Standing in the middle of that turret was the deflated envelope, gondola and burner of a hot-air balloon.

The Stranger took one window and the Kid another. They fired methodically at the mimes climbing the walls. The mimes mimed getting hurt. The mimes fell, hitting invisible obstacles. The Conjurer attended to the Fat Lady. Her envelope inflated slowly. Gas jets hissed from the burner. The roof had fallen down years in the past, and been covered over with a tarp to keep out the elements. Now the Conjurer tore it off (with a flourish that went unnoticed by his audience, who were otherwise engaged) and the envelope expanded outwards towards the dark skies.

“Come on!” the Conjurer said. He hopped inside the gondola. The other two kept firing. One of the mimes had almost reached the turret. The Kid was out of bullets and with a shout of disgust he pulled out a knife and stabbed the creature in the neck. The mime gave him the finger, then clutched his neck, which was bleeding an unhealthy green.

“Got something to say?” the Kid screamed. He plunged the knife down again and the mime let go of the wall and fell, hitting two others on his way down. The Kid abandoned the window and climbed into the gondola. The Fat Lady was rising fast.

The Stranger sighted down the barrel of his gun. He hesitated, his finger on the trigger. Caught in his crosshairs was a human figure rising into the air towards him at some speed. It was the man he had last seen playing “March of the Gladiators” on a piano. The man rose into the air, his mouth open impossibly wide, and his shadow fell down below him like massive entrails spilling from an animated corpse. The shadow congealed and shuddered as it held up the man like a hand puppet, pushing him higher and higher into the sky.

The Stranger took the shot.

The bullet caught the man clear between the eyes and went clean through the back of the skull. The corpse shuddered, hanging in the air like the condemned at the end of a rope. But it didn’t stop, and the shadow below opened the corpse’s mouth and a scream of rage, or perhaps it was triumph, burst forth as the shadow operated the dead man’s lungs to produce it. The Stranger took out a stick of dynamite, bit the fuse to shorten it, lit the fuse, and dropped the stick of dynamite without even looking. He ran for the gondola.

There was a small explosion. Hands reached out for him as he stumbled. The gondola hovered overhead, but the Kid and the Conjurer, working in tandem, got hold of the Stranger and lifted him up. He flopped down to the floor as the Fat Lady rose, higher and higher into the air.