strange cowered . . .

. . . Then the Ancient One floated from the dungeon’s mouth, sitting in the lotus position, but his face was that of a skull, for Strange’s mentor had died . . . or rather, had moved on to another dimension, one denied to Strange . . .

. . . Mordo, his most ancient of enemies, strode forth, as arrogant and as powerful as any Strange had met. He sneered at everyone . . .

. . . Other crypts opened around them and other enemies came forth, but all wore the haughty face of Stephen Strange . . .

. . . No . . .

. . . A soundless cry came as dust on the wind . . .

. . . “Magician!”

. . . Strange saw the last figure to emerge from the dungeon. It was again himself, but the blue-clad, red-caped image of himself at one of the most important and powerful points in his career . . .

. . . The master of the mystic arts, answerable only to himself, powerful and superior . . .

“It is your time, Magician!”

Strange stared at the figures, but there was really only one figure . . . himself—himself at a period when he had no doubts or fears. He knew power then and thought he knew the proper application of it.

He had seen himself as he was then and that had been the reason Strange had put sorcery aside at that time. He’d become self-righteous, which was possibly the worst sin of all.

But to face himself, the himself of that time, was not fair. They had fought once before, Strange’s more certain self and his doubting reality, during the epic battle with Eternity.

“You are confused, Magician!” the other said. “By opening yourself to many realities you have learned that nothing is as it seems! You thought you could triumph—but you cannot!”

The other Stephen Strange sent a blast of pure force against him. Rays of light exploded, dissolving all the others. Now there were only Doctor Strange and his earlier, more certain, more powerful self. Another blast threw him back, but Strange rose above it with a hoarse cry.

“I can!” he cried and sent his own blast of lightning at the other figure. They were both bathed in light, battered by the titanic forces each released. The rocky landscape upon which they stood flowed like lava beneath their feet.

They slugged it out in the most primitive of ways, blasting at each other relentlessly. Yet Strange held his ground, though only barely. The bowl of crimson sky rainbowed and grew dark. The air was hot, the rocky ground smoking and slick.

Strange uttered a spell, but the other Strange countered it before it was even completed. The other Strange wrote letters of fire in the air, encircling Strange, but he rendered them powerless with a gesture and a curse of rejection.

They stood at last, gasping and staring, facing each other. The other Strange put his hands to his face in a sudden spasm of pain and when his hands dropped away he wore another face—that of Baron Mordo.

“Madness, Strange!” he exclaimed.

The universe fell away from Strange and he toppled into a swirling gray wind. His body stretched and grew soft, his bones softened and his control was nil.

“Madness!” Mordo cried. “Madness is chaos, the world inside out! Madness is your destiny, Strange!”

The universe was an endless dropping. Colors melted around him like ribbons, flaming after him as he fell . . .

. . . and fell . . .

. . . and fell . . .

. . . Someone screamed . . .

. . . The voice was familiar . . .

. . . It was his . . .

. . . He could not stop the screaming . . .

. . . No!

. . . Clea! He reached out in his thoughts to his acolyte. She stood like a sentinel only a few inches away, through the skull bone of the sleeping evangelist . . .

. . . Clea!

. . . Stephen! Her voice was faint but it gave him a marker, a milestone, a measure of where he was. He flashed a tenuous line of intangible thought through the void . . .

. . . Clea!

. . . Stephen!

. . . Her mind was a headland against which the sea of madness broke. Yet the madness plucked at his mind like the swift outgoing tide . . .

. . . The Ancient One, dissolving away, not in age and self-determination, but in senility and madness . . .

. . . Clea, a rotting corpse on the altar of a bloated nameless god . . .

. . . Mordo standing triumphant . . .

. . . Nightmare’s gloating laughter . . .

Nightmare!

In a flash of incandescent memory, Stephen Strange remembered the ending of the titanic battle with Eternity, in which Nightmare had been but a spear carrier. The world had ended, when Baron Mordo’s insanity had gone over the brink. Strange remembered the smashing blow of feeling as the lives of four billion people were snuffed out in an explosion that had obliterated the planet. Clea, Wong, sacred relics and humble stones—gone!

Strange remembered wishing he had been destroyed, too. Only his own powers, and that of prolonged life granted him by the Ancient One, had saved him. But for what? He remembered floating in the awful emptiness, amid the molecular fragments of the shattered planet, wishing that he, too, were dead . . . regretting the death of friends, the destruction of mankind’s home, of the hopes and dreams of an entire race.

He realized then that he could not continue to go on bathing in self-pity, in self-recrimination. He lived . . . and he was the Sorcerer Supreme. He could not accept defeat.

He cursed himself for a novice then. He had remembered Nightmare’s brief appearance during the struggle. He had journeyed to the dream dimension, for it was littered with the awesome remnants of every man’s imagination and the raw material for endless dreams. He had passed through the galactic garbage and universal hopes of a race, careful not to make a misstep that would destroy him, for he was the only hope of mankind.

He remembered his resolve to hold on to sanity, for if he did not, he was lost . . . and man was lost. The creatures of Nightmare’s domain had attacked him, but he had overcome them. Nightmare loosed a horde of demons upon him; knife-edged beaks and scimitar claws had struck at him.

“The dark forces gather, then die with the dawn,” he had chanted. “By the light deep within me—begone!” Nightmare had made a mistake; he had underestimated the powers of Stephen Strange. Strange fought through Nightmare’s bastions to confront Eternity and more by logic than by the mystic arts, he had persuaded him to restore the world. From the void . . .

. . . from the atoms wandering in the nothingness . . .

. . . from the rough clots of stone and shreds of gas, planets had been created, stars set afire, worlds inhabited with one-celled creatures . . .

. . . From the primordial ooze came advancing the multicellular creatures. Lightning struck the ooze and started life and there was no stopping it: reptiles and grass, mammals and primates, then man! The recreation of the world had taken place in moments . . .

. . . with help from . . .

. . . the Ancient One, now a part of eternity itself . . .

. . . a world restored . . .

. . . a mind restored . . .

. . . from algae to lizards to man, from stone spears to rockets to mystic sorcerers . . .

. . . sanity regained . . .

“Nightmare!”

The madness vanished; the veil was lifted. Strange stood on a spotless plain of white that extended to the featureless horizon in every direction—the killing ground. No cover, no weapons save the mind and the knowledge it contained.

And Nightmare.

The gray-skinned figure stood warily, his gray hair disheveled, his green cloak hanging limp, his hands curled and fingers ready for primitive battle.

“Strange!”

The Sorcerer Supreme smiled faintly, with the thin echo of ancient haughtiness. “Using my own doubts and fears against me was a good tactic—but not good enough.”

Nightmare snarled and tentacles rose from the featureless plain in a circle around Strange, long colorless arms that sought his flesh. “By the Ethnarch of Judah!” he cried and the tentacles withered and died under his focused power.

Naked women sprang from the plain, coming up as featureless blobs that colored themselves into flesh and formed into women and broke loose from the extension. They all had the faces of a mad Clea and they attacked with shrill screeches. Strange banished the harpies with a gesture and a curse from the Book of the Tetrarchs.

He lunged toward Nightmare and the green-clad ruler of the dream dimension leaped at him. Strange grasped the other’s wrist and the wrist became a loathsome tentacle. The gray face before him became a rotting reflection of his own. The green cape swirled around Strange and tightened into a steel cocoon.

Strange fought for air as the cocoon tightened. The moment he remembered he did not need air, that this was an astral projection, the strangulation stopped and the cloak fell away. But it had confused Strange; he could be hurt, he knew that, yet he retained aspects of his astral invulnerability. He had no time to think it out, for Nightmare drew darkness around them.

Continue the Adventure Tomorrow
at
Seduction of the Innocent

DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One"

Without reading Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen HERE, you're going to be confused...

...but if you've already read them, continue your trek into the Multiverse...

Chapter Twenty

“It was so unreal,” Clea said. “Yet . . . very real.” She shook her head in confusion. “And nothing was more real than Nightmare.” She shivered, hugging herself, and leaning against Stephen Strange.

