by Chuck Wendig
Sure enough, Benjamin saw a dusky-skinned woman come away from their table with a little cup of ice cream. She dipped into it with a flat wooden spoon, and sucked a glop into her mouth. Her face twisted up like she’d just eaten a fistful of fertilizer.
Dad explained: “Thing is, they offer really strange flavors. Last year it was pig’s blood, the year before that, burned orchids. This year, I think it’s supposed to be dog hair.” His nose scrunched up. “Or maybe donkey hair.”
Benjamin wrinkled his nose. He could almost taste the awfulness.
His father knelt down. “Point is, son, this is a land of wonders, and every last part of it is for sale. This is the currency of the unseen world, Benjamin, where secret things are bought, sold and bartered. Whatever you want is here: for the right price.”
That’s what Benjamin was feeling in the pit of his stomach. Magic. A fluttering uncertainty, an endless pit of possibility. It wasn’t a good feeling, but it wasn’t altogether bad, either. Dizzying, that’s what it was. Like standing on a rooftop and looking down. He felt sick and swimmy and lost. Like he’d eaten too much sugar (dog hair ice cream, a little voice reminded him and his stomach lurched) or pizza.
“I feel weird,” Benjamin said.
“I know. I felt that way my first time. Still do, sometimes. But for now, buddy, we gotta keep moving. The auction for the machines will start inside the hour, and I have to get my bids lined up. Daddy has to earn a paycheck today.”
His father stood and grabbed Benjamin’s hand and drew him back into the crowd.
***
A vending machine sat on a dais made of dirty wooden pallets. The machine was gray and featureless, its many buttons offering no product identity, only an opaque plastic enigma. Cobwebs clung to and connected its fixtures.
A squat man in a polo shirt fed a handful of bills – hundreds, if Benjamin saw right – into the machine. It whirred and clunked, like a gnome inside was kicking things around.
Out the bottom came a little box, gilded and ornate.
The man grabbed it, shuffled away toward a group of people forming a half-moon circle around the side of the machine. In each of their hands was a box. They all stared down at the boxes turning over and over in their hands, thumbs massaging odd symbols, fingers dancing across delicate scrollwork.
Benjamin’s Dad nudged an older guy in a navy blue suit.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The guy frowned. “Puzzle boxes. Five hundred bucks into the machine, and a puzzle box comes out.”
“So, what’s the big deal?”
“No idea,” the man answered. He gestured toward the slack-jawed box holders. “But they seem unable to pull away from whatever delights await them.”
While his father continued the conversation, Benjamin turned around in a clumsy, confounded arc, marveling at that which lay before him.
The vending machine was only the first of many unusual – and some usual – constructions. Steam chugged out of tin stacks, wobbly conveyor belts carried chickens and turkeys into the rounded bowels of a trembling contraption, and graceful gears spun gently together with light reflecting off of the bronze clockwork. Behind him sat an apparatus that looked like some kind of half-baked printing press. Sure enough, a corpulent woman in a jam-stained housedress turned a rusty crank a dozen times over, and a slip of yellowed paper came whirling out the back end. A gangly fellow caught it in his hands, looking it over with wide eyes, and then exclaimed in a choked sob: “The whore is cheating on me. I knew it!”
“Sorry, darlin’,” the woman said, shaking her head in pity.
“I’m going to put a bid in,” the fellow said, looking like he didn’t know whether to be mad, sad, or some unruly amalgam of both.
Past that was a device whose purpose Benjamin couldn’t even guess. It looked like a big, clunky wood chipper, a hole atop its metal frame showing off gnashing buzzsaw blades whirling in tandem. A crowd watched as two farmers threw item after item into the chipper. Into the blades went a ham, a bag of potatoes, some old vinyl records, some kind of high school trophy, and then about a half-dozen old Coke bottles. The machine ate each item with equal aplomb, growling and banging, shuddering and smoking. And yet, for all that went into the machine, nothing was coming out.
Before he could see what came out, Benjamin felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw his father, winking.
