The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (16 page)

“Hello?”

Her face in shadow.

He knew her.

Leaning forward again didn’t help him to see,
but he knew her and couldn’t bring her name, conjure her features.
It was the stance, for some reason. Not in those clothes, but it
was the stance that nearly gave her away.

“Hey, what . . . am I supposed to do
something?”

No echo, no indication of space, no volume.

He might have been sitting alone in a closet, or
in a monstrous empty stadium.

She turned sideways.

In profile, a long nose with a faint bump and
the bridge and a delicate hook on the end, a chin that pointed out,
lips in an unconscious disapproving purse. Lower, to a bulging
stomach the gown couldn’t restrain.

“My god,” he whispered.

It was Sheri Firth.

Keeping a hand on the chair’s back, he stood and
glanced around, trying to decipher the joke here, searching for the
others. “Aunt Sheri?” The dark was too intense; he sat again,
heavily, wiped his hands on his legs. “Aunt Sheri, what’s going on?
What the hell are you doing here? Mom —”

“Don’t swear,” she said quietly, clearly.
“Wendall, please tell the little snot not to swear at me.”

“Why the hell aren’t you at the house?” he
demanded, wanting to stand and not wanting to give her the
satisfaction. “Mom’s going to be worried. She already is.” There
was no sense looking for her husband; it was too dark. “Where’s
Uncle Wendall?”

“Speak when you’re spoken to, you little
bastard.”

Turning her back to him.

Bitch, he thought.

“I heard that, Drake,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Bitch.” And he winced.

Turning again. Right profile.

“It isn’t my place to criticize, of course,” she
said, her lips barely moving, “but it seems to me you ought to be
home now, taking care of your mother.”

“She’s working. For Christ’s sake, what are you
doing here? Is this some kind of joke?”

Facing him.

Face in shadow.

“The meat you bought at that little pathetic
place you call a market is tough. I’ll never be able to eat it, you
know that. Give it to me raw and it’ll still taste like old
leather. I simply won’t have it.”

“What —”

“And most of that lettuce has brown edges. Two
days old, at least. Wendall doesn’t like brown edges. And he
certainly won’t eat that ridiculous steak. You’ll have to think of
something else.”

He did stand then, lashed a foot out to kick the
chair away.

It was gone.

He heard music: a tune he didn’t recognize, but
it was as if someone had dragged the carousel’s band of bears in
here with them. When he looked back, his aunt was dancing, waltzing
with an invisible partner, the partner not very close. It was all
very formal; it was all very disturbing.

“Aunt Sheri, this is stupid.”

The dark was warm, chilled, felt like air and
felt like wool. She danced a little faster, skirts rustling, feet
scraping across a rough dirt floor.

His hands clenched and opened, his head swiveled
left and right, but he couldn’t leave. A step backward, a second, a
third, suggested he could get away, get outside, any time he wanted
to, but as he watched his aunt whirl with a ghost in large circles
against the dim light, he simply couldn’t leave.

Couldn’t look away.

The music, tin and silver.

“Aunt Sheri?”

Couldn’t see her face.

This was nuts. She was going to kill herself if
she didn’t stop, she was going to get hurt. He didn’t know who had
thought up this insane gag, but he’d had enough. He strode several
paces to the left, swatting at the air, heedless of what might
happen should he strike a support post, a wall, someone else
standing in here watching the macabre show; a dozen paces more,
looking up, looking out, seeing neither ceiling nor walls and not
feeling anything but a pleasant chill. Like a breeze.

Realizing that the light always stayed behind
his aunt.

Dancing faster.

Face in shadow.

Trotting in hopes of getting behind her — this
was ridiculous; jogging easily — this was nuts; suddenly sprinting
as though he would catch the trick and trickster unaware. Spiraling
inward in order to grab hold of his aunt. Nothing changed. When he
slowed, she spun, in perfect time to the music almost fast enough
now to lose all semblance of a tune.

Tin and silver.

Panting at last, he sagged to his knees, a hand
pressed against his side, face toward the ceiling as his mouth
worked for a breath.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, get in here!”

No one answered; no one came.

