The Life and Death Parade

by Eliza Wass

  All the lights went out. I held Holiday as fireworks went off—the piercing run, the deafening boom—only no lights appeared in the sky. There was only the sound running over and over again in total darkness, as if we had all gone blind.

  “Why is it so dark?” Holly tugged at my jacket.

  The crowd roared as a fire blossomed at the center of the ring—only the fire was shaped like a person. It was shaped like Safi, with long, sizzling hair and top hat lit with flames. Several people screamed. His teeth glowed electric blue. “Welcome to the afterlife,” he said, and then the fire went out.

  The entire camp was painted with an undercoating of black-light paint that now appeared in wild greens and blues and pinks. Neon skulls shone, painted on the faces of the crowd.

  “This is scary.” Holiday pulled my hand and I gasped. Her tiny face had lit up with a secret skull.

  “It’s okay. It’s not real,” I said, but my heart was racing. I waited for proper lights to come on, but the crowd was already dispersing. The drums beat faster, narrowing my heart.

  “I think I want to go home,” Holiday said. I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I thought I wanted to go home, too. On the other, I still hadn’t found the psychic. If I left now, I might never find her.

  I crouched down in front of Holiday. Her skull face blazed. “We just have to stay a little longer. I need to—”

  “Roan!” Holiday’s fear dropped in an instant as she raced to Roan’s side.

  Macklin collapsed in front of her. “My God! What have they done to you?” he said, running his fingers over her skull paint. Then he planted his face in her neck and smelled her hair.

  “What have they done to you?” I looked pointedly at Roan.

  “I gave him the Kiss of Death.” Roan’s eyes were like headlights. Macklin stumbled up and threw his arms around Roan, kissed his neck.

  “This is getting slightly out of control,” I said.

  “I can take Holiday,” Roan said. “I know a quiet place by the canal.”

  “I think she wants to go home.” I was struggling to be heard over the crowd. Macklin whispered slobbery nothings in Roan’s ear.

  Holiday was stitched to Roan’s side. “I don’t want to leave!” she said. “I love this party!”

  I felt uneasy leaving them, but Roan knew his way around and I needed to find the psychic. That was why we were here. I nodded to convince myself. “Okay.”

  I said good-bye to Joy, who didn’t want to miss the party. We exchanged numbers. I gave Holiday a kiss. Then I walked alone into the crowd.

  I had already searched the tents, but I realized it was the boats I needed. I headed toward the edge of the camp, to trace my way around until I reached the canal side. The signs gleamed with black-light paint, and the items for sale had taken a darker bent—Hexing Cream and Curse Custard, Spirit Spells and Hell’s Breath. They were selling dead flowers by the bundle and personalized headstones and caskets. There were shooting games where punters took aim at what looked like real skeletons with what sounded like real bullets. I shivered when I saw a booth called Russian roulette. The game runner sat at the back, waiting for someone to approach.

  It was especially mad along the rim, where little splinter groups had formed. In one, people danced wildly to pounding drums. In another, a crowd gathered and just one person danced at the center, juggling two thick snakes. Some of the tents had already been taken down; others had been trampled by the crowds.

  The second half was definitely about death.

  The canal was lit up like an electric serpent. People danced to a live band on a flat raft. I walked along the towpath, peered into windows, praying I would find her boat. One boat had a long queue at the side. As I approached it, my stomach flipped. Psychic, but only if you BELIEVE it. The sign was posted in the window, yellowed with age. The line went all the way up the low hill. There was no way I would ever be able to see her. I dragged my feet to the back of the line.

  Why had I waited so long to look for her? I should have gone first thing. I waited over ten minutes. The line didn’t budge. I needed to come up with a plan, fast. I considered arson—I already had experience—but I wasn’t particularly good at creating a scene. I wasn’t good at getting anything I wanted.

  I eavesdropped on the couple in front of me. They were huddled together, talking about the psychic in awed tones. “I’ve heard she’s never been wrong before.”

