Just North of Nowhere (49 page)

A gate – a two-story clown face – puffed up in front of Roy. White, green, red, yellow, the face barred the way; the ferocious joy of its mouth was wide with welcome. Above, a banner in red and gold Barnum letters:

BEDLAM AND SWATHE’S

CHAOS MENAGERIE & GRAND GUIGNOL EXTRAVAGANZA

Below, in blue, edged in silver lightning:

Otocar Bedlam and Abner Swathe, Props.

Old Ken rushed full-tilt through the grin. The carnival swallowed him. No fuss!

Roy had never seen a carnival. Not his part of the world. For several moments he thought of going back for Leslie.

A voice in his head shoved at him:
You’re holding the gold-lettered, silver bordered, one-time, one boy ONLY free pass,
it said
.

He reached in his pocket. He was.

For you and you alone! Run now…we’re gone upon return. Passed upon, we’re gone forever. Then…

Then the voice quit.

“Then what?!” he yelled.

Well then, you’ll never know, will ya?
It said.

“Know what? What’ll I never know?!” There was nothing but the calliope’s bray and crash and the hiss and chatter of ride-wheels. “What do I care!” he called over the silence in his head.

But he came. The mouth widened, opened over him, and in a couple steps, it was behind. Somewhere, a turnstile clacked,
ker-ching
. He saw nothing, no one asked for a dime – or for his goldleafed, silver bordered one-boy only whatever which he held in his hand – but the air had a sudden smell of week-old sweat and thousand year-old bodies, of fresh-cut pine and newly-sized canvas, he breathed electric spark and steel-hot oil, he caught a whiff of paint and grease, burnt popcorn and sticky sugar, of frying spuds and grilling dogs turning in their drippings. Beneath his feet the grass was gone, he walked on sawdust, the place wrapped him.

Calliope sang: “In the morning, in the evening…

Carnie folk and roustabouts busied by.

“…Ain’t we got fun…” the place sang.

But they don’t
, he thought,
they’ve got no fun! They’re doing it for doing-it sake! Something missing
, he realized,
something there isn’t...

Old Ken ran ahead. On a mission, it seemed. As he passed, long tents arose along the midway, wheels of fortune ratcheted into being, ring-toss pitches unfolded, slopping with a thousand goldfish bowls in a thousand colors, all empty of flopping fish. Cheyenne Pete’s Sharpshootin’ Quick Draw Doom Game clattered in a loose-chain rattle. No bears, no lions, no rabbits, nothing chattered by to shoot at. The world ahead of Roy petaled open, the muscles that sweated it into place and smoothed it out, no more than ghost and mist.

He passed a large tent. The canvas top and sides puffed in, sighed out. Above, a long, dark pendant unfolded, rolled, sagged:
Chaosium!
it sometimes said, at others,
Gran Guignol Extravaganza
. The opening was wide, dark, but it was silent inside.

Sad
, he thought,
all of it so..
.

Ahead, Ken had stopped. He stared at Thor’s Hammer-Bang. A giant breath of a man raised an airy wooden war hammer above his head, held it for a moment, sucked in, then brought it down. The clanger bounced a skimpy few feet along its rusty rod, then fell back.

The giant was winded, the wings on his hat drooped. “Take a bang at her, fella?” He gasped and offered Ken the mallet.

“Nup. Just wanted to see how you done. I got better places to be!” he said and took off.

The giant shrugged and began to fade as Ken scooted down the midway.

The notion suddenly hit Roy.
Ohh…this is old Ken!
These are his ghosts, his world, past. This is the sight Leslie gave him
.

Ahead, shouts and calls became machinery sketched by light. The not-so merry go-round – horseless, beastless, kidless – turned, its bulbs, faint, the mirrored reflections from around the park, dim. The whirl-machine buttered and bled together in a ring-a-ling thunder clash, and brash, a calliope of hissing steam and cymbals. Nothing rode it, nothing reached out for a ring.

The carnival was feather and mist. Roy sucked roasting corn and hot machinery from the morning air. Good, but just an old man’s memory of flavor. This was... Roy looked for the words. Fun. Fun like a daydream in math class: like remembering the ocean and his mother and dad together, too. The carnival was more, maybe, but it was in the same ballpark!