“Hey, champ,” Dad said. “Neat, huh?”
‘Neat’ wasn’t the word Benjamin was looking for. Might as well call the ocean ‘wet’ or a tornado ‘windy.’ Still, he nodded, because he had no other words to describe that which was all around him.
“I have to make a call, see what the company thinks I should bid on. You’ll wait right here?”
“Okay.”
“You’re sure I can trust you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Another wink. “That’s my boy. Dad’ll be back.”
With that, his father flipped open his cell phone and punched in a number. He held it to his ear, gnawing on his lip as he looked around with a discerning gaze.
“Mr. Candlefly!” Dad exclaimed with what Benjamin perceived to be faux enthusiasm. “Good to talk to you. Listen, here’s what we have so far…”
With that, his father turned and wandered off, lost in the conversation, his wayward voice overwhelmed by the sounds and noises of the auction. Benjamin could still see him ahead, running his finger along pipes and control boxes, nodding and gesturing.
All around Benjamin were faces he did not recognize, and things that should not be.
Even though his father was not far away, he felt very alone.
***
Two men in houndstooth jackets and smoking long cigarettes with delicate hands stood over a long automobile, an antique car from days gone by. To Benjamin, it seemed almost more like a horseless carriage than a car, it looked that old. It seemed a frail artifact, resting on tires that were nothing more than thin rubber curls. Seats of strange pinkish leather were open to the air, protected by a feeble rectangle of glass at the front.
“Hitler’s car,” the one man said to the other, fanning himself with a white silk handkerchief.
“Yes,” the other said, and Benjamin realized this was just the haughty way of saying duh. “Mercedes. Bulletproof, actually.”
“Indeed. A cursed car, so the legends say.”
The one nodded knowingly. “The legends tell true.”
“Idiots.”
This was a third voice, one that startled Benjamin by coming immediately to his left. He jumped and looked, and found a somewhat rotund man standing there, shaking his head. He had a pear-shaped midsection wobbling atop little pale legs that jutted out from a pair of khaki cargo shorts. He stared derisively out from underneath the brow of a black baseball cap. His lower lip jutted out from within the tangle of a salt and pepper beard.
He looked down at Benjamin. “They’re idiots.”
“Oh.”
“That can’t – cannot – be Hitler’s car.” The man had a soft voice with a hint of a languid Southern drawl in there. Certain words carried an almost feminine lilt.
“If you say so.” Benjamin suddenly realized he was talking to somebody, a total stranger. He clammed up.
“You know whose car that is?” the man asked.
Benjamin said nothing. He just stood, wide-eyed.
“Cat bit your tongue?”
Still, he said nothing.
“Ohhhh,” the man said, nodding as if he just puzzled out all the universe’s secrets in just that moment. “You shouldn’t be talking to me, that it? Under normal circumstances, that’d be true. But here, my boy, it’s perfectly okay.”
Benjamin wanted to talk, confirm the man’s theory, and ask him why these do not count as normal circumstances (though a little voice casually reminded him of winged cats and puzzle boxes). But he still held his tongue, afraid that speaking any further on any subject would damn him in some secret way.
&
nbsp; The man reached his little sausage fingers down underneath the collar of his shirt and withdrew a big gold cross that hung about his neck on a glittering chain.
“I am a man of God,” the man explained, with God coming out more like Gaahhd. “You see, you may always trust the servants of the Lord, provided that they aim to be proper and speak honestly. Which, as you’ll note, I am doing.”
“Okay,” Benjamin said, not sure what any of this even meant.
The stranger offered a hand. “Brother Jacobus, but I prefer just to be called Brother Jake.”
Hesitantly, Benjamin took the proffered mitt and shook it.
“I’m Benjamin,” he said to the man who was no longer a stranger.
“A righteous pleasure. Now, as I was saying, this is not Hitler’s car, and those two men are cocksure idiots. The car is simply too old to be Hitler’s Mercedes, and as a point of fact this car isn’t even a Mercedes in the first place – a fact that would be eminently clearer to those who decided to look at the plaque at the rear of the vehicle.”
