Private Midnight

by Kris Saknussemm

And that was dead true. I wasn’t at all interested in Stoakes and Whitney as cases anymore. I was—I don’t know how to say it. I was curious about them as people. As men.

  “You imagine I did something to them?” she asked, her voice rising slightly.

  “Yeah, honestly, I do,” I nodded. “I don’t know what. I sure don’t know how. But you seem to have knowledge—and a secret power over people—particularly men.”

  “A secret power …” she repeated. “Are you afraid of what I’m going to do to you?”

  “I have been from the start. And I am now,” I said, being honest with her again. Talk about being in the dark.

  The close moist tunnel kept on opening up before us, as her voice continued in time with the clinking of the wheels, the cars shunting gradually downward.

  “Do you want to stop seeing me then?”

  “I’m not sure I can stop,” I answered—because that was the midnight truth. “But no, I don’t want to. However old you really are, you do things I thought couldn’t be done.”

  “I thought you believed it was all just shadows and illusion.”

  “I’m still hoping most of it is,” I said, thinking that in the darkness with her I felt free of El Miedo at least. “But you kidnapped the heads of the Zagame and Brucato families, and that’s one trick I know from my own life—my old life—how hard would be to pull off.”

  “Kidnapped is apt,” she answered, as the cars clacked beneath a low-slung brace of timbers. “They are, after all, children. But no, I don’t need to abduct anyone. I invited them. They came. Perhaps they didn’t realize how completely they were leaving their old lives. But resistance always has a cost and hospitality always has a price.”

  Her even, emotionless tone made me shiver, like some cold draft from inside the cliff. And yet, she seemed all the more appealing, alluring. Pure woman. Pure window. Pure terror—or a temptation beyond anything I’d ever encountered.

  “What will happen to them?” I asked. Up ahead the air was getting fresher and there seemed to be more light.

  “That depends on how they work together,” she answered without any inflection. “As far as my objectives go, their purpose has been served.”

  “And what is your objective? Are you going to turn all this into some pleasure kingdom of adult entertainment?”

  “Such entertainments are much better left to the shadows of privacy. They enrich in the imagination there, whereas they tend to wither and droop when brought into the open. You know that, Sunny. It was the call of the forbidden you answered. And that’s what’s brought you here,” she said. “The end of our tour … and the edge of a new beginning for you.”

  The cars careened out of the cliffside, through a blackberry bramble beneath the peeling remains of an old billboard for Dilley’s Chocolates, then through a mess of bolt cutter-opened wire into the waste of Funland. It was cemetery black and no stars shone, only a couple of dimming sodium security lights from beside the broken-back roller coaster and the abandoned dance hall. I stared down at my watch and was shocked to see that it was after midnight. I’d only arrived a short while before. The time my mother used to expect me…

  “You’re surprised at the time.”

  “I’m surprised every time. With you.”

  “Intimacy warps time, Sunny,” she laughed softly. “It can make you age or make you stay young. We’ve spent some time exploring my secrets, however much you believe them. Now it’s time, and you can see that it’s late, to investigate yours. It’s very late in fact—in your life. But not too late. Ready for another surprise?”

  The air had become heavy, but with a different smell—a licorice and ozone scent, like the past. I could feel my head swim … the barium orange haloes of the lights fogging.

  “Why don’t I feel like I have any choice?” I asked, hearing my voice as if from outside myself … more like El Miedo than the rugged man I used to see shaving in the mirror.

  “Because you’re trying with all the fortitude of your being to forget. To hide something from yourself your whole life you need a very big labyrinth—an amusement park the size of a city. Even that will not suffice in the end. Sooner or later you begin to cross your own paths. You see your reflection in places that you’ve been. You hear your own words coming out of the mouths of strangers. The streets swarm with mouths and eyes. Your shadow moves both ahead and behind—the panic mounts. You know that panic, Sunny. You’ve been hunting yourself like a suspect over the years. And the trail of your pursuit and your evasion has finally led you here.”

