Jack: Secret Circles

by F. Paul Wilson

  Maybe Mr. Rosen was right. Johnson, N.J., was like an island in a quiet pond. Maybe he needed to start tuning in to the world around him.

  “Here’s your week’s pay,” Mr. Rosen said, handing him the tan envelope. “Not many hours last week, so not much money, I’m afraid. Things wind down after Labor Day. We’ll go into October, then I don’t think I’ll need you till spring. That is, if you want to come back.”

  “Sure. I’ll come back.”

  He would have preferred to be in de pen dently wealthy, but if he had to work, USED was a great place, and Mr. Rosen was an easygoing boss. Plus he paid in cash, which saved Jack the hassle of applying for a Social Security number.

  “Good. And as for this week …” He held out a set of keys. “Take these.”

  Jack recognized the keys to the store.

  “Didn’t you say you’ll be away?”

  “That’s right. I’ll be visiting my nephew.” He pointed to the keys. “While I’m out of town, I’d like you to open the store for a few hours a day if you can. I left some change in the till in case you happen to sell anything. And if there’s a day or two when you can’t open up, just swing by and take a look inside.”

  “Okay.” That didn’t seem so hard.

  “Oh, and keep a record of your hours there and I’ll pay you accordingly.”

  Jack stared at the keys and couldn’t help a swell of pride. A big responsibility. But Mr. Rosen must think he was capable enough … and trustworthy enough.

  “Will do.” He looked up at his el der ly boss. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”

  He smiled. “If I wasn’t absolutely sure of that, I’d simply shut down for the week.”

  Jack looked around at the roomful of electronic equipment—rows of black boxes with dials and red and green lights and glowing meters.

  “Can I ask what all this is? Are you transmitting to outer space?”

  “No, I’m listening.”

  Weezy’s theory popped into his head. “To aliens?”

  He laughed. “To the world.”

  “Why?”

  His smile faded. “To know what’s going on. So I won’t be surprised again. So events can’t take me unawares as they did back in the day when I assumed everything would work out for the best.”

  Jack frowned. “I don’t under—”

  His gaze abruptly shifted past Jack to the window. “Well, well. It appears your call sparked a quick response.”

  Jack turned and saw a sheriff’s department cruiser turning into the Vivino driveway.

  “Now he’ll get it,” Jack said.

  The old man shook his head. “Remember what I told you: It will not turn out as you hope.”

  5

  To Jack’s dismay, Mr. Rosen was right.

  From where he crouched at the window at the end of the trailer’s front room, Jack watched a deputy he didn’t recognize knock on the Vivinos’ front door. Mr. Vivino answered and let him in.

  Not even ten minutes later the deputy was back outside and shaking hands with the bastard. Jack strained to hear what they were saying but could catch only snatches, mostly Mr. Vivino’s loud voice.

  “Sorry you had to come out here for nothing … probably just some crank … guess I have to expect this sort of thing now that I’m becoming a public figure … maybe a rival for the freeholder job …” He gestured toward Mr. Rosen’s trailer and seemed to look straight at Jack, who ducked farther back from the window. “Or maybe that old coot next door.”

  The deputy said something Jack couldn’t hear but it seemed to surprise Mr. Vivino. “A boy’s voice? Now who the hell … ?”

  His heart sank as he watched the deputy return to his unit and drive away.

  To his credit, Mr. Rosen did not say I told you so.

  Instead Jack heard the echo of the wet smack of Sally’s father’s hand against her butt, almost felt its sting, and the anger returned.

  Mr. Rosen looked at him and said, “That’s a fierce look on your punim, young man.”

  “Punim?”

  Mr. Rosen paused, then gave his head a quick shake. “Sorry. I meant face. I can tuck the old tongue away in the workaday world, but it slips out at home.”

  Jack figured if Mr. Rosen could detect a fierce look on his punim, he was giving away too much.

  “I’m just disappointed, is all. Is that the best they can do?”