The fire in the grate crackled. Stephen had put on soft music to soothe her nerves. They needed a moment of rest, and of planning.

“Nightmare was more real . . .” Strange said softly, his eyes lost in thought. “There’s something there . . .”

“Well, in a way, it was all nightmare time, Stephen.”

“Yes, but you felt Nightmare was more real than the rest of it.”

“Yes, but he was, after all, the focus of everything. I naturally paid him more attention.”

“No, there might be something here that is below your conscious mind; you may have sensed something . . .” He put his fingers to his lips and pondered.

“Nightmare has always tried to invade our dimension,” he said after a few moments of thought. “His whole purpose seemed to be to become a reality here, where nightmares are not real. There must be a reason.”

“I’ve never understood that,” Clea said. “He’s the ruler of the dream dimension—the undisputed ruler from all we can gather. Here, he is certain to have opposition, not only from you, but from many others. What could he gain?”

“A good point, Clea. What can he gain? Or, to put it another way, what does he lose by staying in the dream dimension?”

“Lose?”

“Why has he been trying so desperately to escape the dream dimension?”

“Escape? Stephen, I thought he was trying to invade us, to add our dimension to his. Perhaps even fuse them in some way.”

“That may be where we have made our mistake in the past. We assumed he was attempting invasion, not escape. Perhaps this dimension is the only one he can escape to. Perhaps his dimension exists only because ours does. Someone has to do the dreaming, after all. At any single moment on Earth there are millions of people asleep, and most of them are dreaming. Nightmare has a source of power there.”

“You mean, as long as people dream he exists, the dream dimension exists?”

“Perhaps. It seems a reasonable hypothesis.”

“If everyone stopped dreaming, then the dream dimension would vanish?”

“Again—perhaps. We are working in the unknown here. I believe it would certainly be weakened—or perhaps starved would be a better word.”

“Then why is Nightmare trying to escape? Surely there is no chance of humans stopping dreaming?”

“No, there must be some reason of which we know not. Perhaps . . .” Strange’s voice trailed off for a moment as he thought. “The clue might be your feeling he was more real than the rest. Perhaps Nightmare feels that, too! Perhaps his ‘realness’ has made him different from the rest of his dimension . . . or that his own perception of reality has changed by his constant contact with us.”

“Maybe he feels he is becoming a dream himself,” Clea suggested. “Becoming too much of an unreality.” She looked up quickly. “Stephen—the white universe he put me in, the negative universe—there may be a clue there. In the dream dimension itself what would be the most unreal thing of all?”

“Reality!” Strange said quickly. “Clea, this may be it!”

“Nightmare is, or is becoming, more real—if only in his mind. That means that in the dream dimension he is becoming unreal! That’s why he seeks escape. He may be Nightmare here—and nightmarish—but he is more real here than there!”

Strange’s smile faded. “Yes, but how does he intend to accomplish this? He has been here in our reality before, if only for a temporary stay. I have always defeated him, in one way or another.”

“He may have conceived a new way.”

“Through people like Jacks and Peerson and that mysterious rifleman?”

“Through their dreams.” She leaned forward and looked earnestly into Strange’s face. “Stephen, dreams are his only weapon—dreams and illusions. When are Jacks’s television programs broadcast?”

“At night. They are taped and broadcast into each time zone at night. Yes, I see your point: night, when people normally sleep.”

“Jacks is the wedge by which Nightmare hopes to enter our dimension.” She sat back, a frown on her face. “But there are so many that would oppose him.”

Strange spoke softly. “But there are millions he might be able to control. Millions will hear Jacks’s broadcasts. What if there were something going out in addition to Jacks’s words and ideas? Some kind of signal, or message, or . . .”

“Umm . . . Millions of ordinary humans would have power that even the greatest of the superheroes might be unable to handle. And even superheroes sleep from time to time.” She shivered and once again hugged herself.

Dr. Strange suddenly stood up. “Where is the newspaper? There was a listing of the cities in which Jacks was to make a personal appearance. Six cities, if I remember correctly.”

Clea helped him find the paper and they searched for the news report of the cities in which the Crusade for Change would have massive rallies.

“New York, Chicago, Toronto, Charleston, and Nashville. Oh, and Charleston, again, only instead of South Carolina, it’s Charleston, West Virginia.” She looked up at Strange. “It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? That’s not exactly a big city.”

“No, but look at the pattern. Five cities with one in the center.”

“A pentagram!”

Strange bent to look at the schedule. “Tonight is the last night—he’s appearing in Charleston, West Virginia!”

“The center of the pentagram! Then it’s tonight!”

“Come, we do not have much time,” Strange said, turning toward the door.

“We are going physically?”

“Yes—we are more powerful that way and I feel we will need every bit of our skill.”

They went quickly to the balcony of their mansion and Strange wrapped them in a spell of invisibility. There was no use attracting more attention to themselves than necessary, or generating more UFO reports. They rose effortlessly into the late-afternoon light, cleared the buildings around them and aimed directly southwest.

They had the Appalachian mountain range to clear, then over the wooded hillsides of the Alleghenys at five thousand feet. The sun was setting as they arrowed down from the Allegheny Plateau toward Charleston, West Virginia.

They swept invisibly over the city, heading toward the largest auditorium they could see. There were a number of large trucks parked next to the building, all television mobile units. An immense portable antenna had been erected on a flatbed truck, which would be used to broadcast the signal to the communications satellite that would rebroadcast Jacks’s sermon to the world.

They came to earth between two trucks, returned to visibility and strode out, toward the stage entrance. Black cables snaked out the door, which had been blocked open with a sandbag, spreading to each white truck. Inside, at banks of monitor screens and at the big professional tape recorders, sat directors and technicians. All the networks were there, either as a news-gathering team, or as the prime broadcasting facility.

“Wait a minute there, you two,” a burly rent-a-cop said. “No one goes in but authorized . . . uh . . . oh . . .” He stepped back and gestured them in, his face smoothing out from his authoritarian frown. Strange had made but a slight movement of his expressive fingers.

Backstage there was organized confusion. Men wearing head mikes muttered to unseen others, checking clipboards and looking harassed. Stagehands went by with awed looks. They were not used to this kind of worldwide responsibility in Charleston, West Virginia. Strange saw two network reporters from opposing networks chatting. He kept their attention elsewhere as he and Clea went down the steps marked To Dressing Rooms.

“Stephen, darling!” They turned and looked back. Michele Hartley was coming toward them, a black mink coat open and flying like a cape. Her dress was red, low cut and clinging. “Darling! How perfectly marvelous!” She took Strange’s arm and stepped between them, turning him so that his back was to Clea. “I’ve been so busy! I’m doing postproduction on Phantom Lover and preproduction on another film.” She tugged him back toward the stage, her breasts tight against his arm. “But I haven’t forgotten Merlin, darling. It will be simply marvelous to work with you! We’ll be in England for six months, Stephen, just you and me, won’t that be just super?”

“Ms. Hartley—”

“Michele, please call me Michele. May I call you Stephen, Stephen? Please forgive me. The industry is like that. First names right off. If I met the president it’d be George or Abe first thing, I just know.” She pulled him into a huddle. “Darling, I’ve got to see you—alone. Perhaps we could, ah, see each other soon? Real soon? My Rolls is at the side entrance. Silver Cloud, with my initials on the side, very small.”

“Miss Hartley . . .”

“Ms. Or Michele. Please?” She smiled brightly up at him.

“Ms. Hartley, I have important things to attend to.”

She slipped a piece of paper into his hand. “My private number in Hollywood and my room number here at the Plaza. Do call, darling.” She leaned very close and whispered, “We could take up where we were so rudely interrupted.”

Then she walked away, smiling at the cameras, walking right into the sudden glare of lights. Michele Hartley was a living legend in a business that spawned living legends.

Clea spoke softly. “Shall we continue?”

Strange looked at her, a smile twitching at his lips. “Jealous?”

Her eyebrows went up. “Are you applying for a Screen Actors Guild card?”

