The Further Adventures of The Joker (41 page)

A
s if in a dream only one man can know, he tastes the dirt of the alley he crawls through, the filth of it mixing with the hot taste of his own blood and the cold taste of his own defeat. Laughter, mad and maniacal, peals from the dark brick walls, diminishing even the heaven’s thunder and the white-noise hiss of the nightstorm’s downpour. In this place, at this time, the Batman’s reign is ending.

And the Joker laughs.

Like a dying animal, propelled by instinct unknowing of reality, Batman drags himself across the rain-slicked paving stones of the nameless Park Row alley. His trembling fingers search for gaps between the stones. His breath coalesces in small pale clouds, smeared by rain. His failing muscles contract, and he pulls himself forward another few inches. Another few useless inches. For in this place, at this time, he has nowhere left to hide.

The laughter is like bullets.

Batman hears footsteps behind him, splashing, spritely, like a dancer in the rain. He recognizes their childlike rhythm.

The Joker skips toward their final confrontation.

Batman rolls against the soaking ground. There is a dull metallic clink as his bullet-pocked emblem slips from his chestplate to fall into a puddle of mud and garbage, lost forever, the bat eclipsed.

The Joker howls.

Batman heaves himself against a formless mass of rain-decayed debris. The Joker stands before him, long face curtained by the sheet of rain that falls from the wide brim of his hat. But clearly through that curtain, blood-red lips curl in glee and wild eyes glow with madness fueled by genius beyond measure.

“Caped Crusader,” the Joker sings. His laughter is hysterical.

Batman wills his battered arm to obey him, sends it to the belt, fifth compartment, second layer, feels for a familiar shape. But the Batarangs are gone, expended uselessly an hour ago as the rain began to pour. His hand fumbles to the third compartment, first layer. But the ampules are exhausted. All the compartments, all the layers, all are empty. Everything used up except for the binary chemicals in his hollowed heels. But his broken legs lie unmoving, and his last remaining weapons are forever out of reach.

The Joker steps closer, kicking playfully at a puddle. “World’s greatest detective,” he sniggers as if it were the punchline to God’s greatest joke. He raises his arm.

Batman narrows his eyes against the rain that streams across his cowl, forcing himself to focus on the Joker’s hand. But he sees nothing with eyes still blurred by the beating he has endured.

“Dark Knight,” the Joker screams as his hand lifts higher, a maestro’s command for the final crescendo. A volley of lightning streaks down in answer to the night’s new ruler and the monstrous arcs strobe over the alley.

In the flashes Batman sees others standing where shadows had hidden them. But his technology is spent, his body has betrayed him, and he is helpless.

The Joker leans forward, chortling with delight. “Stupid little boy!” It is the final insult. The ultimate joke. The Batman revealed as he always feared he would be.

Batman’s lips tremble with the cold, with shock, with loss beyond anything he has felt before. He cannot form the words he needs to say, the apology he must make for the failure his life has been.

The others in the shadows point at him and stare.

The Joker laughs again and brings his other hand up to clap against the raised one, purple gloves meeting with a thunder of their own. “Hit it, boys,” he merrily commands and the lightning fades before the onslaught of the searchlights that burst into life atop the surrounding buildings. The tableau is fixed, the mask of night removed from the Batman’s defeat.

The sudden brilliance brings physical pain. Batman hears the whirr of motor-driven cameras and sees the light-fogged outlines of television camera crews moving forward in the rain.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” the Joker intones, then breaks into mindless giggles. “You may wonder why I’ve asked you here today.”

Batman senses the madman moving to stand at his side but can do nothing. Then suddenly he knows what the Joker plans to do. Everything else was nothing compared to the final defeat that faces him.

“What the Joker promises . . .” the Joker announces. He bends down beside the fallen man in black.

Batman feels cold cloth-covered fingers on his face. At first they are gentle, almost a parting caress, and then they are an unrelenting pressure, pushing hard against his bloodied cheek and deep beneath his cowl.

“. . . the Joker delivers!”

The cowl separates from the Batman’s face, pulling, cutting, ripping skin, lifting away, crushed in a purple fist.