  “I’m afraid so. And you should think it’s for the best that you live in a country where they cannot come and drag you away simply because an anonymous caller said you did something wrong.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Don’t guess so—know so.” The sudden sharp edge on Mr. Rosen’s voice took Jack by surprise. “Take it from someone who once lived in such a place.”

  “Where?”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now. It’s gone. But there are other places like it in the world. Be thankful you live here.”

  Jack was thankful, but that didn’t make him any less frustrated. He couldn’t bear to think of Sally having to go on living like that day after day. If her big brother were here, he’d do something—maybe take a licking defending her, but he wouldn’t have stood by and watched.

  Tony, however, was gone.

  But Jack wasn’t.

  He had to do something, had to find a way to bring down Mr. Aldo Vivino. The nerve of the bastard, dragging his daughter around from house to house trying to cadge votes by pretending he was the wonderful family man and loving father. Time to let the world see who he really was.

  Jack had tried going through proper channels with no results. Time to try another way.

  Jack’s way.

  6

  After dinner, Jack, Eddie, and Weezy rode up to the circus. He found it hard riding past the Vivino house. He got steamed again thinking about what he’d seen.

  When they reached the muddy lot, Jack tried to put Sally out of his head and enjoy the show. Wasn’t easy. Especially with flyers about the missing Cody all over the place.

  Sally … Cody … was it just him, or was the world becoming a darker place?

  He didn’t make much progress with his Sally rage until he reached the shooting gallery. The rifles were air-powered and shot pellets instead of bullets, but they fired, and that was what counted. He pretended the targets were Mr. Vivino and it took him five magazines before he scored enough hits to feel some relief. If he’d had his own BB gun growing up, he might have scored better, but he’d suffered through a gunless childhood.

  “Let’s hit the sideshow,” Eddie said. “They’ve got some freaks and stuff.”

  Jack had never understood the attraction of staring at deformed people, but he did want to see the motorcycle show.

  “Hey, Weezy.”

  Jack turned and saw Carson Toliver approaching.

  Swell.

  Toliver, a muscular, tanned senior with blond surfer hair, was top dog at South Burlington County Regional High School—captain and quarterback of the Burlington Badgers and last year’s high scorer on the basketball team. Girls went gaga over the guy. Weezy was no exception.

  “Hi, Carson,” she said, a giggle edging into her voice.

  For some reason he seemed interested in Weezy, and any contact with him seemed to soften her brain. Jack could almost hear her IQ dropping as she gazed at him.

  Toliver pointed down the midway. “C’mon. I want to show you something.”

  “Okay.”

  Jack wanted to say that the three of them had always done the circus together, but bit it back. She caught him looking at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “We’ll catch up to you later.”

  “Okay. You two have fun.”

  Jeez, it was like he’d just turned into a little brother.

  He watched her and Toliver walk away for a few seconds, then turned to Eddie. “Let’s do the bumper cars. I feel like crashing into something.”

  As they waited on line, a guy with a came
ra came up to them. He had signs pinned front and back on his sweatshirt.

  Instant Home Movies!

  Only $10!

  “You kids want movies of you in the bumper cars?”

  “We don’t have a projector,” Eddie said.

  The guy laughed. “You don’t need one. Got a VHS player?”

  “Sure.”

  He patted the camera. “This baby rec ords straight to a videotape. You just take it home and plug it into your VCR. Instant home movies! It’s the latest thing!” He looked around. “Where are your folks?”

  “Home,” Jack said.

  The guy frowned. “Got ten bucks?”

  Jack shook his head. “Not for a film of me and him.”

  With an immediate loss of interest, the guy moved on to greener pastures.

  Instant home movies, Jack thought. What’ll they think of next?

  The idea stayed with him through the bumper car ride where he slammed into everyone in sight, and followed him to the end of the midway where they came upon the traditional game of swinging a mallet and trying to ring a bell atop a board.

