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By Root 534 0

statesman and should at least be made his secretary–especially now with the Snake thundering to rise. He had also a tremendous vengeance to pay Baroque–Baroque, early an idealist in his first efforts to get into the Castle among the Wizard’s Forces after that initial discovery of an innocent Doctor Sax manuscript in the winter night that led him, by speculation and investigation, to further discoveries–Baroque became disillusioned and a Dovist, when he saw how really evil some of the Evilists were– Finally when he learned how Boaz Jr. got his puppets he revolted and had the news brought to the Wizard. The Wizard wearily ordered a stop to the puppet shows —Boaz Jr. had by this time finally wormed his way into an amateur show at the Victory Theater on Middlesex Street near the depot and was being booed off the stage by the parents in the Saturday afternoon audience as he snickered in his long black shoes at the footlights, tall & strange–Dicky Hampshire was the usher– Things were thrown at him, he had to run: the little kids who’d been in other acts of the amateur show with him were now running into the audience to join their parents. And that was when the news came that the Wizard was giving orders: no more puppet shows–so Boaz Jr. plotted the end of Baroque– His next plan was to make blood illegal so the Vampires could be jailed to make it ten years’ mandatory sentence for possession. The commotion we were now witnessing was the culmination of Boaz Jr.’s first great triumph– But soon it was apparent that none of this would matter, up heaved the parapet of the pit as an earthquake seemed to strike the Castle and Snake Hill.

Howling roars from the snake pipes rose.

11

GREAT MOLE CAME FARTING FROM THE GROUND. Everybody ran. Milky white horror flowed in the air. Only Sax wasn’t afraid. He ran back to the parapet, which was now uptilted, and stood gripping one crazy rail and reached for his magic herb powders. All the whiteness vanished when Sax jolted that vacuum ball–normal gray of the world returned. It was like walking out of a technicolor movie and suddenly on the gray suit grit of the sidewalk you see small shining bits of glass in the neon lights of disappointed Saturday night. Screech went a wild honk, it rose like a siren from the hot pit, there was an answering deeper rumbling subterranean honk, more like a burp of heavy sounding hell in his Huge Goop– Some courtiers flung anguished hands across their eyes to hear the Snake make voice. It was a tremendous experience full of shuddering and general horror in my bones and in the stones of the Castle. The earth swayed. I wondered what all Lowell was doing–I saw that it was daylight. Sunday morning, the bells of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc calling Gene Plouffe, Joe Plouffe and all the others-There were no explosions in Pawtucketville Peaceful Sunday Morning–impossibility in the choked out grass outside the church where the men stand and smoke after Mass–Leo Martin comes up to St. Louis the Shadow who’s been saying his Rosary with his hawk lips, says “A tu un cigarette?”(Got a cigarette?)

But Doctor Sax stood at the Parapet, leering down with an insane laugh–his cloaks were black again, his figure was half hidden in the gloom. “Ah priests of the hidden Gethsemane” he was shouting. “Oh molten world of jaw-fires drooling lead–Pittsburgh Steelworks of Paradise–heaven on earth, earth till you die– Law’s amighty as they said in Montana–but these old Doctor Sax eyes do see a horrid mess of snapdragon shit and pistolwagon blood floating in that wild element where the Snake’s made his being and drink for all nigh on ta– Saviour in the Heaven! Come and lift me up—”

He sounded delirious and incoherent even to me.

All the guards and Noblemen who a moment before had been wrangling around the arrest of Amadeus Baroque were now lost in swirls of crowds of them, it amazed me to see the extent and numbers of the Wizard’s Evilist Colony.

Then I heard the screams of thousands of gnomes in the unbelievably immense cellar beneath the Castle, a cellar so enormous, so full of coffins, and levels,