He shook his head and they continued on their way. Behind them the actress was saying, “We’re just good friends” and “He’s perfectly charming, darlings, and so mysterious!” Clea gave Strange a knowing look as they entered the passage to the dressing rooms.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Stop right there,” a deep voice said. A tall, muscular black man stepped out of the shadows. It was Joe Peerson and he seemed ready to fight. “The good reverend doesn’t like to be disturbed before the call of his ministry.”

Strange studied the fighter carefully. He was the man of the dreams.

“We want no trouble,” Strange said.

“Go, then.” Peerson’s belligerence was formidable.

“Stephen,” Clea said softly.

He touched her arm, but he spoke to Peerson.

“The reverend needs our help.”

“He don’t need the help of no queer-looking dude in a cape. Nor no white-haired bitch in a funny suit. Git.”

“Sorry,” Stephen smiled and started to go past. He ducked as the fighter loosed a vicious left, but he did not evade the right cross, which struck his jaw and sent him flying.

“Stephen!” Clea turned with fury in her eyes and blasted the fighter with twin bolts fired from her clenched fists. Peerson staggered back, the front of his ruffled shirt and purple suit in flames. He patted at his chest with frantic hands as Clea bent to Stephen.

The sorcerer sagged weakly, his body sliding to the cement floor. “Stephen!” Clea cried again, but the magician slipped into unconsciousness.

. . . falling . . .

. . . hurting . . .

. . . ribbons of color . . .

Then suddenly reality . . .

Mad laughter made Strange turn. In the moment, before he saw the source of the laughter, impressions and sensations flooded over him.

He was naked, without even his Eye of Agamotto around his neck. The world was black and white, without color, the drab, featureless grayness of dreams. Endless, rolling amorphous landscape blending into the distant horizon. Shapeless lumps protruded, like extrusions of mud smoothed by the wind.

The figure that stood on a slight rise was gray and black, with a bald skull devoid of hair or features. No mouth opened to utter the laughter. To Strange the entire scene was blurred and slightly askew.

The faceless creature’s hands came up, held out before him. There was a shimmering of light and a gleaming long weapon appeared in his hands. There was a moaning in the sky as the figure brought the weapon around. Stephen Strange opened his mouth to utter a protective spell, but his movements were as slow as molasses. It seemed as though time were stretching and there was no way he could stop the killer. The silvery weapon’s muzzle was swinging toward him. The roar in the sky grew. Strange’s words were incomprehensible, garbled and stretched out.

“Steeeephennnnn . . .”

His name echoed and vibrated until the very sky rippled with streaks of white. The featureless killer was still bringing the weapon to bear, slowly, ever so slowly, but still faster than Strange’s desperate incantation.

“Steeeeeeephennnnnnn . . . !”

The muzzle was almost there . . .

The killer laughed . . .

There was a flash, deep within the dark circle of the muzzle . . .

“STEEEPHENNN—!”

Red—a blossoming flower of red, with a white-hot heart.

“Stephen!”

He was in Clea’s arms, lying on the floor of the corridor. Joe Peerson was crumpled nearby, his shirt smoldering. He wasn’t moving, but there were figures coming with an emergency stretcher.

“Stephen?”

“I’m . . . I’m all right.” He felt foolish. Downed by the fist of a fighter, not by the blistering spell of a great magician. With a wry smile at the ways fate had of humbling one, he got to his feet. Clea was looking at him closely.

“I had a . . . a dream. There was a killer, with a long weapon of some kind.”

Clea looked around. More people were coming and they were receiving odd looks. The dark snouts of television cameras were pointed at them and Clea turned, her lips moving silently, her brows down and angry. Suddenly the different cameramen were pulling the cameras from their shoulders, poking and prodding. Reporters and sound men were looking at tape reels and cassettes with worried, puzzled looks. Clea turned back to Stephen and pulled him along the corridor.

“I’m all right,” he said. “This way.”

Two more rent-a-cops, both bigger than the first one, attempted to stop Strange and Clea, and ended up opening the dressing-room door for them. The dressing rooms here were built-ins, not portables, and the walls were of cream-painted cement.

“Strange!” Billie Joe Jacks turned with an angry frown as he caught the red-caped figure in the mirror. “Now you two get out of here! Sergeant!”

“Silence,” Strange said, lifting his hand.

Surprisingly, the evangelist did not fall silent. “Who do you think you are, you witch doctor? If those lazy rent-a-cops can’t keep you out, I can! Billie Joe ain’t forgot his wrestling days back home, no sir! Now you and your fancy Halloween suit shake a leg right outta here!”

If Stephen Strange felt surprise that his spell of silence did not work, he did not show it. He wanted only to quiet Jacks so that he might investigate what he felt was a case of dream possession. But Jacks was not to be silenced. When Strange did not leave, nor look as if he were going to leave, Billie Joe Jacks took a punch at him.

“May the good Lord forgive me, but—!”

Strange became two, then four figures, crimson caped and black haired. Clea, too, split and became four figures confronting Jacks.

“Aha!” the evangelist snapped. “A conjurer’s trick!” He lashed out with a fist—which went right through the projection he was aiming at.

“We wanted to talk,” all four figures said.

“I’ll not talk with the Devil!” Jacks punched air again.

“By the eternal Vishanti!” the four images of Strange said. Billie Joe Jacks jerked as if struck by a live wire, but it only made him more determined. He threw his fist out again and again met air. He turned with triumph to the fourth figure—that one had to be Strange. His balled fist swung hard—and passed right through the dark-haired vision.

“No, can’t be!” Jacks said. “Not all four! One of them has to be you!”

“The twelve moons of Munnipor!” chanted Strange. “Surround this soul and isolate him from the dark powers!”

Twelve glowing dots appeared at Strange’s fingers, three from each projected image. The images merged into one as the twelve dots expanded, becoming baseball-sized spheres that glowed with a cold white light. They orbited Jacks, who stepped back angrily. He snatched at one of them, missed, and tried again. The orbiting spheres moved faster; this time Jacks caught one, but released it at once with a cry of pain.

“They seek only to protect you,” Strange cried over Jacks’s exclamation. “Let them sever the control from Nightmare!”

“Nightmare? Nightmare?” Jacks batted at the balls, which were moving faster and faster in an intricate set of orbits that encased him from floor to head in a blinding ball of light. The orbits were so fast it seemed as if the balls were bars of light and the light spread, becoming an almost solid sphere of cold white light.

“No!” Jacks cried out and the twelve moons of Munnipor exploded away from him, dissolving into points of light which died out.

Jacks stood swaying on the dressing-room floor, glaring hatefully at Strange. “Enchanter! Satan!”

“Stephen, he broke the spell—!” Clea whispered.

“Corrupter! Sorcerer!”

“I am the Sorcerer Supreme,” Strange said with dignity.

“Aha!” Jacks cried, pointing. The walls of the dressing room rippled, the mirrors cracked and crashed down, spilling makeup and combs. The ring of light bulbs around the mirrors exploded in twos and threes. The dressing room was illuminated only by the light from the corridor. “Begone, imp of Satan!”

“Stephen!” screamed Clea.

“Veil of Kashmurti!” exclaimed Strange, sweeping his hand across between himself and Jacks. A blackness followed, blotting out everything, leaving only nothingness.

But to Strange’s surprise, Jacks stepped through the blackness. Clea gasped. The veil of Kashmurti was penetrable only by certain ways, all of them ancient and arcane!

“Leave this place!” Jacks thundered. “You are not wanted here!” He put out both hands, fingers spread, as if to push, and Strange and Clea felt as though a truck had hit them. They crashed back through the dressing-room door into . . .

. . . blackness.

Continue the Adventure Tomorrow
at
Seduction of the Innocent

DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapter Seventeen"

Chapter Sixteen is HERE.

Please read before proceeding, because you'd be lost in the Multiverse if you didn't!

(And we don't want that!)

Chapter Seventeen

Strange had met Clea during his great battle with the dread Dormammu. That sorcerer from a strange dimension had threatened the invasion and destruction of the dimension in which Stephen Strange dwelt, Earth. Strange had gone to that bizarre and surreal time-space dimension, a dimension so alien, so incredible, so utterly beyond human comprehension that there were no words in any earthly language to accurately describe it.