Batman’s cry of rage, of pain, of loss, is incomprehensible.

The cameras whirr.

“Look on my works, ye mighty,” the Joker shrieks as the dark cowl bursts asunder in the light, “and
despair!”
And the reporters gasp as they peer beneath the Batman’s mask and at last see that Batman is revealed as . . .

Batman’s waking scream of anguish echoes in the dark shadows of his lair. He is drenched in sweat. His body trembles. No sleep for ten days. Because of the nightmares.

Because of the Joker.

Further sleep is impossible this night and he knows he approaches the threshold where even his superbly trained body will exhibit sleep-deprivation deficiencies. He arises and cloaks himself in cowl and costume.

This time, the Joker’s science is beyond him and he has only one chance to free himself from the effects of the Joker’s latest weapon. He must return to where it began. He must return to where the answer may yet lie. He imagines the Joker’s laughter in his lair, and it chills him.

The Batman must return to Arkham.

Sunlight filters in through the wind-tossed leaves of ivy crowded too closely around the leaded glass window of the chief psychiatrist’s office. Dr. Bartholomew seems not to notice. The grounds of Arkham Asylum are always rich and dense and overgrown, never in control. The grounds of Arkham Asylum are like its inmates.

The psychiatrist studies the charts spread over his desk. A man cloaked in black waits in the corner of the office, beyond the window’s shaft of sunlight, wrapped in his webbed cape, protected by his mask. There is impatience in his stillness.

Bartholomew looks up, adjusting his glasses, twin round circles of glass turning white in the glare from the window. He is bald, pink, featureless, with pursed lips like a cupid’s. His finger taps a gas chromatograph printout. “I’ve seen a compound something like this before.”

The Batman steps into the sunlight. His costume stays as dark as always, swallowing the light. “The Joker’s venom.”

“Ah, yes,” Bartholomew says. He smiles himself, nodding his head nervously. “I’ve conducted autopsies on victims of that. Extraordinary chemical. Brilliant man.”

The Batman’s silence encompasses the room.

“All things considered, of course,” Bartholomew adds quickly. He looks back to his charts.

“You know how the Joker venom works?” Batman asks.

“The textbook explanation,” Bartholomew says without looking up. “Absorbed through the lungs, carried by the bloodstream into the brain. Direct stimulation to the portions of the amygdala controlling emotional responses. In the case of Joker venom, the stimulation leads to an unrestrained feeling of . . . good spirits. Well-being. Uncontrolled laughter as a sequela. Incredible knowledge of neurochemistry. Quite impressive.”

“Victims die of cardiac arrhythmia and suffocation.” The Batman’s voice is as dark as his cape.

Bartholomew stares up at him for a long time. “We all die, Mr. Batman. At least the Joker’s victims die happy.”

There is the sound of creaking leather as Batman closes his fists, considering his reply. “How is this compound similar to the Joker venom?” he asks at last, fists opening back into hands for the moment.

“By ‘this,’ you mean the compound to which you were exposed when you last fought the Joker?”

“Yes.”

Bartholomew leans back in his red-leather-covered chair. The old wood complains. He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose, gazing up at the age-darkened patterned plaster of the ceiling. “According to my analysis, this new compound has the same general molecular structure as Joker venom so I would assume it, too, would be absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs and then be able to cross the blood-brain barrier.”

“To stimulate portions of the amygdala.”

“Exactly.” Bartholomew studies what little he can see of Batman’s expression beneath the mask. “Have you had bouts of extreme and . . . inappropriate emotional responses since your exposure to the compound?”

“Yes.”

“Care to provide details?”

“No.”

Bartholomew smiles, a nervous tic. “General parameters, perhaps?”

“Disruptive dreams.”

“Nightmares?”

“They could be called that.”

Bartholomew leans forward, hunching over his desk, hands clasped together. “That a mind like his should be locked away here, and not turned loose at MIT or DARPA or . . .”

The Batman looms over the desk. The shadow of his cowl falls across the little man.

“The compound is stimulating other areas of the amygdala than those affected by Joker venom, Mr. Batman—the portions that control your reaction to senseless fear, to danger, to personal threat.”