A skittering across the dirt, and something
bumped against his leg. A shoe. Her shoe. Sensible, as always, and
as always, expensive.

This is a dream, he thought, and felt stupid for
thinking it.

They were always dreams, the nightmares and
wishes and scenes that weren’t real; they were always dreams, and
the dreamer always woke up and sometimes was glad and sometimes was
sorry. But the point was — they were dreams.

He saw the other shoe fly off into the light,
fading, shrinking, never hitting the back wall. Vanishing.

“Aunt Sheri?” His voice small. Helpless.
“Please, Aunt Sheri?”

She tried to speak; the words were garbled; the
music played faster.

Why doesn’t she fall?

She danced on, back perfectly straight, arms in
perfect position to hold on to her partner.

He cried for help.

The light turned amber, his shadow-aunt
darkened.

He called out a second time, and the first drop
of blood landed on his cheek.

He reared back, twisted away, and the first
shard of her gown fiuttered into the air, absurdly slowly, absurdly
long.

Ignoring the taste of bile in his mouth, the
surge of acid in his stomach, he scrambled to his feet and tried to
reach her, changed his mind and tried to run away, but the blood
was faster and the gown fell apart and his aunt danced on to the
music tin and silver; he screamed at her to stop and received
gibberish in turn.

Face in shadow.

Dancing on.

He found the chair and grabbed it, knelt beside
it, pulled himself onto it and covered his face with his hands.

He heard her bare feet on the dirt, heard the
blood splatter, heard the silk and satin tatter, heard the
music.

Heard the first of her bloodless skin pull away
from her arm.

He moaned.

He rocked.

Mom, he prayed; Mom, Jesus Christ, what’s going
on?

The music stopped.

The sound of a distant wind, not approaching,
simply traveling, winding down to the hiss of a breeze in summer
leaves, winding down to silence.

His fingers spread, stiffly as if cramped.

His shirt, his jeans, were drenched; he could
feel the blood drying in his hair. An image of himself in gleaming
red made him retch, but nothing came up, and he swallowed as
rapidly as he could as tears finally broke and crawled down his
cheeks.

One eye opened — a lost little child in a
theater, not wanting to see the monster, too curious to look away —
and saw a stick figure frozen in the midst of an extravagant sweep
of its arms, accepting plaudits from admirers for the magnificence
of its dance.

A giggle was swallowed. Another escaped, and
that horrified him more than what was left of his aunt, standing
there, frozen, in the middle of the light.

Dreamer.

A slow inhalation brought him out of the chair,
another one with a hand pressed against his chest moved him a step
forward, turning slightly sideways as if ready to run away,
blinking, reaching out.

Touching the light.

It was solid.

He pressed harder; it was cool.

He ran his fingers along its unblemished surface
as he circled the indistinct figure inside. But it was his aunt. He
knew it. There was too much arrogance in that stance, too much
preparation.

The light went out.

He nearly fell as he whirled, and saw an exit
sign right behind him.

Tell someone, he thought, hysteria and panic
close to hand; tell someone what happened, Jesus, tell Mom.

He ran outside, and grabbed a guy wire with both
hands to stop himself, swinging himself around until the wire
started to burn.

The midway was deserted.

Bewildered, he checked his watch, and didn’t
believe the Travelers had closed just before eleven. Then he
brought the hand close to his eyes, turned his arm over, stretched
it out, brought it back. He sagged against the taut wire. There was
no blood. He checked his shirt, jeans, hair, spun around with a
question opening his mouth and saw that the tent flap had been sewn
closed with tarnished copper cable.

He had to tell his mother what had just
happened. Or Jill Yes; Jill was closer. She was on the Octopus,
he’d only been gone fifteen minutes, no more, though it seemed like
hours, and there was no way she would be content with only one
ride. She knew about weird things; she’d be able to help him out,
think of an explanation of either what had just happened, or how
he’d been taken.

The police; he’d have to tell them, too. His
aunt was dead, entombed in that tent.

He looked at it.

The wind, kicked up, and sun-faded pennants
along the rim snapped at him, the sides of the canvas billowed
toward him.

He stumbled more than ran, thumbs brushing the
tears away harshly.