He had faced Dormammu, a powerful figure whose head was a glowing, steaming pillar of mystic force. “You must never be allowed to hurl your sinister spells against mankind,” Strange had told him, but the mystic magician had laughed at Strange’s assaults.

“Even the powerful Ancient One cannot stop me, so how can you?” With a wave of his hands the ribbons of that dimension parted, twisted, disappeared, reunited in a bizarre Mobius strip, altering space and the perception of space. But Strange had resisted, barely, the altered state of mind his opponent had created.

“I warn you to send the Ancient One to fight in your stead,” Dormammu had snarled. “You are too young.” His voice and manner were insulting, and Strange felt the sting to his pride. “Your knowledge of the mystic arts cannot begin to equal mine!”

Black, white, red, green, blue . . . The universe changed with bewildering rapidity.

“No, dreaded one,” Strange said. “It is I the Ancient One has sent . . . and it is I you must battle!”

The Mobius world flattened in a blink. Grotesque statues sat squatly, sacrificial smoke rising from their head bowls. Bizarre shapes hung from the arching black ceiling. Dormammu stood on a gleaming golden square and sneered. “Bah! All through the ages, witless creatures such as you have dared to challenge me . . . and all have met the same deadly fate.” His green-gloved hand pointed a finger at Strange and the glowing force that was his head shimmered. “I shall give you a brief period to reconsider before I summon you to your final battle!”

Dormammu raised his hand, his long fingers stretched. “For I no longer derive pleasure from defeating weak opponents The sport now bores me!” Dormammu’s hand swept down and in the blink of an eye, Stephen Strange was somewhere else.

He looked around. He was in a hall with a pool of thick green ooze, surrounded by massive pillars that rose into the darkness. The pillars were carved and inscribed, painted and covered with mosaics, arcane designs, and mystic symbols. He took off his cape and commanded it to stand while he strolled along the golden floor which edged the erratically shaped pool.

“He sounded so sure of himself,” he thought. “So totally arrogant! Can he really be so completely unbeatable?”

Every man has areas of uncertainty, especially where he has not been tested. Dormammu’s certainty struck at Strange’s own insecurity. He had to decide whether the master of this bizarre dimension was really as powerful and as knowledgeable as he appeared. David slew Goliath. Power and knowledge alone were not completely the deciding factors. There was still will, determination, righteousness, and right.

He was deep in thought when he noticed a spot glowing in the air near him. As he looked, the spot dilated to permit a woman to step out of it and stand on the floor before him. She was the nameless woman who had tried to warn him when he had first entered that dimension of the dread Dormammu. He would know her eventually as Clea, but then she was mysterious and nameless.

“Heed my words, man from another world,” she said urgently to Dr. Strange. “You must not battle Dormammu!”

“You waste your breath,” Dr. Strange said. “Nothing can stop me! I must save humanity from the dreaded one.” He turned away from her, annoyed that Dormammu had tried such a transparent and ineffectual trick. “Even though I perish in the attempt, I dare not falter. My life means nothing.”

“No!” Clea said quickly, her voice filled with concern. “It is not only of you I am thinking. If, by some unbelievable miracle, you should triumph, it could mean the end of us!”

“I do not understand,” Strange said.

“Then you must be shown!” Clea said. Her eyes burned into Strange’s. “Prepare yourself, Earth mortal . . . Prepare for sights such as no human eyes have ever before beheld!”

Her hands went out, directing her energies. Dressed in red and black, with distinctive white hair, a red radiance came from her body. In the midst of the radiance a yellow spot appeared, grew into a shimmering rectangle. Strange could see into it, floating unsupported in the air above the golden floor. Down the rectangular passage, lined with shapes that shifted and merged, was a pure whiteness. “Let the entrance appear,” Clea commanded, and the rectangle grew rapidly. “The entrance to . . . the beyond!”

She looked at Strange with a challenging expression. He nodded, but all his senses—especially his sixth sense—were on full alert.

“Follow me then,” she said, “and be prepared to witness the incredible!” They floated up from the floor, side by side, and quickly entered the yellow rectangle.

“I must be vigilant,” Strange thought. “It might be a trap. Yet, my instincts tell me she is sincere.”

They floated into the pure-white world, into a world of total madness! Tubes of protoplasm, or something like it, writhed through the endless space. There were webs and blobs, floating openings into other worlds, spiny extrusions, dangling tentacles . . .

“This is but the start of the eerie spectacle you are about to see,” Clea said. “For these are the outskirts of Dormammu’s domain, where the mindless ones dwell.”

They floated out, through traceries of smoke, past tubes and tentacles of pulsating, writhing protoplasm. “The mindless ones?” Strange inquired.

“Yes,” she said and pointed. “There they are!” Ahead, on a floating island of quivering protoplasm were two great humpbacked manlike beasts. They were fighting, with hamlike fists and with blasts of some sort of ray coming from slits in their wrinkled featureless faces. They fought with unceasing ferocity, and Strange could see reinforcements coming through, climbing out of the openings into this world, their fists clenched.

“They are primitive, savage, totally devoid of love, or kindness, or any type of intelligence,” Clea said. “They live only to fight . . . and to destroy.” One of the monsters seized another and flung him from the floating island. The defeated creature fell a great distance, caught a throbbing tube of protoplasm and at once began to climb back to begin the fight again.

“They have lived at the fringe of our dimension since the beginning of time,” Clea said, “ever waiting for a chance to attack us . . . to slay us all!”

They floated on, but they came too close. One of the gray creatures sent a bolt of energy at them. Strange thrust Clea aside, causing the mindless one’s beam to miss, and he sent back a blast of his own. They slipped past the creatures but Strange wondered why these powerful entities had not conquered all of that dimension before.

Clea explained that a powerful shield, placed by Dormammu with a great spell, kept the creatures confined. “If anything should happen to him, then all of us in this dimension are doomed,” she said.

Strange sensed that this white-haired enchantress was telling the truth. “Though he represents a menace to mankind, Dormammu is a protection to his own people,” he thought.

“That is why you must not defeat him,” Clea insisted as they swam back through the wavering rectangular passage to where she had come to Strange. “Only he can save us from the mindless ones!”

“Yet if he lives, humanity shall always be in danger,” Strange replied. “I wish to bring no harm to this fantastic world . . . and yet my first duty is to Earth . . . and the ones who inhabit it.” He felt sad, but he knew he had no choice. He had to be true to his oath.

Clea disappeared into her self-made passage and Strange shrugged into his long blue cape. He waited, thinking, but was still surprised when a white glow appeared, then grew to a silent shimmering explosion of light. A red carpet snaked out like some even-edged tongue and Dormammu’s voice boomed out.

“Come, man of flesh and blood! The time is here!”

It was Dormammu’s summons. Now, Strange knew, the die was cast! The battle was about to begin. He stepped onto the red carpet and it sucked him into the explosion of light.

The first thing Dr. Strange saw was Clea, on her knees, her hands encased in enormous metal balls, linked by a chain, her head down. “The girl! What have you done to her?”

Dormammu’s glowing head spouted more steam. “She knew the penalty for speaking to the enemy! She has betrayed me . . . So, her fate is now linked with yours!”

Strange protested. “But she merely tried to help—! To convince me not to fight!”

“Silence!” exclaimed Dormammu. “First, she shall witness your defeat . . . Then, she shall be the next to die! Dormammu has spoken!” He raised a hand. “Now, let the battle begin! The battle which shall end, as have all those in the past, with the complete victory of Dormammu, master of the dark domain!”

His hand slashed down and yellow ribbons of energy coiled out, divided, divided again, then streaked toward Strange, but the master of the mystic arts spun a spell of his own that deflected the rays of light.

I know now that I have made the right decision, he thought. No matter what the consequences, Dormammu is too powerful, too evil, to be allowed to exist!

Flames were met by a mystic shield. Arching spears of energy were deflected. No matter what the cost or consequence—he must be destroyed! Radiant force was met by impenetrable might. But, he shall see that I, too, have magical weapons. He swiftly spun a cocoon of light-force around Dormammu, but it lasted only seconds, not long enough for Strange to consolidate the advantage.