“The things I fear, Dr. Bartholomew, are not senseless. They are precise and specific. How could any compound trigger such exact stimuli?”

Bartholomew waves his hand, the fluttering of a frightened bird. “You don’t understand, Mr. Batman. The Joker has gone far beyond your understanding of biochemistry and psychology. It is
your
brain that provides the details of your nightmares. What the Joker’s compound does while you’re asleep is trigger the release of enormous amounts of chemicals and hormones just as if you had been badly frightened. Your sleeping mind, having to deal with this terrible feeling unleashed as the fear chemicals spread through your system, creates an extremely detailed dream of the thing you fear most in order to ‘explain,’ if you will, the feeling and its intensity.” Bartholomew smiles and holds it. His teeth are small, pearl-like, perfect. “You see, the genius of the Joker has made it possible for one compound to affect each person differently. Each individual exposed to it will experience his or her own worst nightmare.” He claps his hands in delight. “Oh, I must ask him if we might write a paper on it together. Has he written other papers before, do you know?”

“Will it wear off?”

Bartholomew grudgingly looks back at his charts. After a moment, he sighs. “Technically, yes. But practically, no.”

“Explain.”

The nervous smile appears again. “The compound should take about six months to be fully metabolized by your body.”

“So in six months the nightmares will stop?”

“Oh, dear me, they’ll stop sooner than that, Mr. Batman.” He holds his smile. “If you don’t develop an antagonist for this compound within another two to three weeks, you’ll die. Of exhaustion, insanity . . . whatever.”

Bartholomew shakes his head as he folds up his charts. “Bloody genius,” he whispers to himself. “Incredible.”

The Batman’s outspread hand descends on the doctor’s desk, covering over the papers there. “I want to see him.”

Bartholomew at last looks shocked. He answers in outrage. “Mr. Batman! You of all people should know that’s impossible. Here at Arkham our goal is to help our patients over their past troubles. To point them toward the future as fully functioning, well-adjusted citizens able to—”

The black glove becomes a fist. “Now.”

Bartholomew stands, all five feet four of him. He glares back at the eyes burning within the black mask. “As his psychiatrist, I cannot permit it. A confrontation with you could destroy everything Arkham has achieved with him in his long years of therapy.”

“Between his escapes. His crimes. His murders.”

“One must have hope, Mr. Batman.”

“I
will
see him.”

“No, you will
not.
I forbid it. And I can have an injunction drawn up to keep you away from him. And away from Arkham.” Bartholomew straightens the charts on his desk, tapping them into perfect order. “Besides, he specifically asked that you not be allowed to bother him.”

“Because he knows,” Batman says.

“Knows what?”

“That he’s the only one who can help me.”

Bartholomew takes a clipboard from the side of his desk. “Perhaps you should have thought of that last week before you beat the poor man senseless and dragged him in here again. No wonder he’s afraid of you.” The little man marches to an ornate wooden door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Batman, I have my rounds.”

Batman stands helplessly by the window, staring out at the setting sun, seeing darkness grow among the thick bushes and gardens and high stone walls. Arkham’s darkness. Like its grounds, like its inmates, rich and dense and uncontrolled.

Night is falling. The time of dreams. He makes the only decision he can.

“You know, Harv,” the Joker says, “you’re not
half
the man you used to be.” Deep in the ancient cellars of Arkham, the Joker’s laughter echoes down the long, dark corridors. From one of the other high-security cells, something wails in answer.

The other patient in the recreation lounge turns slowly away from the ceiling-mounted television. The half of the patient’s face not corroded by acid smiles calmly. The other half, what little remains within it that is recognizably human, drools. The two-faced man reaches down the side of his leg and pulls out the slim shining needle of a commissary spoon, filed to a deadly point.

In one hand, he holds the weapon ready to strike. With his other hand, he expertly flips a silver dollar into the air and snatches it in flight. Then he studies the coin in his open palm and the half smile goes away. The man with two faces slips the weapon back into his sock, gets up, and leaves the lounge.

The Joker cackles. “Hey, Harv!” he calls out to the departing patient. “I think you’ve
flipped!”
He chokes with laughter, pounding his hand against the side of his chair.