The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (7 page)

“I guess. Yes.”

He told her about the past two days, about the
destruction of his gardens and all the unsuccessful attempts to
discover the reasons; he tried to make light of his suspicions of
Norma Hobbs, but he could hear the hate prowling around the edge of
his voice and it startled him, quieted him for a moment, until she
hugged him as they walked and said that what he needed, tonight,
wasn’t a solution but an evasion.

“A what?”

They paused at a stand to buy cans of soda,
stood to one side to drink and watched a hard-tested mother coax a
young boy from the cab of a tiny train engine, but he was having
none of it. He wanted to ride. He didn’t want to give up pulling
the cord that rang the bell or pushing the green button that tooted
the steam whistle.

“Sometimes,” Corri said, “it doesn’t pay to
fight.”

He thought she was talking about the woman and
the child until he felt her looking at him. A brief scowl as they
walked away, hand in hand this time.

“You’re not suggesting I forget about my
flowers?”

No answer.

“I can’t do that. Really. I mean, if the lack of
rain had killed them, my neglect, something like that, I’d feel
like hell, but I wouldn’t give up gardening. Hell, you can always
plant more, in a case like that. But this . . . this wasn’t my
fault. Somebody . . .” A shuddering deep breath. Her hand tightened
around his. “Somebody deliberately . . . it’s like they came into
my house and stole everything I owned that meant something whether
it was valuable or not” He rubbed his brow. “I’m sorry, I’m not
making much sense.”

“You are,” she said, twirled around in front of
him, stopping him while she kissed him again. On the lips. Sweet
candy and warm breezes, a hint of strawberry when his amazement
finally allowed him to kiss her back.

“Well,” he said when they were done.

Nobody looked.

A train whistle sounded.

“Sometimes,” she whispered, lips close to his
ear, “it’s all right to run away, even for just a while.”

He didn’t know, didn’t understand.

“It clears your head.” Lips at the other ear.
“Lets you think.cvLike counting to ten, Casey. It’s like counting
to ten.”

“Ah. Okay. So when I see that bitch I won’t tear
off her head before I say hello.”

“Something like that”

Still close, not moving, nobody looking.

“So.” He gestured to gather the fair in. “This
is my evasion?”

She shook her head, winked, led him around the
track until he saw the carousel. “Maybe we’ll get lucky
tonight.”

A quick look this time, but there was nothing in
her expression to tell him what she meant. If, he thought with a
flush of guilt, she meant anything at all.

They stood in line. Held hands. Didn’t speak as
the carousel turned and the line moved and the cacophony of the
fair settled into a buzzing that was soon no sound at all.

Evasion.

He supposed that was a natural response for
someone who lived with a carnival that seldom stayed in one place
for more than a week or two at a time. Don’t worry about problems;
next Monday they’ll still be here but we won’t. Our lights will
blind you, and while you’re rubbing your eyes we slip out of
town.

The carousel turned, animals and riders sweeping
forward, up and down.

Dead roses, dead paint

It was as if, he thought with a start, the
Station was rejecting him. Slice by slice, carving him away from
whatever he knew, whatever he had.

The idea terrified him, and he gripped Corri’s
hand more tightly.

But what if it were true? What if his presence
here was no longer required, what if he had fulfilled his function
and was now being eased out? Dead roses. Dead paint. He and Yard
had worked for days scraping and patching and replacing and
painting and trimming and wiping up. Last fall. Last September. The
paint couldn’t be dead. But neither could the roses.

The carousel stopped.

The riders scrambled off, waving, pretending to
be dizzy, some racing back along the track to get on the end of the
line.

Casey felt a tug and stumbled forward.

“Come on,” Corri urged. “Our lucky night,
remember?”

He climbed onto the platform, into the
pale-green light, and followed her, weaving through the frozen
bestiary until they found the llama and the giraffe. His foot
fumbled with the stirrup, his palms were unaccountably slick, and,
shamefaced, he was about to give up and ask for a boost. Then it
worked, and he was on, grinning at the grinning bears on their
bandstand to his left. They shuddered, a bell rang, and the
carousel began to move as the bears began to play.