The cocoon melted away and Dormammu spoke. “So, human! You are a more capable foe than I had suspected! All the more pity that I shall be forced to vanquish you!”

The battle raged on. Spell met incantation; force met resistance. Glowing symbols were drawn in the air and erased with another powerful spell. Curse met curse; realities were shifted, the surreal became the norm. The battle raged between two completely alien foes, foes with only one thing in common—an awesome mastery of the powers of magic!

In a silent retreat in the Tibetan mountains, an aged mystic observed every detail of the fateful confrontation. He was the Ancient One.

“There is no turning back now,” he whispered. “The game must be played to the end.” He closed his eyes and prayed. “May the light of the Vishanti shine upon Stephen Strange . . . and may the omnipotent Oshtur grant him wisdom and strength!”

Dormammu’s attack grew stronger and Dr. Strange was pressed to his limits. Try as I may, I cannot break through his defenses. I cannot find a way to reach him!

In Dormammu’s mind was this thought: I am stronger than he, but never before have I seen such courage . . . such valor. But neither courage nor valor alone are enough to prevail against my superior might!

In the mind of the helpless Clea was this thought: It matters not who shall win . . . In any event I am doomed! It will soon be over. The mortal one cannot survive much longer!

The great battle raged across the length and breadth of the dark domain. But unknown to Strange at the time, the battle had weakened the shield that Dormammu had erected to confine the mindless ones. They broke through while Dormammu’s attention was elsewhere. A vast horde of the savage, ruthless creatures spilled into the domain of Dormammu.

Suddenly Strange saw Dormammu break off his attack. “I shall attend to you later, Earthling!” Dormammu said as he turned away. “I see a more pressing problem to dispose of!”

The master of the dark domain turned his back on Strange and lifted his hands high. A radiance of light grew around him, and Strange knew he could pierce it from behind, but he hesitated. It is my chance . . . but I cannot do battle in such a manner.

Then the mindless ones charged into view, their beams slashing forth from the dark slits in their heads; but Dormammu had created an emergency barrier before them. Their beams splashed off, but as their numbers increased, the beams began to penetrate, further and further, into the barrier.

“Back, creatures of the night!” Dormammu shouted. “Back, I command you, by the seven rings of Raggador!”

The creatures multiplied and Strange could see that the quickly erected shield was not going to hold. He knew that if Dormammu’s barrier was ruptured, many innocent creatures living in the dark domain would be killed. He had to help.

His fingers went to the jewel at his throat and a light shone forth from the enchanted amulet. “Stand still!” he ordered Dormammu as the light bathed him. “Let the power of my amulet seep into you, adding to your own!”

Fortified by the energy from the gleaming jewel, Dormammu’s strength increased and the barrier held. Then with an outward pulsing of light he drove the mindless ones back and back, until they were once again confined in their mystic prison.

Then instead of expressing gratitude, Dormammu turned upon Strange with rage. “Curse you, mortal! Curse the fact that I needed your help! Curse the woeful fate that has placed me in your debt! I cannot slay you now! I cannot destroy the one who has saved me!”

Strange smiled grimly. It is as I suspected, he thought. He is evil, true, but only by our human standards. According to his own lights, he has his own moral code.

Strange acknowledged that Dormammu was in his debt, but he asked only two promises to be kept and the debt was paid: that no harm must come to the female he had imprisoned for trying to help, and that Dormammu vow never to invade Earth.

The master of the dark domain agreed. “But I shall never rest until I have avenged this indignity!” Then he was gone.

Strange turned to the white-haired young woman, now freed of her metal balls of bondage. “What will become of you, now? Perhaps there could be a way to take you back with me?”

But Clea had refused, saying she preferred staying in her world—but that she would never forget Doctor Stephen Strange.

Reluctantly, Strange departed the dark domain, and returned to the Tibetan monastery of the Ancient One. There he found the old man amazingly revitalized. Strange’s defeat of Dormammu had broken a spell the master of the dark domain had put upon him. As a reward Strange was given a new cape, with great spells woven into it, and a new and more powerful amulet, the fabled Eye of Agamotto.

Strange shook his head. There was no clue there, in Clea’s origins, for her present whereabouts—or none that he could detect. She had eventually come to him, exiled from the dark dimension, and they had built a life together.

Distressed, Strange ran through the entire sequence again, quickly. The Ancient One had dispatched Strange to do battle in Dormammu’s own land. Strange had had to fight his way through foe after foe, just to be able to meet Dormammu. Reason had not worked, not against Dormammu’s determination to conquer Earth. Clea had tried to warn him, and eventually her warning had borne fruit, for in aiding Dormammu to defeat the mindless ones he had placed the mighty magician in debt to him.

But none of it, none of it, offered a clue. If Dormammu was behind Nightmare’s action, if he was in some way manipulating Nightmare, that horrendous dream master did not seem to know it.

No, the clues were obscure. Perhaps they were there, perhaps not. Strange knew of no other way to proceed than the way he had been proceeding: onward.

To Be Continued on Thursday...
at
Seduction of the Innocent

DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapters Fourteen & Fifteen"

If you missed them, Chapters Twelve and Thirteen are HERE!

If you're linking from that site, disregard and keep reading...
Chapter Fourteen

“Brethren, I speak to you today from the Temple of Light!” The television screen framed Billie Joe Jacks nicely and the lighting technicians had done him justice. Strange detected the makeup, but that was hardly unusual for anyone on the tube these days.

“Brethren, this hour, this minute, this second is the first moment of the Crusade for Change! This world changes on the surface every day. The world we knew as a child is as distant today as Jupiter is from the Sun! The world of our parents has vanished! Technologically, we are changing as swiftly as some speeded-up movie. The minds of men are delving into everything: the radio waves coming from distant stars and galaxies which are unimaginably far away, the planets, the structure of metals, and the nature of time itself. There are far too many who know how to explode the heart of the atom!”

Billie Joe’s face was stern, earnest, and commanding. Strange saw what there was in this man that had brought him from a small church in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to the worldwide network of stations and satellites that was making this broadcast one of the ten most watched programs of all time.

“Our lives are changing, rocketing into the future at speeds we cannot possibly hope to comprehend. This morning’s world is not tonight’s world and tomorrow’s world is beyond understanding or believing. Man is in danger of being made obsolete by his own headlong progress.”

Strange nodded. Jacks was taking the usual anti-technology line. If he had been a caveman he would have resisted fire—probably as a tool of the devil.

“Progress,” sneered Jacks. “Each hour that passes brings this planet, this system of planets, this galaxy forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the constellation of Hercules . . . and yet there are misfits and malcontents who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, ‘The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.’ And by that test, has our ‘progress’ been progress?”

Jacks leaned forward into the camera lens. “Has it?” he insisted. He flung a hand into the sky. “I insist that it has not! Anything that makes the world more humane and more rational is progress, I say. That’s the only measuring stick we can apply to it.” He settled back and spoke in calm, even tones. “In a world where the two greatest powers—not even counting the others—can each destroy totally the lands and populations of the other, fifty or a hundred times over with atomic fire, I say we have not made the world more humane or rational.”

Stephen Strange found he agreed, but he kept his caution up.

“Speed is frequently confused with progress, but it is not progress. Some say progress is the substitution of a complicated nuisance for a simple nuisance. Well, my friends, I am here today to make a very progressive suggestion: let us not have any more progress!”

Jacks beamed out at his worldwide audience. “Let us instead have change. Change is not progress. Change is not our enemy. What single ability do we all have? What solitary ability do we all possess? Change.”

He took a deep breath. “The world is changing faster than people are. Our problem is that we hate change and we hate progress, and we love them at the same time. Change keeps things from becoming static and boring. But what we really want is for things to remain the same . . . but to get better.

“We have only two things to dread: changing . . . and not changing. But you don’t change the world—you change yourself. You don’t change the men who are learning about microbes or stars. You don’t change the men and women who are building machines or discovering processes. You don’t stop those who are searching our genes and chromosomes for better people. No, you change yourself.”