  Three Swings for a Dollar.

  Jack wasn’t interested. He knew his skinny arms wouldn’t be able to power that ringer to the top, and the prize was a teddy bear. Who wanted a teddy bear?

  The sun was gone, leaving the circus an island of light in a sea of deepening darkness. Jack glanced toward the trees bordering the field and saw two points of light in the shadow. They blinked off and then on again.

  He thought he could make out a hulking shape within the dark. But then the points blinked off and never came on again.

  Eyes? Had something been watching the circus from the pines? It couldn’t have been a person because human eyes didn’t glow like that. And what kind of animal had eyes so far off the ground?

  Unless …

  He shook it off. That was Weezy territory.

  They entered the sideshow and ambled past the freaks.

  Only half a dozen present if you counted the Siamese Twins as two: Armando the Armless Saxophonist, Corinda the Cow-faced Woman, Tiny the World’s Fattest Man, and Peter the Pinnochio Boy who was a midget dancing around with elastic strings stretching from the ceiling to his wrists and ankles.

  Jack suspected the Siamese twins were tied at the shoulder rather than truly joined. He was watching them closely, looking for evidence of fakery as they juggled—a clever act—when Eddie hurried up and grabbed his arm.

  “Jack,” he said, grinning, “you’ve got to see this thing down here. They’re calling it a ‘machine’ but it doesn’t do anything!”

  Jack followed him to a stall where an odd gizmo sat on a rotating platform under a hand-printed sign.

  THE MYSTERY MACHINE

  The weirdest thing Jack had ever seen: a bunch of odd-colored, odd-shaped pieces—flat, round, oval, irregular, opaque, clear like glass—haphazardly stuck together with no rhyme or reason. Like something a toddler would put together from an alien Tinkertoy set.

  “Isn’t it a riot?” Eddie said. “It just sits there.”

  He was right. It simply sat and rotated on its stand. Dumb. Jack was turning away when something caught his eye. He turned back and stared. He could have sworn …

  Nah. Impossible.

  He made another move to leave when he saw it again—or thought he did.

  For an instant—just an instant—the upper half of one of the pieces seemed to have faded away. It looked fine now, but Jack was sure …

  He stared unblinking. If it happened again, he’d catch it.

  “What did you see?”

  A thin, balding, bookish man to his left had spoken.

  “Not sure,” Jack said. “More like what I didn’t see.”

  “Something faded in and out of view?”

  Jack nodded. “That was how it looked.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Eddie said.

  “Only certain people can, and then only out of the corner of the eye.”

  “What is it?” Eddie said.

  The man smiled. “A mystery.”

  “Yeah, fine. But it says it’s a machine. What’s it do?”

  “It fascinates.”

  “The fading in and out of view,” Jack said. “Optical illusion, right?”

  The man shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it goes somewhere.”

  “’Goes’?”

  “As in: leaves here and pokes into another place.”

  “What other place?”

  The man’s smile was almost sad. “That’s the real mystery. I—”

  “Hey, Prather!” someone said, and the man turned.

  “Yes?”

  The canvas boss from last night walked up and said, “Little Taber wants t’see you.”

  As the bookish man hurried off, the boss looked at Jack. “Want tickets to the cycle show?”

  “Well—” Jack started to say.

  “You would’ve had free passes if you’d pitched in last night,” he said with a sharp grin. “But now you’ll have to buy them, won’t you?”

  Jack pulled out the passes Mr. Drexler had given him. “Not exactly.”

  The grin vanished. “Where’d you get those?”

  “I’ve got my sources,” Jack said, turning away.

  “What’s he talking about?” Eddie said.

  Jack told him, keeping watch on the Mystery Machine as they walked away, but nothing faded away this time.

  Pokes into another place … yeah, right. An optical illusion and nothing more.

  “Any word on that kid?” the boss called after them.

  Jack looked back. “Not that I heard.”

