He leaned his head out, turning left and then right. He saw the kitchen was across the hall, just under the staircase. He could hear movement in there, some clattering around. He couldn’t see Gearhart. However, he could see the lip of an island, pots and pans dangling from hooks above it. On the other side was the counter, and from where he stood he spotted a section of a stainless-steal sink.
Tobe didn’t wait for Gearhart to appear. His feet were moving his body into the hallway and towards the front door before his mind had given the order to do so. Luckily Gearhart had left the main door open, and all that separated Tobe from being outside was the screen door.
The length of the hallway seemed to be stretching, moving the door farther away from him. Tobe knew it actually wasn’t, but damn it, what was taking him so long to reach the exit?
Finally, it was near enough to touch.
He reached for it.
And his cell phone’s ringtone erupted in the silent stretch, sounding like a mass of metal being dropped in an aluminum room.
Of course, he’d forgotten to turn off his ringer. Of course, he’d chosen the old rotary sound for his ringer, which was the loudest of them all. And of course, Kaylyn would pick now to call! He knew without looking that the display screen would show The Wife as being the caller.
He looked over his shoulder. Gearhart stepped halfway into the hall. The other part of his body was hidden behind the doorway. Grasped in his left hand was a butcher knife. “Where are you going?” he shouted. Gone was his polite tenor. Gone was his smile, his friendly eyes. What occupied his face now was an angry scowl.
“Oh sorry,” Tobe said. “But I have to go!”
Gearhart shook his head. “No! You’re staying for dinner!” He wasn’t saying this like a man attempting to persuade someone into staying longer. It was an order. “You will not leave!”
“Fuck you, man. I’m going!” Tobe shoved the screen door open, giving one more look over his shoulder. Gearhart was charging towards him, and moving faster than Tobe expected him to be. “Shit!”
The muggy air slithered over him as he raced across the porch and down the steps. He lost his footing when his shoes hit the gravel of the driveway, but he managed to stay up. For a flare of a second, he’d forgotten where he’d parked. There was only one place he could have and that was in the driveway, which was located directly ahead of him.
And there sat his Jeep, waiting for him like a kind friend. His phone continued to clamor from his pocket. He didn’t want to stop long enough to answer it.
The door busted open behind him. “Stop!”
Oh shit oh shit…he’s coming!
“I trusted you! Glenda liked you!”
“Glenda’s not real,” Tobe shouted without looking back.
“How could you say such a thing?”
Tobe’s side banged against the Jeep, he said, “Because it’s the truth,” then twirled around to the driver’s side, his hands fumbling with the door handle. He yanked it open. Thankfully, he’d forgotten to lock it.
He didn’t forget, though, once he was inside.
The staccato sound of four doors and a rear gate locking was glorious. Through the windshield he could see Gearhart had slowed his pace. He was hardly running now, not even trotting, more like a brisk walk. The waning light glinted off the knife’s blade.
Tobe fished his keys out from his left pocket, then his phone from the right. When he shoved the key into the ignition, he noticed Gearhart had turned his back on him and was returning to the porch.
What’s he doing?
He kept his eyes aimed at Gearhart while he cranked the car. Air blew from the vents. Warm at first, it quickly cooled. He cranked the dial back up to high.
Gearhart watched him from the porch, a shadowy shape under the eave. He had his hands on his hips, the blade of the knife angled away from his body like a gleaming barb. He no longer looked mad.
He was frowning.
Ashamed? Embarrassed?
Possibly.
Most likely, he was just sad.
Tobe felt crummy. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d acted how anyone else given the same situation would have. He might have even saved his own life. So why did he feel like he’d stolen stacks of money from Gearhart’s hidden safe?
Putting the car into reverse, he backed around a light post, and turned the wheel sharply to the left. He shifted to drive and sped away, throwing up gravel behind his tires.
He stared in the rearview mirror. Gearhart became smaller and smaller until eventually the sagging tree limbs filled the glass completely and he could no longer see him.
Once he was at the mouth of Windy Circle where it met the paved road, his phone rang again. This time, he dug it from his pocket and answered.
“What’s going on?” asked Kaylyn without a greeting.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah…I suppose…” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You sound awful. What happened?”
“I can’t talk about it right now…I just want to get home.”
“Was it the John Gearhart you wanted it to be?”
Tobe sighed. “Yeah…”
“What happened? Was he an asshole?”
He laughed, though it lacked humor. “No. Actually, he was…”
“What?”
Sighing, he said, “He wasn’t what I thought he would be.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll give you all the details when I get home.”
They said their I love yous and hung up.
As Tobe drove the scenic route back, he decided that once he reached civilization again, he would find a gas station and pull in.
He needed cigarettes.
Story Notes:
I’m sure it’s no surprise that I love horror movies. The passion began when I was five years old and saw Friday the 13th for the first time, way back in 1984. My love for the genre spans a wide range, though I find it difficult to enjoy a lot of the newer films that aren’t sequels to the classics. Maybe it’s my stubbornness, but I don’t think anything can beat the old stuff. The list of horror film-makers that I adore is quite long and John Gearhart is a hodgepodge of them all.