  “A mate of mine went to see her last year,” I volunteered, stepping toward them.

  “Oh really?” one asked. A large group in front of us turned to listen. “What did she say?” The boy beside me was beaming. The group waited with bated breath.

  “She told him he was going to die.”

  The group shifted uncomfortably. The boy frowned. “Oh. How quaint.” He looked at his girlfriend. “Is your mate here?” he asked me.

  “No.” I shook my head. “She’s never been wrong.”

  “So, he’s…” He peered around behind me.

  “Dead.”

  He pressed his fingers together. “Well.” The large group started talking, fast, among themselves.

  “I don’t really think…” the girl said.

  “Yes, perhaps we should just…” They held tight to each other as they abandoned the line. After a minute, the large group did the same. I worked my way down the line, telling the same story. It wasn’t my finest moment, but I considered it consumer protection. After all, I doubted the psychic had a Yelp page.

  My final predecessor climbed out of the boat looking seasick. There was already a queue behind me. I took a deep breath, climbed onto the deck, and pushed through the door.

  The lights were out except for a swirling lavender crystal ball at the center of the table. The woman was behind the table, her head covered in a purple scarf. There was a heavy compression in the room, so thick that my ears popped when I swallowed. The mess on her boat had grown claws over the past year. Old papers were stacked to the ceiling; thick dirt clung to everything. Even the oils couldn’t cover the stench, like rotting food.

  The woman swayed. “Put the money on the table and sit down on the chair,” she said. “And I will tell you the future.”

  “I don’t want to know the future.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know the past.”

  She slid the scarf from her face. She looked older, frailer, like it had been more than a year since we’d met. Not that I’d fared much better. I pressed my tongue against the back of my piercing.

  She narrowed her flinty eyes at me. “Who are you? We’ve met before.” I didn’t want to tell her about Nikki, not yet.

  “I’m Darlene Damice’s daughter,” I said. It was a card I’d never played before, and I didn’t know whether it would have any effect.

  She nodded like this didn’t surprise her. “Anaya.” She held out her hand and I shook it.

  “Anaya?” I repeated. “Mum used to talk about you. She used to say, Anaya taught me how to pray.”

  “Ah.” She flicked the switch on her crystal ball so it stopped spinning. “I like to think I’m very good at praying. I always know what to be grateful for. Will you share a cup of tea?”

  The adrenaline that had propelled me through the night emptied, and I felt something like dread flood my veins. “I…” Anaya knew Mum; they were friends. So why had she told Nikki he was going to die? “I’m all right. I had a whole pitcher of Heaven earlier,” I joked.

  “Oh God.” She threw her hands up. “That tourist tat.” She went to the window, flicked aside the curtains, and peered out. The chaos seemed contained now, behind glass, like a circus in a snow globe. “No. You must have some proper tea. The way your mother made.” She paused to shake some pills out of a bottle, which she swallowed dry. “Lock the door.”

  I did as she told me. “You seem nervous.”

  “Do I? Ha!” She opened and closed cupboard doors, removing pinches of herbs that she mixed in a teapot. “I wo
nder what your mother would think of all this.” She indicated the scene outside. “Not much! When Darlene was part of the parade, it wasn’t like this.” She wriggled a finger. “It wasn’t a theme park. This is for the tourists, you understand?” She stopped to stare into my eyes, like my opinion mattered. “Sit. Please, sit.” I sat on the same chair Nikki sat on. “None of the magic tonight is real, but don’t let that convince you it’s never real.”

  My heart thudded. I wondered what she would say about her time with Nikki—was that for the tourists, or was it something else?

  “Why have you come after midnight?” Her penciled brows came together. “You should have come before.”

  “I was told that after midnight was for the afterlife.”