Ballpark!
Roy thought,
Ha!
This
was
a ballpark—
his
ballpark.

Old Ken had stopped again. He stared up at the sign above a platform pitch backed by a sagging tent. Sign said:

Madam Adam

Mistress of the Monstrous

Charmer of Serpents

As Pictured Here, So In Life!

As pictured, Madam was an hourglass of a woman, wide-eyed, dark, muscled, clothed only in tattoos and sweat, her particular parts blocked by coils of snakes.

A breeze licked the tent flap. It opened coyly, showed dark within.

Old Ken rushed the steps; clamored up, foot and paw. The pitchman halted Ken with his bamboo cane.

“Whoopf,” Ken said.

“Whoops yourself there, son,” he said, “Madam A. will hootch no kootch tonight.”

Old Ken sagged.

“Why, you ask? Swiftly comes my answer: the lady’s monsters for the charming? See there on the portrait?”

Ken hadn’t taken his eyes from it.

“Gone. All gone. Their mortal coil? Slithered off, boys. Asp and anaconda, basilisk and cockatrice? Gone to vapor, friends! The rest? Monster-crushers, elephant-gulping wyverns? Breath and synapse flash, m’lads! But need I tell you!?”

He’s talking to me, too
, Roy realized.
I’m really here
, he thought,
in Ken’s old head!

The barker fixed a squint eye on Roy. “Hey!” The voice was closer than the man. “That ‘hey’ is for you, little Hoss!” The pitchman bent toward Roy.
Optical illusion!
From a dozen yards away, their noses nearly touched. “You need see Mr. Bedlam, boy!”

Roy smelled whiskey, teeth, dust.
No illusion
, he thought! “Me?” he said.

“None but. You’ll find him...” the tip of the man’s cane left a faint yellow trail as it arced overhead and stopped pointed at the Ferris wheel. “...at the top!”

“The top?”

“Where else? He’ll come down to getcha!”

Slumped on the steps up to Madam Adam’s pitch, old Ken continued to stare at the quivering tent flap.

By the time Roy reached the Ferris wheel, it had stopped. The seat bar of the bottom car flipped open and the small man who sat there scooted aside to make room. He patted leather. “Plenty room! Come sit Mr. Roy. Meeting’s just begun! You’re the agenda.”

Thin black moustaches slid from each of the man’s nostrils and spread both ways across his upper lip. His suit was spotted, greasy, frayed.

Roy looked at some of the wheel’s other riders. Descending, the He-She, pinstripes, one side, lace, the other, pomade to the right, poofed and flowing blonde, the left. Above the He-She, a spattered geek in jute-tied burlap stared down and swiped his lip with a blood-black tongue. Further: the fat and bearded women shared a seat, above them, Siamese strong men, bald and bulging, then further up, alone, Mr. Electro – electric flame and crackling spark chasing round and round him. In every gondola rode men and women, skinned, scaled or feathered. The albino boy and porcupine girl – bristling in a thousand places (pierced with needles, nails, shards and spikes, swords and forks, pins and such) – were wrapped in an embrace. They all stared down, leaning from their swinging seats, watching Roy.

“I’m the agenda?” he said.

“Right you are!” he said, “And right you were! Not a jot of fun this century!” the man said.

“What?” said Roy. But the safety bar clanked across his lap and the wheel jerked him backward into the air.

The round man next to him stuck out a hand. “Otacar Beldam,” he said, “It’s ‘Bedlam’ for the rubes, but I wanted you to know the truth of it – as that is me: truth and full disclosure, no spices, spaces, or hidden spades, get me?” From one frayed cuff, Mr. Bedlam produced an ace of spades between index and middle fingers. He sent it spinning into the dark. “Mr. Swathe, down there, next car but one, now he’s ‘Swathe’ for real and can’t you tell by looking?”

Roy shook Mr. Bedlam’s hand and tried to look down at the same time. He felt as though he were two steps behind and loosing ground fast.

Two cars below a mummy, linen wrapped and rotting, shared the seat with an armless, legless head and torso. The mummy waved.