A lot of writers, myself included, usually can’t say where an idea for a story comes from. Most of the time, they just pop in my head. One minute I’m thinking about food and the next thing I know something knocks that thought out of the way and a story has hatched. Not with Gearhart’s Wife. I know exactly where this idea came from: It was my job as a Notary Signing Agent.
My duties included taking mortgage paperwork to the borrowers’ homes to sign and notarize and I was responsible for shipping them back to the lenders. One day, I received an order for a borrower with the name John Carpenter. Sure, that’s quite the common name, but the entire drive over there, I kept fantasizing about the borrower being the real John Carpenter who opens the door. I pictured him smoking a cigarette, wearing all black, while the soundtrack to Escape From New York blared from a stereo somewhere inside. To my disappointment, it wasn’t the same John Carpenter. On the drive home, the story formed itself in my head and I wrote it that night.
Even now, all these years later, it’s still one of my favorites.
A fun fact that I’ve never shared until now is that John Gearhart was actually in the original draft of my novel, Proud Parents. There’s a scene where the characters go to a horror convention because one of them is a guest and he invites his neighbors to sit with him at his table. Greg Heyman, the neighbor, sneaks outside to have a cigarette and bumps into John Gearhart, who’s enjoying a cigarette. Turns out he’s a guest there as well and they have small exchange.
I loved the scene, but in the end, I felt it only slowed down the third act when the momentum was switching to rapid-fire. Still, I hated to see it go.
But, to have a little fun, here’s the scene, unedited:
Dim lighting made it di
fficult to see, but the red glow of an exit sign guided Greg in the right direction. He arrived at the door, found the bar, and pushed it down. It sprung open, throwing bright warmth onto him. He squinted so hard his eyes watered. The heat was heavy on his clothes as he stepped outside.
“Catch the door!” he heard a man shout.
Greg caught the door by the handle just before it closed. “Got it!”
“Thank God,” the man said. “I’ve been locked out here for ten minutes. Times like these make me wish I owned a cell phone. Could’ve just called someone to come let me in.”
Greg nearly gasped when he realized who the voice belonged to. John Gearhart, a popular horror director who’d directed a slew of films that Greg had grown up watching. A Georgia Massacre was one of Greg’s favorites of all time. Sheila would never believe this.
“Door locks when it shuts, I take it?” asked Greg.
“You bet. Come out for a smoke and you’re left to bake. This heat is something, huh?”
“Yeah. Summer’s definitely here.”
“It’s okay. My favorite time of the year anyway.”
“I like it, too.”
John squinted his eyes, regarding Greg curiously. “Do I know you?”
Greg felt a slight flutter of concern. “I don’t know. Do you?”
“Maybe you have one of those faces.”
Smiling, Greg shrugged. “I get that.”
“I bet so.”
“I know who you are, though.”
“Yeah?”
Greg nodded. “John freakin’ Gearhart!”
The old man laughed, nodding. His snow-colored mustached curved upward with his smile. “That’s me.” The hair on his head was wavy and gray, the bangs clung against his forehead from sweat.
“I didn’t know you were a guest here this weekend.”
Gearhart shrugged. “Don’t know if you can consider me a guest.”
“Why do say that?” Greg kicked down the stand on the door to hold it open.
“Well,” said Gearhart, “they’ve got me tossed in the backroom with the dealers. All those people from that zombie show got all the good spots.”
Greg frowned. “That sucks.”
“I’ll live. What sucks is I want another cigarette and left mine in my bag at my table.”
“I’ll give you one.”
“You’re a kind soul.”
Laughing, Greg walked over to the knee-high ash tray. Sand had been dumped into the basin. Crinkled butts jutted like twisted little worms. Greg held out the opened pack. The old man pinched a filter and slid one out.
After the cigarettes were lighted, Gearhart turned to Greg. “So are you a guest? A fan?”
“Neither. Well…I suppose I could be considered a fan, but that’s not why I’m here.”
Gearhart’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow.”
“Well…” Greg didn’t know how much he should say, but he figured it was safe to share a little bit of it with Gearhart. “You know Todd Parker?”
“The author?”
“That’s him. He’s my neighbor and, well…I’m a comic book artist looking for work, so Todd thought…”
“If you tagged along, he could introduce you to some people?”
“Yeah…in a sense.”
“That’s a good friend. I’ll tell you, in this business, no one likes to stick their necks out for each other because usually, it gets broken.”
“The neck?”
“Oh yeah. Sometimes, in multiple places.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah…it’s nothing that I’m proud of, but it happens.”
“You get your neck broken?”
Gearhart patted the front of his throat. “Yes. So many times, I’m surprised I don’t have to constantly wear a brace.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Nature of the beast, I suppose. But if your neighbor is willing to vouch for you, in this day and age, then you must be good people.”