Up, and he saw straight ahead a huge billy goat,
head tilted to the right, roses carved into its-beard.

Down, and he saw his smeared reflection in the
pole, covered it with his hand, looked quickly right and saw his
face in the lion’s saddle.

Corri waved at him. He blew her a kiss.

Abruptly the music stopped, nothing now but the
creak of gears and the hiss of the wind.

He held his breath for a second, fearing the
ride had broken down, that the rest of his turns would be spent
listening to nothing but the machine below the magic. A quizzical
look to Corri, but he couldn’t see her face because beyond her, in
the fair, nothing moved, nothing stirred. He was going up, going
down, had to squint in the wind his passing created, but outside,
on the oval, everything had frozen.

A single note from a xylophone.

Corri pursed her lips and kissed the air. “I
knew it!” she cried, and gestured frantically at the lion.

He couldn’t move.

A single beat of a drum.

“Hurry!” she called. “Casey, hurry!”

A horn played two notes; chimes played two
more.

Up and down.

Awkwardly, keeping a one-handed grip on her
pole, she leaned over and snatched at his sleeve, tried to pull him
out of his seat. “Damnit, Casey, come on, move!”

But nothing moved. Three notes, four beats.

He wiped his hands on his shirt, felt a twinge
and examined his palms. Red dots where the thorns had pricked him;
on the other side, lines of garden earth in the lines of his
knuckles. For what? he wondered.

A firm grip on his arm pulled until he had to
slap a hand on the lion’s back to keep from falling. Corri glared
at him, urged him, while the lion flew up and down between
them.

“I can’t do it, I work here,” she said,
desperation around her eyes. “Please, Casey, before the band
plays.”

He was afraid.

It was stupid, he knew it, but he couldn’t help
feeling a touch of ice in the air that made him blink rapidly, as
if casting snow from his lashes.

“Let go of the damn pole, swing your leg
over.”

So what would he win if he did?

Would it bring back the roses and make the paint
fresh again? Would it somehow, magically, give him a larger
paycheck, put him first in line for the postmaster job? Would it
prevent the Station from tossing him aside?

It might, something answered; what the hell, it
just might.

He nodded.

She laughed.

With much twisting and near slipping, in a move
he was sure was laughable to those who watched, he transferred to
the back of the sinking gold lion, grabbed on, held on, as the
beast rose and the lights flared and the band played its song as if
it had never been interrupted.

Corri cheered.

Casey laughed.

He raised his arms in triumph and looked around
to see how many others knew what he’d done. Yard would have a fit;
it would be great to see the look on his face.

The carousel was empty.

“Hey, Corri —”

She was gone.

Behind him, the animals rose and fell, rose and
fell, forever charging and never closing mouths frozen open, eyes
wide and blind, rising, and falling, leaning close, and away;
before him, they fled, hooves and paws and tails and manes, rising,
and falling, never quite reaching the turn in the bend.

The band played a little faster.

The carousel turned a little faster.

“Corri!”

God damn, he’d been tricked. She was a shill
after all, some kind of gag played on the local yokel and everyone
out there having a good laugh at his expense. He glared out toward
the oval, ready to tell them he didn’t think it was funny, but the
glare disappeared when he saw nothing but the night beyond the fall
of green light.

No lights, no rides, no people — only what
looked like a vast field, and a vast field of stars out there on
the horizon.

The band played. The carousel turned.

Off, he ordered then; get the hell off, find out
who’s in charge and get the bitch fired.

He couldn’t

As much as he tried, his feet wouldn’t leave the
stirrups, and as much as he lunged side to side, back and forth, he
couldn’t lift off the saddle. Frantically, then, he shoved and
pushed and kicked and punched, until something stabbed a muscle at
the base of his spine, until his arms wilted at his sides and his
legs wouldn’t obey.

Ride it out, then; wait for the joke to end.

Rising.

Falling.