“Mr. Swathe sports hisself professionally as ‘Pharaoh Ankh-Sho-Tep, the Mummy Peripatetic.”

Mr. Swathe waved again.

“The other fellow is Otto, the Legless, Armless Ambidextrian! Tends the money,” Bedlam said. “Such as it is,” he added with a sigh. “The others?” he gestured above, below. “They all have their art. We all have our duties.”

“Uh-huh,” Roy said.

“We meet here,” Bedlam patted the side of the wheel, “for in a circle, King Eugene, you arrive at everyplace you’re ever going to be,” he smiled, “one time or other.”

Roy nodded.

“Within our world, encapsulate, Mr. Roy, my responsibility is the care and feeding of our titular Menagerie and Chaosium. Call it the red and beating heart of the operation, without which we are an ellipsis to the age, a bagatelle of the merest moment – the nonesuchest camelopard you’ve never seen!” He nearly touched Roy’s ear with his moustache. “I say this with neither pride nor pomp, Eugene, for I have skived off. In sum and substance, to wit, I’ve failed. Truth be told, Mr. Roy, Eugene if I may, you are salvation on the hoof!”

How many times had the wheel gone round? Several, he was pretty sure, but he liked being sure for certain. Now, he couldn’t be. Probably three. Say three, then. Their seat was now at the top of the wheel and the wheel had stopped.

“Me?” Roy said. “Salvation?”

The other seats squeaked agreeably. The wheel swayed gently with them.

“Salvation! Now, you’ll want to know what we’ll give in return! Here,” Mr. Bedlam shoved Roy forward. The chair tipped. “A gander, Roy, m’boy!” He said as his arm swept the horizon. “The world!”

The carnival, Elysium Park, the bluffs, river, town, were all below –
well below
, Roy suddenly realized!
Didn’t seem that big a wheel when I got on
, Roy thought. But there he was.

Roy had been places. He knew the ocean and had crossed the places between it and Bluffton. He knew how much country he and his mother covered getting here.

All he knew of the world lay before him, tiny bright, a web in the dark. The wide black sea lay like the edge of the end of time in the distance. The full bright moon hung above. The stars burned hard. Between the stars was nothing. Nothing. Nothing spread across the water.

“Oh,” Roy said. “Uh-oh.”

“Don’t be sick, now” Mr. Bedlam said.

Roy was sick. His sick spread wide falling.

The voices...

“Hey!”

“What the…?”

“Fer Christ…!”

“Hey, rube!”

...came from below.

Mr. Bedlam leaned over the bar and spoke for a moment.

Roy didn’t listen. He grabbed hold, swallowed several times. Finally, the urge subsided, the gag climbed his gullet and belched forth quietly, dry and harmless. He stopped shaking, wiped his mouth, and at last the wheel felt solid. That, at least.

“Better?” Mr. Bedlam asked. “Yes, better,” he decided without waiting. “So?”

“What?” Roy asked. “What do you want?”

“Ah. We’ve not covered that? Perhaps not.” Bedlam’s eyes crinkled. “That’s the problem, working in a circle, Eugene. You sometimes confuse where you’ve been with where you’re going. We begin negotiation, now, I suppose. Yes?”

Roy nodded before he thought to say, “Huh?”

“I shall state the opening and subsequent gambits. We’ll step, thus, gently, here to there, skip the twixty places, save the haggles till the end. All right? To begin: I put forth the merest whiff, a subtle evocation of what we want and, to be honest, the minimum we’d provide in recompense. You hawk offense, damn my name and progeny, threaten to leap from the wheel itself before such a pittance is homeward borne. Wide-eyed, I ask how I’ve offended, what might I do, your unexpected calumny to put in retrograde and rid myself, thus, of dudgeon’s unearned wroth. Less the chilly umbrage flows but yet in heat incarnadine, you demand terms no man, family, or corporate body could ever grant. The World, you ask. I demur. You ignore. Chastened, I restate, and in terms more nearly fitted to the how and why of our situation, redraw our needs and count our generosity. Finally, when you are moved near to tears, I ask what it is you require absolute of us and...” he turned to Roy and drew a breath. “Is that about it for our first quarter hour’s back-and-forth?”