Chapter 41 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 41 — Jola the Yule Cat

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 40 — The Book of Voodoo · Next: Chapter 42 — Sharp-Elbows · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

I pulled myself onto the crumbling edge of wet asphalt.

Summary

'Entering Dallas County, Iowa' — five feet of asphalt breaking off behind Carl's heels; Cliffhanger ('I will not point out how disgusting your toenails are'). Farmhouses, a trailer park, half a commercial farm, a silo at the edge. Invisible moths on a roof; 'Your equipped cloak has aggravated the Nightgaunt'; a quarter hob-lobber that breaks both rules (never at invisible things, never on unstable ground) — the roof, the chimney, a Ford and the driveway slide into the sea, a crack down the road. No Mongo, no headset. Donut summons Katia's card: black sky, digital snow over real Christmas lights, jingle bells slowed and warped, a distant opera dirge, white fireworks, a garbage-can candle lighting on the head of a house-sized, dirty-brown Persian: 'He hungers for the indolent and the naked […] And for the sweet, sweet taste of severed toddler tongue. It's Jola the Yule Cat!' The Visitor, level 70, Deckmaster Seven — a Nightgaunt, peaceful vegetarian nocturnal 'bats mixed with Neanderthals mixed with donkeys' from a Nullian world, ridden like pack animals by the Grays (the dolphin comparison), one brought illegally to Earth in 1903 and shotgunned across Iowa: an urban legend. The candle reveals six level-30 Quench Moths, who dive into it and die. 'Hvar eru fötin þín?' The enraged demon has eyes only for Carl's cloak and never plays a card; the cat pins it, shakes it, eats it, and says more to Carl in Icelandic ('Hvar eru buxurnar þínar?'), untranslated. 'Is your cloak made out of his mother or something?' Donut, passing on Katia's view that they got the folklore wrong: 'The real Yule Cat is a big grump, but this one is quite the serial killer' — the candle sees invisibility; naked or child opponents make him stronger; 'It makes me wish our entire deck was cats.' Loot: eighteen totems including a legendary level-110 Demon Queen (a crowned ant), ten Lamp snares (ten seconds' paralysis and a glow — the moths' strategy, Imogen's method). Opponents failing to play their own decks is common now; one of Li Jun's ate his cards. Carl's arms shake and he pretends they do not. A hangar-length barn, the silo tumbling off the cliff, feed pouring over the edge like a waterfall, a warm door: tens of thousands of white turkeys (level 5: 'Roast at 325 […] You should step on it'), heaters on overdrive for an Iowa winter now in Florida, birds dying in the heat — the first living creatures taken from the past, a rule broken, the heat probably not on purpose. A spiked ogre deckmaster frozen in the throng. Plans: kill them all, pied-piper them off the cliff, a tractor. Mongo's squeal of joy — a weed whacker through the buffet, heads bitten, bodies tossed ('like some common circus performer'; 'It's just like you with Japanese porn'). One turkey his teeth pass through — 'That's not a memory ghost' — Combat Started, Mongo drops unconscious, every turkey falls silent and turns, the boss turkey flies to the rafters with a deck as the ogre wakes with his own. 'Prepare for Trouble! […] And make it double!' — two deckmasters who 'work really, really well together'; prize a turkey deep-fryer and the archives of Grandma's Cooking Recipes on Facebook. 'Gobble-Gobble, Bitches. Welcome to Iowa.'

Characters

• Carl — Breaks his own bomb rules; watched by a giant cat; shaking hands.
• Princess Donut — Wishes the whole deck were cats; 'You're going to ruin your dinner!'
• Jola — The Yule Cat: a house-sized Persian with a candle, hunting the naked and lazy.
• Mongo — A turkey massacre, then unconscious.
• The Visitor — A Nightgaunt too angry at a cloak to play.
• Katia Grim — Gave the cat away; knew the folklore was wrong.

Locations

• Dallas County, Iowa — A farm and trailer park on top of a mud mountain in the Keys; a turkey barn.

Motifs

• T'Ghee totems — Jola; eighteen totems in one enemy deck; Lamp; two deckmasters at once.
• The ghosts of Earth — Live turkeys, the first living things pulled from the past, cooking in their own heaters.
• The three phases — Deckmaster seven and the double eight-and-nine.
• The river in Carl's head — Arms shaking; 'I needed to keep my head about me.'