Suddenly Greg felt like he was suffocating. His mouth went dry, and the cigarette smoke was like powdered chalk on his tongue. Gearhart’s words struck him in the chest like a sideways hand chop. Greg didn’t feel as if he was much of a good person. He’d done too many things he wasn’t proud of. He’d hurt a lot of people. But Todd was a genuinely good guy, the first benevolent person Greg had come across in a very long time.
“He’s not a homo is he?” asked Gearhart.
The blunt question evaporated the fog in Greg’s head. “What?”
“I see the wedding ring on your hand, so I don’t suppose you are.But if he’s a homo, he might be promising you things just to get at your tally-whacker.”
Greg huffed out a cloud of smoke as he sighed. He tried reminding himself Gearhart was from a different time and probably didn’t realize how smallminded he sounded. It didn’t work. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Gearhart.” Greg stuffed the cigarette into the sand.
The Night Everything Changed
The wind was picking up. All week the weathermen warned of severe thunderstorms making their way into the heart of Wisconsin, but, until recently, the weather had been chipper. These early days of June had been almost perfect.
Lightning flashed with a boom of thunder. Rain would come soon, probably within minutes. The lingering odor of manure that usually fortified the farmlands had all but been dispersed by the wind.
Dr. Vincent Carlson darted from his house. He’d forgotten to latch the front barn door and heard it pounding against the side of the stable. The last thing he needed was to trot all over the land during a storm and gather up escaped animals. If it were any other night, he’d get his daughter, Leanne, to help round them up, but she’d been at the carnival all evening and wasn’t here to help if the stock got out.
Vincent had implored her not to go, but she’d insisted. He didn’t like the idea of her running off to some strange carnival where the main attraction was a herd of tiny people, even if it was on his land. Not dwarves, mind you, these people were even smaller. He’d heard rumblings in town that some folks thought they might be elves.
That was ridiculous. Elves.
Leanne argued it was the eighties, times had changed, and people could believe what they wanted and go to any kind of carnival that they wanted without worry of being ridiculed for it.
Vincent wasn’t the only one in Doverton who wasn’t thrilled that the Haunchies had rolled into town.
He was sure Leanne would have plenty to say about what the other townspeople were thinking. She was a teenager and had just graduated from South Doverton High School. Of course she knew everything. Her brain was a mass of uncultivated knowledge.
She was a very smart girl, preparing this summer to start college near Green Bay in the fall. And Vincent wasn’t scared to admit to anyone he’d miss her terribly.
He grabbed the barn door just as the wind gusted it open, catching it before it smacked against the side wall. Keeping it gripped firmly with both hands, he inspected the door as the wind wobbled it like sheet metal. It was a strain to keep a firm hold on it. He saw the door was already showing evidence of damage. The wood was old, but he’d hoped it would last at least a couple more years. After this abuse, he’d probably have to repair it by the Fourth of July.
Using both hands, he pushed the door against the blustery weather, and, after a bit of a struggle, managed to slam it shut. He dropped the latch in place, securing the door closed and pulled on the plank, checking its durability. It felt sturdy enough. He hoped it would hold.
Another twisting bolt of lightning crackled down from the sky, striking a tree somewhere deep in the woods, across from Vincent’s cornfields. The explosion made him jump out of his skin.
Storm’s getting closer.
He hugged himself. What little heat they’d had during this early part of the summer was gone. In Wisconsin, the summers normally felt like the fall, and when fall did come, it was nearly as cold as the winter. The weather never matched the season.
>
“Leanne better be getting on home,” he muttered.
Why hadn’t she gotten home yet? He’d told her no later than midnight. It had been steadily approaching that time when he’d last checked the clock in the house. It was probably midnight by now, but if not, it was damn close.
As Vincent hurried back to the house, he recalled the flyer Leanne had shown him. It was an advertisement for the carnival, one of the many he’d already seen stapled to the power poles in town and taped across the windows and walls of any buildings whose owners had granted them permission.
Written in flashy letters was:
The Final Tour of the Haunchyville Carnival!
Come enjoy it while you still can!
He shouldn’t have let her talk him into it.
When she’d brought him the flyer, she wasn’t just showing him that they were coming. She’d been using it to help explain why Vincent should offer them his fields for their last run in the Midwest. They’d lost their original location at the fairgrounds in Bixby and traveled south, trying to find another place to stake their tents.
Like a fool, Vincent had obliged.
Haunchyville. Such an awful name. Why those little people had selected that name for their traveling group was beyond him. Maybe to the little ones it was okay. He couldn’t fairly vouch for their way of thinking. After all, he was only the town doctor, so what he figured probably didn’t count for much.
But he hated the name all the same.
Leanne sure knew a lot about the group. He was taken aback by how much knowledge she had. It was a little unnerving. She’d sat Vincent down at the kitchen table the same night she’d shown him the flyer and explained what she knew of the carnival’s history, explained that they weren’t really dwarves at all. She told him more about the Haunchies than any rational person needed to know.
Even though he hadn’t wanted to hear any of it, he’d sat and listened. She was good at that, getting him to give in to anything she wanted. Probably because she had her mother’s eyes, brightly blue as the sky and round as tires.
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