Jacks looked straight into the lens. “And that is the most frightening thing of all. You are the only you you know. Without that you, you do not exist. To change that you is to not be.”

Again he leaned forward. “But you must change. You cannot help it. You were once young and foolish and naïve. Today you are older, wiser and not so naïve. You know the world is complex, not simple. You have changed. The toughest sort of mountain climbing is getting out of a rut. Today, we start making those first steps . . . out of the rut!”

“Make your point,” muttered Clea.

“Each new plateau reached by the human race has been the result of some change, some maladjustment, some twisting of the silver cord of life. It is no accident that it has been the so-called ‘maladjusted’ individuals who have been responsible for the ascent of man to higher and still higher levels of comprehension and ability. And I come to you today as one of those maladjusted individuals.” Jacks’s smile took the sting from his words. He spoke on, confidentially and person to person.

“Progress is merciless. It has no purpose; it just happens. It chews up everyone in its path—and we are all in its path—then spits us out and spits out things and events we cannot understand. The only value it seems to have is to make a few people rich. Progress is manufacturing beer cans that last forever, and expensive cars that rust out in three years. Progress is getting you across the country or across an ocean faster than ever before and then losing your luggage. Progress is inventing television, the greatest teaching tool in history, and boring you to death with it. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backward faster.

“Changing is applying your own God-given intelligence to your life and your world. Being changed is what happens to you and me when outside forces force us to be different. But only you can change yourself!

“Why should you do it? For the Lord? For me? For society? No! But we shall not survive without changing—not you, not me, not your nation nor mine, not our world! To change with change is the changeless state. All things change. This species gives way to that, to one better equipped to survive. But—!” His finger pointed again at the heavens.

“To become a different you, you must find someone you’d rather be! And there is nothing in our society that does not need changing on one level or another!”

Stephen Strange was watching with careful eyes, evaluating both method and thought, both meaning and attitude. This was an inspired Jacks, a magnetic personality, one that was certain to gather about him many people. Not just the eternal malcontents who attach themselves to any sort of possibility for change, hoping that when everything is uprooted and turned over they will be on top. No, he would attract the more stable, those who were altruistic, those who sincerely wanted justice for the oppressed and to right the wrongs of society.

“Today! Tonight! This marks the beginning of the change! The world will be different tomorrow from what it is right now! Why? Because you have listened. Some of you will turn me off, close your minds, and forget my words. But some of you will understand, some of you know that a better world lies ahead, if we work together. We are doing the Lord’s work, we are doing man’s work! Together, hand in hand, and mind in mind, we will change the future! New let us pray.”

The camera pulled back, showing the crowded Temple of Light and dissolved to the spire over it as the prayers of the faithful rose. Strange leaned forward and pressed the button; the image collapsed in upon itself, became a dot and disappeared.

“He’s magnetic,” Clea commented. “You do listen.”

Strange nodded. He had sensed something more than just the personality of the evangelist. He was not certain just what. He stared at the blank gray screen.

Gray.

The color of clouds—gray.

Nightmare was somewhere behind this, Strange knew, but at just what point did he plan to appear? If he thought to make everyone listening to Billie Joe Jacks fall asleep from boredom and invade on a broad front in that manner, he was doomed. Billie Joe seemed to electrify, not bore.

In fact, Billie Joe Jacks was far more electrifying and commanding than he had ever been—curiously powerful. Strange leaned forward and turned on the television set again, getting a curious look from Clea.

There was a newsman with a hand mike, holding it in the face of a famous Protestant minister, an evangelist who had adopted the charismatic image of a television evangelist early, and had risen to international fame. “—and I applaud the Reverend Jacks for his challenging statement. I want to say, here and now, that I support his Crusade for Change. It is time that—”

Clea spoke over the minister. “Everyone is getting on the bandwagon. They see his effect. Remarkable.”

“Indeed,” Strange added.

The network had shifted across the country to interview another famed minister. “Carl Eisenberg here with the Reverend Curtis Smith, of the United Protestant Reformed Church. Doctor Smith, what are your thoughts on the first speech in the Reverend Jacks’s Crusade for Change?”

“Well, Carl, it is a clarion call for unification, there’s no doubt about that. We here at the UPRC have long hoped and prayed for a force to unite all the Christian factions.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Now to Paul Wright, with Richard Cardinal Buttner, in Philadelphia.”

Stephen Strange snapped off the set. The silence deepened for a long moment. “They are getting on the bandwagon fast,” Clea said.

“Aided by the technology he seems to want to destroy,” Strange said softly. But what exactly was the plan?

Chapter Fifteen

“Doctor Strange, this is Alicia Jacks.”

“Yes, Mrs. Jacks, what can I do for you?”

“I hate to be calling you; I know you must have important things to do, but . . .”

“Go on, please,” he said into the telephone.

“It’s Billie Joe. He’s . . . he’s not well.”

“Is the crusade taking that much of his energy?” Strange asked. The well-televised crusade had been taking up much of the airwaves for ten days.

“He’s . . . weak, Doctor Strange. I’ve been giving him the vitamins, seeing he gets rest and all, but . . . he’s so weak in the daytime. He’s . . . he’s aged five years. I don’t know what to do.”

“Would you like me to see him again?”

“Oh, I . . . to be frank, Doctor, I don’t think he’d see you. After . . . after our visit he was, well, very much against you. He called you—no, I shouldn’t.”

“Go on, Mrs. Jacks, it’s all right.”

“Well . . . uh . . . he called you a devil, an acolyte of Satan, things like that.”

“And a charlatan, no doubt.” Strange smiled faintly. “But what can I do for you. I do not practice medicine any longer, you know, Alicia.”

“No, it isn’t . . .” She seemed very hesitant. “It’s . . . it’s not really medical. I think . . . it’s . . . oh, I don’t know how to put it.”

“Psychic?”

“Well, I . . . I just don’t know. He should be well. He’s always been very healthy. We’ve done crusades before, several of them, that were just as demanding, or almost so, anyway. It’s . . . something else, Doctor Strange.”

“I’ll come see him tonight. You are appearing at Madison Square Garden, are you not?”

“Yes. I’ll . . . I’ll have tickets for you at the box office. Or would you prefer to come backstage first?”

“I’d like to get as close as possible, yes.”

“I’ll arrange it. We are scheduled to start at five o’clock, you know? That gives the engineers time to do a bit of videotape editing before we go on the air at eight.”

“I understand. Clea and I shall be there.”

“Thank you, Doctor Strange. I just know you can help.”

Strange hung up the telephone and stood silent for a minute, thinking. Then he went into his library, hunted through the shelves, and found two thick, dusty volumes. He sat down and started searching through their thick parchment pages.

The streets were clogged with cars, taxis and charter buses for blocks in every direction. It was obvious that the Garden would be filled many times over. As Strange and Clea got closer, they could see huge projection screens had been set up beside the marquee and three more had been erected on temporary platforms down the street.

The crowd parted for Strange and his white-haired companion. No one called out in the usual rude New York manner. Their voices fell and they stared, moving aside without jostling, making a path before Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme walked confidently, in full cape and tunic, the horns of his unusual cloak rising above his head in crimson points. The crowd closed behind them and after a few moments their conversation continued. Not one person mentioned the pair that had just passed.

The doorman waved them on, an expression of silent awe on his face, an unusual attitude for someone who had seen costumed rock stars, the world’s champions, politicians, and kings come through his door.

“The Reverend Jacks is that way, sir,” the guard said.

Strange nodded and continued through the passage formed by the outgoing equipment and scenery of the rock group, The Marvelous Madmen, and the incoming movable ring of the championship fight. There was a line of dressing rooms and only one was lighted. The entire backstage was quite empty, except for a few lounging stage technicians and several quiet television cameramen. There was a muted rumble from the direction of the vast main floor, where thousands of the faithful were filing in. Strange saw in the corner a row of card tables set up, with middle-aged men and women behind them, each with a ledger, an adding machine, and a metal box.

“Doctor Strange? Oh, I’m so glad you are here!” Alicia Jacks hurried across the room. She glanced upward, at the filling auditorium. “We’re going on soon. Oh, excuse me; I’ve been with Billie Joe so long, we’ve done so much together, I still say ‘we.’ ” She twisted nervously at her wedding band. “Lately, I’m afraid it hasn’t been ‘we’ at all.”