  “Why do you believe what someone tells you? No. You think for yourself, that’s the better way.” The kettle screamed and she poured out the water. “Before midnight is for working good, blessed magic. After midnight is for dark, cursed magic. That’s what I believe, but don’t you trust me either. You make up your own mind.” She bustled over with the tray and set down cups for each of us. “This is your mother’s recipe. Very strong. She doesn’t make anything weak.” She raised her eyebrows at me.

  I found myself warming to her, in spite of myself. There was something hovering in the air, in talking about Mum with someone who actually knew her. It made me feel connected to her in a way I never did anymore. I stared into the murky cup of tea.

  “Drink it,” she said. “It will give you faith. You need it.”

  I slid the teacup closer to me. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “Of course you do.” She scoffed, picked up her teacup, and took a messy gulp. She wiped the edges of her mouth. “What you have is the fear. I know. Your mother was the same. You’re afraid to believe in anything, but it is only in discovering what you believe in that you can find your true path.”

  I took a deep breath and lifted the cup. The thick liquid clotted around my lips as I tipped it back. I coughed. “Yuck. This is Mum’s recipe?”

  “I didn’t say it was good, but the best things are neither good or bad.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is just bad,” I said, but I took another sip. I gazed out the windows, which throbbed slightly with the beats outside. “So this is all tricks for tourists?”

  “For the tourists, it is.” She leaned forward, like she wanted me to ask her to read me. “Tourists, I cold read. It’s very easy to tell the future that way.” Her eyebrows swiveled as she spoke. “One of the illusions in life is that people change. They don’t change. If we met again ten years from now, we will have the same conversation; you will have the same—or similar—worries. Nothing changes.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “You watch. You’re young now, but when you’re old like me, you’ll still be young.” She grinned.

  “So everything is set.” My voice rose, thinking of what she’d told Nikki, how he thought there was no way out. “Everyone and everything—nothing we do matters?”

  “I didn’t say that. You see, Katherine.” I bristled; she knew my name. She leaned forward. “You are you and I am me, and out there all different people are themselves. The change is not in you. The change is between you and the others. We are all one being, and together, we make the world. Now.” She set her empty cup on the table and walked toward the back of the boat, where the altar I’d noticed a year ago still swayed, wild with candles. “If you won’t tell me why you’re here, I’ll tell you.” She lifted a pile of saint cards from the side table. “I will ask your mother—” She pulled a card from the pile and placed it at the center of the altar. I recognized her face immediately; it was so close to my own.

  “Why do you have Mum on a saint card?”

  “Because your mother is a saint.”

  “She can’t be.” I remembered her page in the book, the powers she’d listed: grief, creativity, new life. I’d thought it was for fun.

  “She is. I use her card all the time. Not for tourists, but for myself. I ask her for things. Talk to her.” The idea of people talking to Mum unsettled me. I knew it wasn’t real, but that seemed to matter less and less.

  “No.” My pulse pounded in my throat. “I don’t want you to use Mum’s card.”

  Anaya turned. “But you don’t believe in magic?”

  “And I don’t want to know the future,” I said. I didn’t want to have my future read, my past read, anything read. I felt it like cold water all through me. I wanted to run, out of the boat, into the party, to be lost in beats that never came together. What if I went looking for the truth and the truth found me? What if the truth was staring right back? “I want to know what happened to Nikki. The boy you read for outside the Hartfords’ party last year. What happened to him?”

  “Boy? What boy?” Her eyebrows flicked with realization. “Ah, you mean the boy with the funny smile, of course. I knew I recognized you. You came onto this boat with him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m very sorry for your—”

  “What happened, when he came back to get his cane?” I gripped the edge of the seat.

  “He came back and got it. I gave it to him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “We spoke for a while.”

  “About what?”

  “About his reading.” She lit the candles that had gone out, so the altar seemed to float with flames. “He was very puzzled by it, as you can imagine. It’s not every day you contact the spirit of your dead loved one only to find that you are going to be joining her.”