“Here,” a voice whispered.

He waved a hand
— not now.

“Here,” it insisted.

He hurried on toward the oval; the voice
followed.

“God damn,” he said, nearly shouting, turned to
the speaker, and jill handed him an ice-cream cone.

“Strawberry,” she said. “You like it?”

He nodded, examined it, sniffed it, tasted it,
nodded again.

“Real strawberries in here. That’s the best
kind.”

“A connoisseur, huh?”

“Years of practice.”

She couldn’t quite look at him. “Are you all
right?”

A wan smile quickly vanished. A shrug.

“You’re mad,” she said, a finger tracing the
length of her scar. “I’m sorry. Really. I just couldn’t resist that
thing. I don’t blame you for leaving, are you sure you’re all
right?”

He watched without seeing the people pushing by,
checked the sky, realized they were standing in front of an
undecorated caravan with a sign that declared that this was where
lost things and people were found and held.

Another shrug. How, honestly, could he be mad
when he had known what he was getting into when he asked her out?
She was Jill, that’s all there was to it, and if he hadn’t wanted
to abide her he could have come alone.

“You’re dripping.”

Ice cream trailed down the cone and over the
back of his hand coldly. He licked it quickly and, at the same
time, let his expression tell her he was okay, don’t worry, and he
wasn’t mad at all.

Relieved, she took his arm, and they bucked the
surging customer river to a clear space on the other side, where he
pointed out a grey-board shack that claimed to hold a photography
studio where, when they entered, they discovered cardboard people
in bathing suits, garish military uniforms, space suits, elaborate
antebellum gowns and evening dresses, or nothing at all, with holes
where their faces should have been. Jill pointed at one nude woman
with hands on her hips, the hips thrust forward, and allowed that,
all modesty aside, her own figure was rather better than that.
Drake fought the urge to compare openly, fought back a maddening
blush when he lost and did it anyway, then hastily, solemnly,
concentrated on a grizzled backwoodsman with an eyepatch and noted
that the man’s coonskin cap seemed to be a little ragged.

Jill playfully bumped him with a hip, laughing
quietly, knowing.

On the walls, framed black-and-white pictures to
prove how the real and the false were all the same to the camera
when the colors were gone.

Jill walked a circle around the nude. “I think
I’ll do it,” she decided, idly scratching a hip. “It’ll drive my
father up the wall.”

“I’ll wait outside.” He backed into a muscleman
and had to grab it before it fell. He pointed to the exit. She put
her face in the hole and stretched her arms around the cardboard
until her hands modestly covered the painted breasts.

“Better?”

She winked.

Oh my god, he thought, and once outside heard a
hoarse voice whisper, “Hey, over here.”

He scowled.

His eyes widened.

The midway was empty, the photography shop
locked, the concessions boarded up.

“Here.”

A gust turned him, prodded him forward, until he
collided gently with an empty platform he hadn’t noticed before.
Behind it, another tent, smaller than the first, its front painted
to depict a Wild West show. Cowboys, Indians, the cavalry charging,
while off to the side were snowcapped mountains, a young woman in
settler’s dress, a squaw washing clothes in a shallow stream.
Buffalo Bill. Annie Oakley.

“Here.”

No one there.

The flap was open.

He called Jill.

A whisper: “Here.”

The sound of a small cat yowling inside.

The bleachers took up all of one side, eight
rows high, the wood unpainted and worn smooth, creaking softly when
he stepped into the first row and sat down. He didn’t know why he
did. He had no business in here, waiting for some stupid cowboy
show when he should be outside, hunting for Jill, a cop, anyone at
all. In fact, he shouldn’t even be on the carnival grounds. If he
had any brains, he would get the hell away, run like hell to the
police station, and bring someone back. Sitting here was dumb. But
he didn’t move because that voice had been speaking to more parts
of him than he had realized existed, parts of him that had already
begun to hint that he didn’t need anyone’s goddamn help, that he
knew damn well what was going on and all he had to do was think
about it for a while and it would come to him, like an epiphany
that would rip the dark from his vision and let him see, for the
first time, what he had only suspected was there.