“Is he ready to see us?” Clea asked softly.

“Well, uh . . .” Alicia glanced at the dressing room. “He’s taking a nap now. He always takes one just before, uh . . . he needs the rest, you know? He hasn’t been lookin’ well. Guess I told you that, I’m sorry.” She looked at her watch. “I better wake him. Come along.”

Strange and Clea followed Mrs. Jacks to the dressing room, where she briskly knocked twice and opened the door. Strange had a quick glimpse of Jacks lying on the single bed, his body arched with tension, his fists knotted at his side, his face contorted in an expression of terror and fear, his eyes bulging. Alicia gave a gasp and instantly Jacks collapsed. His body thumped down into the bed limply, his eyes closed, and his limbs relaxed completely. He looked asleep.

Alicia gave Strange a pleading look and went into the dressing room. “Billie Joe? Honey, it’s me, Alicia?”

The man on the cot stirred and his eyes opened, one at a time. “Oh, hello, my dear. Is it time?”

She gulped and glanced over her shoulder at Strange and Clea. “Uh, yes, it is, dear. Billie Joe, there’s someone here to see you . . .”

Jacks sat up, yawning, a hand over his mouth. “Now, Alicia, you know I don’t like to see anyone before, not even the media people, not even Barbara or Walter. After, dear, after.”

Alicia moved aside and Jacks glanced out the door and froze. “What’s he doing here?” He glared at his wife. “Alicia, I told you this man is a fake. Worse than that, he’s liable to attract the television people. Look at him! It’s a wonder he isn’t on the six o’clock news every night! Or locked away in some funny farm!”

Jacks stood up and stepped quickly to the door, reached out and grabbed it, then slammed it shut in Strange’s face. He turned to castigate his wife when he realized the door hadn’t latched and was swinging open again. Angrily, he turned and did it again, this time carefully latching the door. Again the door swung wide and Billie Joe Jacks was face to face with Dr. Stephen Strange.

“Strange—if that’s your name—I don’t want to have anything to do with you. You are the very opposite of everything I represent! I don’t like you. I don’t mean to be unChristian, you understand, but it is in us all to hate the Devil!”

“Have you been sleeping well?” Strange asked mildly.

“No, but what business is that of yours? I expect to make sacrifices for the cause! I’ll go on making sacrifices until we have triumphed! Until the Crusade for Change does something about this world we live in!”

“Oh, I’m sure the world will not be the same if you succeed,” Strange said. An expression crossed the sorcerer’s face that Clea could not define. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you before a performance,” Strange apologized.

Jacks glared at him with an icy expression. “It is not a performance—though perhaps you would not know the difference!” He glared at his wife. “Get my suit ready, I’ll change now. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” he said with heavy sarcasm and reentered the dressing room. This time the door stayed shut.

Strange turned away and Clea matched his pace. She looked up at him, frowning. “Stephen? You sensed something?”

“Yes, I did, Clea. There are strong forces at work here. But I cannot fully comprehend their direction. Jacks is a focal point; that much I know.”

There was a flurry of activity at the backstage door and a big Negro entered, striding like a black king, with a number of people asking for his autograph and calling out his name. The big man walked on without paying them any attention at all. Strange pulled Clea into the shadows. The black giant strode purposefully to Jacks’s dressing room and knocked, then entered without waiting.

“I know him,” Clea said. “That’s Joe Peerson, the heavyweight contender.”

Strange nodded. “And the one I saw in Billie Joe’s dream.” Clea glanced at him in concern. Strange looked around. “The other? The dark, nameless one? Where might he be?”

To Be Continued on Wednesday...
at
Seduction of the Innocent

DOCTOR STRANGE: NIGHTMARE "Chapters Ten & Eleven"

Continuing the saga from Chapter Nine (Read HERE if you missed it)...

...we continue as Doctor Strange (actually his astral form) explores another dimension...

Chapter Ten

Stephen!

The clouds swept by, distant and untouched.

His mind was tired, his body battered . . .

. . . Stephen . . .

“Stephen!”

Dr. Strange awoke back in his body. Clea was bending over him. “Stephen! Oh, thank the powers! You’re back!”

“Yes,” he whispered, conscious that his voice was weak.

“Stephen, I was worried, you were gone so long!”

“It’s all right,” he said, smiling weakly. He put his hand on hers, looking up at her as she bent over him. “It’s Nightmare, Clea. He’s behind it all.”

“Nightmare!”

“The dream dimension. I don’t know what he is up to . . . or rather, he’s up to the same old thing—invading this dimension—but I don’t know how he hopes to accomplish this.”

Strange looked across at the sleeping Billie Joe Jacks and his wife. He made a small gesture and the evangelist blinked and awoke. “Hey?” He looked around and, seeing his wife, smiled automatically. He stared at Strange. “Well?”

“I’m not certain, Reverend Jacks,” Strange said, rising from his chair. His physical body felt weak; probably sympathetic reaction to the immense drain on his energy when in astral projection. “There are dark forces at work here.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Jacks said, making a disparaging gesture. “That’s hokum.”

Alicia, his wife, put a hand on his arm. “Billie Joe, I know Doctor Strange. He wouldn’t fool around about a thing like this.”

The minister looked at his wife in frank amazement. “Alicia, I would never have thought it of you. This man is a charlatan. Look at all this nonsense,” he said, gesturing around at the ancient books and the other paraphernalia. “Show biz, my dear. Look at the way he dresses—show biz; impress the gullible. No Christian would be caught by all this. No, now let me finish. I shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have consulted this . . .” He shot a look at Strange. “. . . This charlatan.”

“Reverend Jacks,” Clea began, but the minister cut her off.

“I don’t want any mention made of my visit here. I’d be a laughing stock. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve just been having a little trouble sleeping, that’s all. A temporary condition caused by my commitment to the Lord.” He stood up and reached down for his wife. “Come, Alicia. We have work to do, work we have neglected for this . . . this nonsense.”

“Billie Joe—”

“Shush.” He looked at Strange. “Send me your bill. I shall pay it, only because my wife foolishly made this appointment, but I want no more said about this. Understood?”

“Of course,” Strange said. He made a slight bow, but his eyes glittered.

“Stephen, I—” Jacks cut his wife off with a noise of annoyance, as he took her arm. Wong appeared and escorted them out. Clea looked at Strange, who seemed to be far away.

“What do we do now?”

Strange did not reply. Clea knew better than to intrude. After a few moments Strange broke his silence and walked back to his chair. “You look tired,” Clea said. Strange nodded. “I’ll have Wong make us something to eat.”

Strange nodded absently. His mind was juggling all the many strange elements of this puzzling case. What was Nightmare’s plan? The purpose was clear, but the means were still uncertain.

Wong brought food and Strange ate without tasting what he was putting into his body. Fuel, just fuel. When Clea suggested he go to sleep and rest, Stephen Strange felt a sudden pang of distant fear.

. . . Sleep . . .

. . . perchance to dream . . .

. . . to dream was to lie vulnerable . . .

To be vulnerable was to be defeated, to die.

What had Pushkin said? “Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.” Could that be true? Not in the terror world of nightmares.

Tennessee Williams had written, “A persistent dream has meaning, and is sometimes fulfilled.”

Strange stood up and walked to his wall of books. He sought for and selected a volume and opened it to the words of Dr. Michel Jouvey, a famous brain specialist.

“When people dream during the slumbering process,” he read, “they are really not quite asleep nor yet fully awake but in a third dimensional category. Dreaming occurs in all mammals, and to some extent in birds, but not at all in reptiles. Cats spend about twenty to twenty-five percent of their ten-minute catnaps in this dream state, which is about the same percentage that human beings do during their periods of sleep.”

Strange closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. A fifth to a quarter of the time humans were vulnerable. They opened portals to the dream dimension and, in essence, invited Nightmare in. But there must be other conditions to be met, or Nightmare would have invaded earlier, with greater success.