Wait. All you have to do is wait. They won’t
leave you here to starve or die of thirst. Sooner or later they’ll
shut down, have their laugh, and you can go home. Tend the gardens.
Repaint the house. Fix the gutter. Give Tina a call and take her to
dinner. Maybe — he smiled weakly — you could apologize to Norma for
wanting to kill her.

Rising.

It won’t be long.

Falling.

It can’t be long.

Close your eyes, he suggested, and pretend it’s
all a dream, just like in the movies.

The carousel turned.

His eyes wouldn’t close. He had to look — ahead
and behind, in case they were hiding someplace; out in the field,
in case someone turned on the lights. He had to listen-to the
music, to know when it began to slow down, when the bears stopped
playing that same goddamn tune.

Oh god, Casey thought; dear God, he prayed.

“Oh god!” Casey screamed as the animals charged
and fled, as the mirrors winked and darkened, as the stars never
changed, as the night didn’t lighten, as he heard above the thunder
of the carousel as it turned the soft quiet sound of a young woman,
laughing.

He rode through the night without the strawberry
blonde.

And the band played on.

The world changed when the cartons were all
emptied, crushed, dragged out to the curb for the garbage truck to
take away. Before, when dishes were still being unwrapped, when the
toys were still jumbled in their boxes, when all the good clothes
were still crammed into their hanging bags with the stuck zippers
and probably forever wrinkled, there had still been a chance her
parents would change their minds. They would see that this house
wasn’t as nice as their real home, that the town was too small for
anything to happen worth getting up for, that the people just
weren’t the same as the ones she had left behind. They would see
that, they would understand, they would say
oops, sorry, Fran,
we blew it,
get into the car and drive away without looking
back.

Still a chance.

Even when the moving van had backed out of the
driveway and pulled away, coughing smoke and grinding gears,
swaying as it rounded the corner and disappeared.

Even when Daddy had carried Mom kicking and
giggling over the threshold.

Still a chance.

Until the cartons were empty.

The worst day of her life.

A warm day, with flowers and bees and bluejays
and cars with their windows rolled down, trailing music behind
them; a T-shirt and jeans and sneakers and dark hair like her
father’s, just long enough to poke at her eyes when the breeze
snuck up on her from around the side of the house.

She sat on the front porch on an upturned orange
crate and propped her elbows on the railing that needed a coat of
paint, her cheeks in her palms, glaring at the street half in
sunlight, half in shade. All those trees. All those houses. All
those hedges taller than she was. Old. Everything was old and big
and she supposed it was nice enough for the people who had to live
here, but it wasn’t home. And it wasn’t ever going to be.

She sighed. Loudly. Mournfully. With just a hint
of a false sob.

No one heard her; they were too busy
unpacking.

She sighed again, this time to herself.

When the breeze blew and things shifted just
beyond the range of clear vision, she felt like she was trapped in
one of those crazy dreams she got whenever she had a fever. A dream
where things had sharp edges, even the pillows, yet nothing ever
cut her and she never quite bled and nothing was ever quite in
focus. A dream like looking through glitter-laced gauze, where
every footstep was a gunshot and every whisper a shout and every
color hurt her eyes but didn’t make her turn away. Nothing ever
made sense in a fever dream — she could fly, she could die, she
could carry a tune — and nothing made sense now.

She scratched her cheeks without moving her
hands.

Nothing made sense, but this wasn’t a dream.

Behind her, she could hear her mother singing
something that had no words as she sorted out the stuff that had to
hang in the living room, the dining room, the foyer, the hall to
the kitchen, while her father carted armfuls of junk upstairs
where, in a little while, more sorting would take place. He wasn’t
singing. He made fun of her mother instead, laughing fun that had
them both giggling.

Fran rolled her eyes.

This was nuts.

They were actually
glad
to be here. They
actually thought
she
was glad to be here. They actually
really and truly believed that this was going to be the greatest
thing that ever happened to them in the whole world. She had no
idea grown-ups could be so amazingly stupid.