  “Dead loved one? You mean Mum?”

  “I told you, I always use your mother’s card.” She brushed the card’s face with her fingers. “Since she passed. She is my most trusted saint.”

  I lost my grip on the chair, felt my soul slip beneath the table. “You mean Mum told you Nikki was going to die?”

  “She told Nikki.” She set the matches down and cracked her knuckles. “Now. We do your reading.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “How could she? You never speak to her,” she said. “Let’s begin, I don’t have all night.”

  “No.” I stood up and stamped my foot. “Put down Mum’s card. I don’t want you to use Mum’s card.” I was acting like a child, but I felt the way a child felt, like the whole world was conspiring against me. Mum had told Nikki he was going to die. Mum was the reason he believed it. My mind reeled back to that day with the rabbit, Nikki cuddled into her chest as she brushed his hair and told him There are no accidents.

  “Darlene will be very angry with me, but if you insist, I will use the serpent spirit.” She took Mum’s card down and replaced it with a figure that was half man and half snake, a rainbow spouting from his skull. She placed her hands on either side of the altar and dropped her head so the flame from the candles rose along her silhouette like a crown of fire. She began a chant, which I had heard before but could barely remember. It was like watching a memory unfold.

  I pushed the tea away from me on the table. What I had swallowed sat thickly in my stomach. I gazed at the party through the crack in the curtain, although it shrank as her chants filled the room. The boat shifted, as if the earth was rearranging itself beneath us. Then she spoke:

  “You came to get the blood out.” I inhaled sharply. “Of the coat. You came to get the blood out.”

  “We got the blood out,” I said, but my voice was weak. “We took it to the dry cleaner’s.”

  Anaya’s back twitched, as if she ran on faulty electricity. “He’s showing me a church—”

  “We don’t go to church,” I said quickly. It felt like a battle. Like it was my job to block every assault, in case one did damage.

  “—filled with books. That’s where it happens.” The library. But how could she see that? Not many people filled a church with books.

  “What happened?” I braced for impact.

  “That’s where he dies.”

  My teeth set. I felt
bugs crawl all over me, up and down my skin. Was this what magic felt like? Like someone telling you a truth you never wanted to hear?

  She hissed. It set the bugs on my skin alight and I knew I had to leave.

  “The one he loves kills him.”

  I bolted up, upsetting the tea. It ran across the table, spilled over the edge in a long, thin line—the way his blood ran that night.

  She didn’t turn. She didn’t move from her pulsing position at the altar. I reached the door, turned the knob, found it locked. But I’d locked it. Yes, I was the one who locked it and I turned the lock, raced out the door, and caught myself on the deck railing. The party was there, and instead of running away from it, I ran toward it. I ran into the party until it swallowed me up.

  A body fell down the stairs. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. I opened my eyes in the dark, unsure of where I was, waiting for reality to surround me.

  The wall beside my arm came first, smelling of age beneath thin wallpaper. Then the roof crossed over me, hemmed with Victorian plaster. Then the quiet.

  I sat up. I was in the room next to Nikki’s. The place I went to keep watch over him, to listen. Only there was nothing to hear. Often I could hear him mumbling but always I could hear him breathing, gurgling as if he were drowning.

  I concentrated. The rustle of my nightgown. The rising of my breath. Nothing else. I threw the covers off my makeshift bed. I got to my feet. Nikki’s room was only next door, but it seemed to take ages to get there, crawling along the wall with my heart in my throat.

  The door was shut. I had a choice. I could open it and risk waking him. Or I could go back to sleep. I checked the grandfather clock across the hall. It was nearly three in the morning.

  Just look, I ordered myself. Open the door quietly and look. I broke out in gooseflesh. I didn’t like to see him asleep anymore.

  I pressed my fingers to the wood of the door, to keep the age-warped wood from creaking. My fingers settled spiderlike around the brass doorknob. The latch clicked, and I pushed the door open without a sound.