  The guy shook his head in what looked like disgust. “We’re doing our part, you know.”

  “Yeah, I saw the posters.”

  As he and Eddie continued toward the main tent, Jack was doubly sure that particular roustabout knew nothing. But that didn’t mean somebody else here didn’t.

  One of the freaks, maybe?

  Instantly Weezy’s voice was in his inner ear: Oh, sure, blame it on the freaks. Just because they’re different doesn’t mean they’re evil.

  Okay, right, sure. Different didn’t equal evil, but that didn’t guarantee not evil. Maybe if you were treated badly all your life because of a twisted outside, you became twisted inside.

  His imagination was running now. What if Peter the Pinnochio Boy pretended to be a little kid—he was small enough to pass—and lured Cody into a trap and—

  Jack’s mind balked at going any further.

  They reached the main tent, showed their passes, and found seats. After watching the animal show—dopey—and cycle stunts—cool—they wandered back outside.

  “Where’s your dear sister?” Jack said as he watched some hapless father trying to win a teddy bear for his little girl by throwing darts at balloons.

  Why wasn’t Mr. Vivino here doing that for Sally? What was wrong with him?

  “With Toliver somewhere, I guess,” Eddie said.

  Jack had had enough so-called fun, and was ready to head home. But they couldn’t leave without Weezy.

  “Let’s go look. You head toward the front, I’ll take the rear. We’ll meet back here in a couple of minutes.”

  As he walked along he heard, “Hi, Jack.”

  He turned and recognized a girl from one of his classes.

  “Hi, Karina.”

  What was her last name? He’d started high school only a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t nailed down all the new names yet.

  Haddon. That was it. Karina Haddon.

  She smiled. “I figured you’d be here, seeing as it’s practically in your backyard.”

  She had a nice smile and wore her dark blond hair short, though not as short as his sister Kate’s. She had most of it hidden under a striped engineer’s cap now. Her brown eyes sparkled in the lights strung overhead.

  He said, “You’re from Tabernacle, right?”

  Tabernacle was the next town north on 206. Karina was alwa
ys seated on the school bus beside her friend Cristin by the time Jack boarded. Compared to other girls in the class, she tended to dress down—way down. Like bulky sweaters and loose jeans. To night she wore a Bob Marley T-shirt.

  She rolled her eyes. “My dad drove me and Cristin and he’s been like hanging over us.”

  “Where is she?”

  She looked around. “I’m not sure …”

  Just then a grinning brunette slipped through a knot of people.

  “Hey, you found him,” Cristin said.

  Jack saw Karina give her a shut-up look.

  “Oh, uh, well, your dad’s like having a major cow because you wandered off. He wants to find you and skate.”

  Karina turned to him and said, “Gotta run. See you in school tomorrow.”

  She waved and hurried off with Cristin, the two of them blabbing a hundred miles an hour.

  Hey, you found him.

  Had Karina been looking for him?

  Interesting, he thought as he resumed the search for Weezy.

  He found her standing by the hammer game with two other sophomore girls. Though only four months older, Weezy was a year ahead of Jack in school.

  The other two were giggling as they watched Carson Toliver swing the mallet and try to ring the bell atop the board. His muscles bulged beneath his tight T-shirt.

  But he wasn’t having much luck reaching the bell. Despite pounding the pad on the base pretty hard, he was moving the striker weight only a third or halfway up. Weezy joined the others in calling out the labels on the levels as he reached them.

  Whack!

  “Wimp!”

  Whack!

  “Dork!”

  Whack!

  “Nerd!”

  Jack wondered why he felt such plea sure watching him fail. He was supposed to be a pretty nice guy. He’d never picked on Jack—never acted any way toward Jack—but for some reason he disliked the guy.

  A word popped into his head.

  Jealous?

  No way.

  Yeah, Weezy had kissed Jack on the lips last month but that hadn’t meant anything. Little more than a peck. They weren’t like that. They were friends, nothing more.