“So who’s car is it?”
“It was the automobile of Ferdinand, Archduke to Hungary. Poor fellow got himself assassinated in Sarajevo roundabouts 1914. He took a bullet to the neck, and his poor wife Sophie took one in the belly. Happened in that very car, as a matter of fact. Both died, and that action is what some say caused the First World War.”
“Oh,” Benjamin said. He felt queasy at the thought of people getting shot up and killed in this car.
“And it is not a Mercedes,” Brother Jake said again, this time quite loudly so that the two men in their ugly coats heard. They turned and sneered in disgust. Jake continued. “It is, quite actually, a Graf Und Stift automobile – “ He said these words with an egregious German accent. “—and only utter jackasses wouldn’t realize that Mercedes-Benz wasn’t even a company until 1924, ain’t that right, Benjamin?”
Reluctantly, Benjamin nodded.
“See, even a teenager knows it,” Jake said, rolling his eyes at the two men. They both looked angry and shamed, and stalked off, heads held high as if to defy their own ignorance.
“I’m only twelve,” Benjamin said.
“Twelve?” Brother Jake asked. “Well, I’ll be. That’s a good age, a fine age to be sure. You know what a twelve-year-old boy ought to see at least once during that time? Something that few boys your age will ever see, much less dream is real?”
Benjamin swallowed. He felt excited and scared. “What?”
“A mermaid. So let’s go see us a mermaid.”
***
Brother Jake held onto Benjamin’s hand tightly, drawing him away from the machines and past a table of a man auctioning off cartons of bloody red eggs and jars of praying mantises. They headed toward the corrugated archway leading into another warehouse – this one smaller and darker by the looks of it – and Benjamin felt powerless to do anything.
He liked Brother Jake. The God-fearing dumpling of a man seemed friendly, and had a warm smile framed by that pleasantly unkempt beard. But Benjamin had broken the promise to his father. What happened when Dad came looking for him?
He thought about prying free his hand and returning to the where the machines chugged and rattled, but again came that promise from Brother Jake replaying itself in Benjamin’s head:
Let’s go see us a mermaid.
A mermaid! Horned horses and nasty ice cream were one thing. But a real, live mermaid? That took things to a whole new level. Benjamin wanted to see her so badly, and he knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. Besides, he could surely get back in time to greet his father, couldn’t he?
***
The room they entered was dimly lit, the only light coming from electric candles whose fake flames were made to flicker and flutter like the real thing. Here, the hay on the floor was thick, almost slippery. Nothing here felt certain; everything was fuzzy.
And yet, he could not contain his excitement.
Three boxes – cages, by the looks of them – were pressed against the far wall of this space (and they were the only things here save for a handful of people milling around and ogling).
Each cage was different.
The first was tall, taller than two lumberjacks standing on one another’s shoulders. Thick bars ran the length of the cage, each thicker than Benjamin’s wrists and corroded with barnacles of rust. This was no cage; it was a fortress, a citadel meant to keep people out as easily as it kept someone in. Within the russet darkness of the cage, a darker shadow moved, loping and pacing.
The second cage was perhaps not a cage at all, but rather, a big metal box, like a bank safe covered in grease and oil and bolted together with fat, uneven rivets. A pair of knobby hinges at the front suggested that there was a door, though Benjamin could make out no handle with which to open it. A single rectangular window stood in the middle of the box, no taller than an inch, no wider than five.
Then, the third cage. Again, perhaps not so much a cage as a box – this one made of smeary plexiglass, the plastic scratched and jaundiced. Even from where he stood, Benjamin could see her. A woman laid belly-down on the floor of this box, one of her hands pressed against the plastic (which now Benjamin could see was peppered with a series of holes). Black hair, so black it was blue, cascaded down and concealed all of her face except a porcelain sliver.
“Welcome to the Rarities Room,” Brother Jake whispered as if in reverence. He finally let go of Benjamin’s hand, and he pressed his together as if to make a small, silent prayer. “This is the mermaid of which I spoke, boy.”