  This couldn’t be Funland. Gone was the tidewater and rust spray—the gull and garbage smell. There was something … different. Wrong. It was the sharp soft fragrance of Bermuda grass and alfalfa … like the valley to the east where I grew up. She was either more deeply inside my mind than anyone had ever been—or she’d taken me—outside. Somewhere—somehow else.

  “Come with me,” Genevieve called gently. “The rain is about to come. You can smell it in the air. We need to go inside.”

  I thought of my recent visit to the deteriorated park, the denizen with the fake walkie-talkie—and the strip of pictures from the Foto Booth. I took her hand. I wanted to believe that we really were just down the hill from her lighted mansion. But the smell in the air stayed wrong and grew more intense. A decidedly inland smell. Crop fields. Orchards. Irrigation canals. We picked our way past the familiar ruined attractions—the same things I’d seen before in daylight, only now washed with the shadow of a later hour, giving them a deeper sense of vandalization and decay. Then we came to the Haunted House. The front yard was a graveyard with bright red blood dripping down plywood tombstones.

  “I don’t remember a Haunted House in Funland,” I said—and felt my stomach churn—a twinge in my neck, like a clotted artery.

  “Remember, I said that the boundaries of the park aren’t what you take them to be,” she answered. “Intimacy warps time like guilt warps memory. Unless you embrace both the shadows and the light, you’re never where you think you are, you’re always where you imagined you were—in some dream past—the dismembered, misremembered, ever present nightmare of Yesterday. The dragnet is closing. Time for you to turn yourself in.”

  “Into … what?” I asked, trying to control my breathing.

  “We can only become what we really are,” she replied. “Lead the way.”

  I took one step onto the creaky planks of the porch … but I was back home in the valley. I was 14. Heat lightning … a rare night of summer rain … smell of the Bermuda grass and alfalfa. A carnival was in town. I had a summer job, collecting tickets at the Ghost Train. I was on a break. My older sister Serena was trying to pal around with the majorette Lindy Bramlett and Oriole Tench, the spinach farmer’s youngest daughter. The two popular girls were swanning about in boob tubes and tight jean cut-offs. I wandered down through the garish lights of the Midway—voices and rubbish whipping by in the wind.

  “Have a throw and win a cuddly lion!” a guy with a Rebel Flag cap hollered. That was when I spotted Grier. I spat into a trashcan that stank of fatty food and spun sugar. Grier ambled over to one of the shooting galleries thick with stuffed animals and pulled out some money. I got talking to this sophomore named Gwen, a friend of my cousin’s. When I turned back, Grier had won a bubblegum blue bear. A mist of rain came down but he just stood there, calmly aiming at the targets, popping them off. I was starting to get wet by the time he’d shot his way up to a colossal pink pig. Made me sick to see it. Then I saw Lindy and Oriole under an awning. I guess they’d ditched Serena. They headed to the Haunted House.

  A jet of air shot up between your legs when you went through the front door, and like the Ghost Train, there was a stupid greeting as you stepped inside and the door slammed shut behind you. “Maniacal Laughter” the sound effect was called. There were quite a few such noises to be heard: banging shutters, creaks and whispers, rattling chains—the occasional scream. A carny named Wing had shown me a handbook of suggestions f
or the Haunted House which even advised supplying actors with small coffee cans with beans or washers in them. As the customers walk by, the actor shakes the can, supposedly frightening them into the next room. I guess they couldn’t find anyone dumb enough to stand there shaking a can all night.

  Outside, the summer rain started to sluice down on the metal and the taut canvas, and I could feel more than hear the presence of the agitated crowd. I inched my way forward, imagining what it would be like to be with Lindy Bramlett in the dark. She wouldn’t notice my pimples in the dark. Suddenly a shrill cry came from up ahead.