Strange thought of what he had once read, but could not remember the author. “The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.” And Ralph Waldo Emerson had written, “We wake from one dream into another dream.” Joseph Heller had written, “Dreams are merciless: they come upon you when you’re asleep.”

They were all vulnerable. Sooner or later, everyone had to sleep—perchance to dream.

Dr. Stephen Strange turned and strode off to bed.

Chapter Eleven

“Master?”

“Yes, Wong?” Strange turned with a slight frown, reluctantly lifting his eyes from a large book.

“A Miss Hartley to see you, sir.”

“I don’t know any Miss Hartley. Please tell her I am very busy.” His gaze dropped again to the arcane formulas of Pournellian logic.

“Why, Doctor, what a blow to my ego!”

At the sound of the melodious voice, Strange looked up. A beautiful woman stood in the doorway. Even the phlegmatic Wong seemed mesmerized by her beauty. She stepped into the room with a charming smile. “I thought everyone would know Michele Hartley! How perfectly delightful to discover someone who is not a fan!” She put her purse on the table and walked around the room looking at various objects, knowing it gave Strange a chance to look her over.

What Stephen Strange saw was quite, quite gorgeous. He was not so unworldly as not to recognize the highest achievements of the arts of dressmaking, makeup, and possibly even plastic surgery.

“Thank you, Wong,” he said.

The servant withdrew, but at a slower rate than usual.

“Is this anyone I know?” Michele asked, touching a gold-banded skull with a delicate finger. “A producer, perhaps?” She smiled over her shoulder at Strange.

“That was Alantripi, an Atlantean sage.”

“I thought Atlantis was a myth,” she smiled, turning toward him. Her perfume was faint, but persistent.

“Many do,” Strange said. “May I ask what has brought you here?”

“You have, Stephen Strange.” She stepped up to him, touched the Eye of Agamotto lightly, smiling, then walked away. She ran a fingertip across the roughened cover of a metal-edged leather box carved with ancient symbols. “I thought perhaps we should meet, you and I.”

“And you are . . . ?”

“Michele Hartley.”

“I hope you will forgive me, but the name does not . . .”

“They said you might not know who I was.” She stopped and faced him squarely. “I am what they call a superstar. I could have sent my representatives here instead—my agent, my business manager, perhaps even a studio vice-president—but I thought your status deserved my presence.” She shrugged, smiled, and made a little moue with her mouth. “It seems I am not quite as famous as I thought. Please don’t tell the people at Variety or the Reporter. I’ve gotten one Sour Apple Award already—I don’t want another.”

“Miss Hartley—”

“Ms., please, Doctor.” She walked around the table, looking at the wooden globe with its faded maps of an ancient Earth. She stopped by a pedestal that held a silver-embossed statue of the goddess Astarte. “Doctor Strange, I have a proposition to make to you—a business proposition.” She smiled again, briefly. Her perfume was lovely.

“You and I, Doctor Strange, could be the biggest thing in films since, since Tracy and Hepburn, Gable and Lombard, Laurel and Hardy, Travolta and—”

“Ms. Hartley!”

She stopped and smiled softly. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Are you proposing that you and I act in a . . . a what?”

“A movie, Doc—the cine-mah; the flicks. Ten million three is the budget, Universal will distribute. I can get Goldman to do the script, Orson has expressed interest in directing, and—”

“Miss Hartley!”

“Ms.”

“Ms. Hartley, I am not an actor. I—”

“I know that, but we can send you to Lee Strasberg for a few weeks. You have presence, Doc—star quality. Anyone can see that. Merlin will be the biggest—”

“Merlin?”

She looked at him, then laughed. “Of course! I forgot! I’m sorry. No wonder I have a business manager! Merlin the magician, you know? Court of King Arthur, that whole thing?”

“I am acquainted with the mage in question.” He looked at her closely. “You are not presuming to do some sort of film about the . . . no!” He glared at her.

“Hey, wait a sec, Doc! It’s all in public domain. Guy probably wasn’t even real. That was fifteen hundred years ago, maybe more. No conflict.”

“Merlin! The subject of a motion picture?”

“Sure, it’s a natural. You’d play Merlin, of course. Say, the special-effects guys will flip out over you! I’m going to play Guinevere, the queen, and we are talking to—get this—Richard Burton about playing King Arthur. Camelot, you know? He did it on Broadway. Marvelous, marvelous, especially now that he’s off the juice. Getting to the right age, too.”

“Ms. Hartley, you had better go.”

“Listen, Doctor Strange, we haven’t gotten to the best part yet. You and I will have two nude scenes, one where you come by this little idyllic stream and Sir Modred attempts to—”

“Nude scenes?”

“Sure. They even have them in PG pictures now. Discreet, of course, but my public expects it. There’ll be one where you summon up the forces of white magic to fight the black magic of Modred, who—”

“Modred was not a magician!”

“And I’ll have at least one with Richard, I mean, King Arthur. But don’t you worry, they will be tastefully done. All my nude scenes are.”

“Ms. Hartley, I—”

“You’ll want to know if you, well, can handle a thing like that. Men are far more shy than women, I’ve found.” Without a moment’s hesitation, she reached up, touched a button at each shoulder and the pink dress slid to the floor like pink champagne going downhill. She wore nothing beneath it.

“What do you think?” She posed with hands on hips, then pirouetted around to give him a back view, looking at him over her shoulder. “Doc? Still pretty good, huh?”

“Ms. Hartley . . . I think you had better go.”

She turned around and stepped close to him. Her perfume was even stronger, mixed with another subtle odor. She put her hands on his chest, to either side of the Eye of Agamotto. “Stephen . . . ?”

His expression hardened. “Ms. Hartley, please put on your clothes, and—”

“Stephen!” It was Clea, standing in the doorway with an expression of surprise and hatred.

“Clea, I . . . this is Ms. Michele Hartley. She, uh, came to talk to me about doing a movie about Merlin. You know, Merlin? King Arthur, Excalibur, Morgan le Fey, the Round Table?”

“Is that why she is naked?”

“I’m not naked, Miss, I’m nude.” To Stephen she whispered, “Is she somebody?”

“She is Clea,” he whispered, then stopped himself and continued in a normal voice. “She is Clea, daughter of Umar, and is my student and . . . uh . . . friend.”

Michele looked around Strange at Clea and flashed her a bright smile. “Do you mind? We’re rehearsing.”

“Rehearsing for what? Caligula and Nero stopped giving parties some time ago.”

“Clever, clever. Stephen, tell her to go away. We’re talking business.”

“Uh, Clea, if you’ll assist Miss, uh, Ms. Hartley, I’ll be in the, uh, in the other room.”

“Oh, Stephen!” the actress said quickly. “Now if I’ve gone too far, just say so. I just didn’t think anyone as far out as you, would be, uh, straight. I’ll get dressed.”

Strange walked out, not looking at Clea, who watched the voluptuous actress dress. Her expression had become faintly angry, but mostly blank.

“You and Doc Strange live here together, huh?” Michele said, pulling the dress up over her hips and lifting the straps. “Very nice. He’s a touch square, but hey, that’s not all bad. You ever thought of being an actress? Great figure, you know; oh, of course you know—a girl always knows. That hair, though, that’s a bit far out. The cameras and lights will make you white, know what I mean?”

Clea did not respond and Michele finished doing up her straps. “Well, there.” She took a script from her purse and put it on the table. “Here’s the suggested script. Ask him to make notes, will you? Things he likes, things he doesn’t? And maybe, well, I’ve heard . . . I mean, if he could mark places where he might supply the special effects. I mean, well, I’ve heard the doctor could, um, do things, you know?”

“Did you bring a coat?”

“No.”

The two women glared at each other, then Michele started for the door.

“He isn’t coming back, is he?”

Clea shook her head.

“Well, okay. I’ll . . . I’ll call back, all right?”

“This way, Ms. Hartley.”

They left, and a few moments later Clea returned. She picked up the script and read the name across the cover. She walked over and tossed the thick wad of stapled paper into the fireplace. It caught slowly and burned smokily for some time.

To Be Continued on Tuesday...
at
Seduction of the Innocent