“What’s in those first two boxes?” Benjamin asked.
Jake smiled. “Doesn’t much matter. Let’s go see our prize.”
Brother Jake kissed the cross around his neck and trundled up closer to the mermaid’s plastic enclosure—which was not, the boy noted, filled with water. Benjamin followed.
As they approached, Benjamin could see the iridescent tail laying flat behind her: it called to mind the scales of an exotic fish. Her hair covered her breasts, but Benjamin could still see the outer curves of those swollen hillocks, and he felt his mouth go dry and his knees weak.
Still: something wasn’t right.
The mermaid’s arms were blotchy and sallow. Her fingers were curled inward, twitching feebly but not much else. The pale expanse of her tummy looked too thin, and Benjamin saw the xylophone bumps of her ribcage showing through her marmoreal skin.
“My dearest Iara,” Brother Jake said, eyes wide and lips stretched into a painful-looking smile. “Hello, again.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Benjamin asked.
Jake gestured behind the cages, where two teenage boys in wife-beater shirts and ratty jeans were unwinding a pair of garden hoses. In moments they had them mostly unraveled, and turned them toward the mermaid.
“Step back,” Jake said, putting his hand on the boy’s chest and easing him out of the way of the sudden spray. Dual streams of water hit the mermaid – Iara, apparently – on her back. She arched her shoulders and made a weak, mewling sound. They juggled the dueling sprays up her back, her head, and back down to her floppy fish tail.
“It’s not salt water,” Jake said, clucking his tongue. “And it damn well should be. A maiden of the sea such as herself does not thrive well in freshwater conditions, I’m afraid. Besides, she should be swimming in it. Not sprayed with it like a dog urinating on common shrubbery.”
“Oh.” Benjamin felt a struggle of emotions. He felt in awe of this creature, but he felt sick, too for the way they were treating her.
“That won’t be a problem when she comes home with me.”
Iara hung her head low, her damp hair pooling against the ground like a knotted coil of seaweed. Benjamin looked up at Jake. “You’re buying her?”
Jake nodded. “If I win the auction, yes. And I will win it. My bid is substantial, thanks to the… donations of my congregation.”
“What will you do with her?”
A
mad glint flashed in Jake’s eye, and it scared Benjamin. “I will make her pious. Mermaids and other primeval creatures are like aboriginal peoples, you see? They have kept to the fringes, sometimes by choice, other times through the force of others. This keeps them out of the range of the Lord’s teaching. They end up as bitter pagans, awful cannibals, dissident heathens. Some of them can be changed. Some of them can be shown the light of Heaven.”
“You’re going to make her go to church?” Benjamin frowned.
“In a matter of speaking.” The two teens turned off the hoses, and began coiling them back up around their cocked elbows. The mermaid just slumped against the ground, rubbing her cheek in circles against a draining puddle. “She will not attend services with the rest of the congregation. But she will kneel before the cross.” He licked his lips. “One way or another.”
”That seems weird,” was all Benjamin could say.
Brother Jake put a steadying hand on the boy’s shoulder, but to Benjamin, it felt cold and clammy. Was this right? Could – should – Jake do that? Maybe it was the right thing to do. Benjamin and his family went to church (er, sometimes) and were afforded the chance to go to Heaven. Shouldn’t Iara be allowed the same opportunity?
Still. Something didn’t sit well. Not just about the church thing, either. But about this… auction. She was a living thing. Human, or at least human-seeming. Why should her fate be given over to a financial transaction?
“If you’ll excuse me,” Jake said, wetting a finger and smoothing a few errant hairs of his beard. “I am going to go ensure that my bid is in the proper hands and that it is sufficiently marked. Will you wait here for me? I will regale you with stories upon my return.”
Benjamin swallowed and nodded. “I will.”
“Good.” Jake winked, and waddled off.
***
He is no man of God.
The thought wormed into Benjamin’s head like a long finger. It did not ask to be thought, nor was it actually his own thought at all. Knees weak, he stumbled forward and tried not to throw up.