  The Hanged Man. Usually they used a dummy, but every so often, just for a laugh, Wing would get one of the other half-wit carnies to play the part, kicking and twitching when anyone came by. The gallows were made of two-by-fours and the viewing hallway had been constructed to let only one person through at a time. Most people assumed it was just a dummy hanging down, so if the noose was attached to a safety harness worn by a real person, and if the person was made up with a bit of blue around the lips and eyes, and maybe a rope burn around the neck, a sudden jerk could get a good reaction. I wondered who it was—Chow Hound, or maybe Donna Donna with the Big Set On Her. They were both the sort of mildly retarded people who were ideal for such an assignment. I hurried through the shreds of black velvet and the tacky paper skeletons to get a look. But when I got to the gallows, the noose was empty.

  Outside, it sounded like the rain had slowed and the noises of the rides and the music seemed infinitely far away. Inside, everything felt close and tight. Lindy and Oriole appeared to have gotten lost in the Maze of Horrors. I could hear them clattering about, their voices raised to an excited pitch. I wondered what had happened to Serena. She was always being left behind by her friends. A painted bulb glimmered behind a piece of cardboard attached to a belt-driven rotating arm. As the cardboard spun around, it cut the light and made shadows move across the hall like phantoms.

  I was supposed to be back at work at the Ghost Train but I didn’t want to go. I could feel the presence of someone—just ahead. I had this feeling that maybe Lindy had lagged behind—waiting for something like this. After all, she’d winked at me. Hadn’t she? My face would clear up. I stretched out my hand. There was a tremor of air just beyond my reach. Lindy’s perfume lingered in the tight hallway, diffused by the sting of pinewood—and the odors of all the other bodies that had squeezed through.

  I stroked the face of the air. Then a hand groped my leg. Another hand in the dark. It brushed my jeans, then paused. I stiffened—waiting.

  I must’ve sighed because the darkness distinctly answered back … “Shhh.” Then a hand moved to my belt buckle. I froze. There was a fumbling, then the sound of my zipper being lowered—a deafening, ripping sound. My own hands had stopped still in mid-air, afraid of what would happen if they reached out—afraid of what wouldn’t happen. I was being fondled. What would I do if someone came? What had happened to Oriole? Had they arranged this?

  Ideas started to pour through my head. The air in front of me rustled. I felt a brush of movement at belt level—and my arm shot out to stop her. I held on tight. But it wasn’t Lindy I grabbed. I felt soft synthetic fuzz and a chill went through me. Even in the dark, the shape—the texture was unmistakable. My legs were trembling and a dry retch taste was in my mouth. I snatched the thing up—as much to get it out of my way as to drag it into the light—bouncing off the walls, rushing to get out. But even as I hurried, I knew what I was holding just as surely as if I could see it. I felt the ears—the snout—and knew—that I was holding the giant pink pig that Grier had won.

  We’d moved inside—Genevieve and I. Whether it was the same building we’d been standing in front of before I couldn’t say—the Haunted House I’d never seen in Funland. Heavy smell of sawdust and cheap fabric. She was holding a stuffed pink pig. But I didn’t hear any rain outside. Just our voices—and somewhere out of sight—someone shaking washers in a can. A slow, disturbing, rhythmic sound.

  “Take your prize, Sunny. You’ve suffered for it. And made others suffer for it.”

  “N-no,” was all I could say. I wouldn’t have it then and I wouldn’t have it now. She’d gone too far with this. This wasn’t possible. This wasn’t natural.

  “Very well then,” she said and produced a wooden stake and impaled the stuffed animal on it. “We’ll see what light it can throw on your life in another way.” Her other hand came out with a cigarette lighter and she ignited the pig, which burst into flames—only they didn’t consume the object. The form remained, seething with pink phosphorescence that revealed more details of the space we were in.

  It was the interior of the old carnival Haunted House—exactly like the one all those lost summers ago. Synthetic spider webs hung from spars of blackened two-by-fours. Skulls and masks lined the walls. The gallows were gone but in a shaft of light from a red cellophane spot hung a noose, stark white in the bloodshot motes.

  “We’ve reached the heart of your secret, Sunny,” she said, hoisting the burning pig toward the noose. “The twisted little drama that has distorted your life. You used to believe you were a good detective. I’m paid the fees that I command because I’m the best at what I do. So, let me lay it out for you.”

  The clunking chains sound could be heard as she waved the acetate stinking torch backwards and forwards, making phosphene afterimages in the claustrophobic air and on the walls. The images seemed to come to life, like shadows and reflections of her words—but appearing too quickly and too abortedly to be seen properly.

  “Your father came from hardened working stock. In his family, men had always been men. Back in Arkansas they raised crops, fixed machines and built houses. Growing up in California, he grew up heir to these skills and to the values connected with them. He wanted a wife and a family. He wanted a better social standing for himself and his children—but he had a longing for male bodies, didn’t he? He had a desire which he tried to deny, which became ever more violent. You learned about violence from a real master.”

  She swung the pig torch faster and the images massing and dissolving around us became more hectic and impassioned—menacing. The rattling of the can grew more insistent.

  “Despite his genuine love for your mother and for you and your sister, he couldn’t suppress his inner secret, just as you haven’t been able to suppress yours. The blood-stained Vaseline jar that you found in the glove compartment of his truck … that you presented to your mother just before he died … when did you first comprehend that it wasn’t only the evidence or residue of his actions—but the goal?”

  The licking flames revealed a huge rubber tarantula.

  “Your father was a physically fit, vigorous man, Sunny. The sex he had with the young men who lugged lumber and tools for him was rough. You realized that long ago. At a level below where you’ve been willing to venture, you’ve always known that his death wasn’t the accident your mother wanted to believe, or the suicide you said were so ashamed of—his sacrifice of himself—which of course you could then resent and hate him all the more for.”

  The phosphene shapes flurried across the masks and skulls. The sound of heavy breathing surrounded us. It might as well have been my own.

  “Deep in your mind you’ve always tucked away the truth that he was murdered.”

  “You think my father was murdered?” I cried as everything went silent.

  “You do too,” Genevieve answered thrusting the hot bright pig at me. “You know. You saw that one special young man heave a hammer at your father with all the might of his heart. You traced the shape of the claw head in the ruptured sheetrock. You knew just what you’d witnessed but you later refused to testify, so to speak. The repulsion—the horror was too much for you. That’s what authentic horror is Sunny. What you can’t face. That’s the only true horror there is in life. So you lie and you lie and you lie—but you still can’t kill the truth. That’s the real reason you became a homicide inspector—because of a murder you helped co
nceal. And who was the murderer? Confess that name to me now. Say it.”

  “It was … Jake … my friend Frank’s older brother,” I choked, jaw clenched.

  “Jake didn’t just work for your father, did he?”

  “N-no.”

  “What did your father do with him?”

  “He … he fucked him.”

  “He loved him, Sunny. And Jake loved your father. Too much. Young, unstable—both of them in hiding. Both of them addicted to a kind of pain. It had to end the way it did. But it absolutely didn’t end there, did it? You made sure of that. You transferred all of that ambivalence—all the hatred, disgust, jealousy and adoration onto Frank. Nothing happened physically between the two of you on your little jaunt to Mexico. That’s why the memory looms large in your mind. Because of what you privately wanted to happen. So badly. Because when he was asleep in the car in the hot sun, you were torn between touching him—and beating his head in with a half-empty bottle of tequila. Because of what his brother felt for your father. Because of what you were terrified you felt for him.

  “You became an investigator of murders because you knew a murder was what made you the man of your house before you were ready—and what’s prevented you from ever becoming a man in fact. Jake disappeared—never to be seen again in your life—except in nightmare after fantasy, after endless waking drunken dreams. But what else happened? What other crimes were you party to—in a more personal, responsible way? Hm? What can’t you so easily blame on what you thought of as your father’s shame?”

  She slowed the motion of the torch and the afterlight changed in time and form with her words. I heard the sounds of kids’ voices through the walls … where I was slipping. Out of myself. Out of everything known and even denied.

  “Your father dead, his lover and killer escaped—you sentenced yourself to the anguish he’d been wrestling with his whole adult life. If anyone ever hinted at you being a fairy—and boys are always being called fairies—you rose to the bait and raised your fists or cringed in loneliness. Then another character appeared on stage.”