by William Lobb
Frankie said, “We have to stop her or she’ll bring this whole dog-and-pony show down. Too many of us don’t need the cops looking around here.”
The boss agreed. “She’s been fairly calm since that night in Virginia. I think that close call scared her a little. Part of me thinks we should just leave her here. I’ll pay her what she’s owed and just move on. You can stay on until we reach Alabama—we still need to bring the House of Horrors with us. I’m sure we can find some local talent to take her place.”
Frankie agreed. Whoever or whatever this girl was, she was pure evil. He didn’t need to share this with the boss. The boss stood up, handed Frankie another breakfast beer, and said he was going to go over to talk to The Mechanic and The Engineer about Katrina.
The boss found the Engineer and the Mechanic outside the shower trailer. The discussion was brief. Everyone agreed. They would just cut her loose tomorrow and move on. She was a liability and she scared everyone, including Frankie. They didn’t realize that Katrina had overhead the conversation. The Mechanic saw her walk around the corner of that trailer. She was walking away fast, her head down, her hands in the pockets of her jeans. The three of them looked at each other and then back in her direction. The boss said, “Come over to my trailer. Go get Frankie, too.”
They found Frankie still sitting under the Cabbage Palm, looking out at the roiling Atlantic, drinking the last of his beer. They yelled out in unison for him to come quickly. Frankie stood up, less wobbly than before. The boss’s beers had helped. He walked over across the sand and stepped onto the beach grass and followed them to see the boss. The three of them walked in some kind of lockstep, the conversation low. A tension seemed to permeate across the entire carnival site. They arrived at the boss’s trailer and walked in. The boss seemingly had switched back to military mode. He was very serious and somber. There were four pistols on the table; he motioned at them and asked each man to take one. He said, “I know none of us want the cops here, for various reasons, but when we let this girl go I don’t know what to expect.”
Frankie knew, but he also knew this was one of those life moments where there was just no choice. Every option was bad. He said, “Let’s do it now; let’s just go get her and tell her to pack up and do it now.”
Frankie had this thing about him all his life. It was why he’d never go near the edge of a cliff or a roof. He had this compulsion to jump, a strange feeling; not that he wanted to die, but it was not unlike someone behind him pushing. And the more dangerous and twisted the situation became, the quicker he was to want to just jump. He always jumped, and always landed on his feet. He knew that was the work of the witches; there was someone, somewhere watching out for him. He was a pathetic, self-destructive mess, but every time he jumped, he always landed on his feet.
Frankie walked out of the trailer to go find Katrina. He found her in the House of Horrors and asked her to come and talk to the boss. Things had been very tense between Katrina and Frankie for the past few weeks. He’d been avoiding her and rejecting her sexually, just staying completely wasted on Seconal and vodka and acid. He once hoped she’d be gone from his life, that the need to be in this state constantly would pass.
He’d started spending the nights alone in the sleeper of the tractor. The night in Virginia was the last time he spent the night in the House of Horrors with her. Her evil was so pure and complex and complete that it almost made Frankie wonder if somewhere deep inside him there might be some fading, still hiding, spark of redemption. She was a beautiful and hideous and deadly mirror, reflecting back everything about himself that he denied. When he looked in her ice cold, empty eyes, he saw what he had become. It terrified him. It left him in a cold sweat and pondering how he could ever have gone this far down this dark road.
There are roads we take, journeys we embark on, full of promise and amusement, but somewhere in the journey everything can become twisted. Our compass breaks and slowly, insidiously we change, never for the good, never for the better. It permeates our fiber and changes us in ways we can never untangle; from some decisions there can be no safe walk home.
These are the dark and twisted dreams we’ll never awaken from. That moment when we realize every option is a painful, dangerous and ugly dead end, and we realize yesterday’s worst scenario looks good now by today’s comparison. That is exactly how it felt when Frankie looked into Katrina’s eyes.
Frankie walked up to the liquor store. The girl behind the counter commented that he was becoming their best customer. He bought a half-gallon of vodka and walked back to the carnival grounds. Katrina sat in the later afternoon sun, her face expressionless. He told her that they had to go talk to the boss. Her reply was, “Fuck that and fuck you,” as she continued to stare off in some meditative state.
Frankie climbed into the tractor and sat in the driver’s seat, drinking straight vodka and chain-smoking cigarettes. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a couple Seconals, and washed them down with the cheap booze. Hopefully, in a few minutes he would pass out. It seemed the only way he could get any sleep at all was to become completely numb. He sat there and guzzled a few more long drinks off the bottle and smoked more cigarettes. Then he crawled back to the sleeper. It was still hot outside, so Frankie turned on the air conditioner and fell asleep.
Sometime about 10:00 p.m., Frankie heard noises, gunshots, and yelling and screaming. He sat up and looked out the windshield. People were running in all different directions. He heard two more gunshots and screaming, and saw more people in panic. He looked across the field and saw the boss’s trailer. It looked like it was on fire. He looked around quickly. He saw other fires, small ones, growing rapidly. He heard a banging on the door, so he slid over into the driver’s seat and looked down. It was The Mechanic and his shirt was soaked with blood.
Frankie opened the door and jumped down. The Mechanic yelled, “Get your gun!”
Frankie told him that he’d lost it. He hated guns. He had his Bowie knife. He finally asked, “What the fuck?” The carnival area was abandoned now and most of the lights were out. They walked quickly. The Mechanic was in no shape to run and he was still bleeding heavily. Frankie was only mildly hungover. They ran to the boss’s trailer. It was fully involved in flames and the boss lay in the dirt just outside the door. Frankie knelt down to check on his new friend. No pulse. He was dead. They ran to the tents in back of the trailers, set up under a tall stand of Loblolly Pine. Looking inside, they saw nothing but carnage. Frankie turned to his friend and just said, “What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? How could she do this?”
The Mechanic stood there, shaking. Frankie grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the hideous sights in that tent. He asked if he was okay. The Mechanic just looked at him. “I mean physically; are you going to pass out?” They heard sirens, cops, fire trucks, ambulances. Frankie just muttered, “Cops. I’m fucked,” as they walked quickly back to the trailer that the Mechanic shared with the Engineer. They opened the door and the Engineer sat at the little table by the door, dead; a can of beer in front of him, and a stab wound right through the neck.
Frankie turned to the Mechanic and told him to go to the ambulances; he was going to find Katrina. He walked quickly toward the tractor. His eyes darting everywhere at once, he walked half-hunkered down, not knowing where the next gunshot would come from. He opened the tractor door and slowly climbed in, not knowing or remembering if she had a key. The sleeper was empty. He sat in the driver’s seat, grabbed the big bottle of vodka, now half-empty, and took a drink. He watched the fires burning. Now knowing his friends were dead, he watched the flashing lights and listened to the sirens. The entire grounds were active now; firefighters, emergency medical personnel, and police were everywhere. He took another long drink and climbed down out of the truck.
He walked around to the back of the House of Horrors trailer and went inside. She was there on the rack, totally nude and covered in blood. She saw him and
sat up. “I’ve been waiting for you, lying here, masturbating, and imagining how I am going to kill you,” Katrina said as she reached for a bloody knife laying on the bed next to her.
Frankie screamed, “Don’t make me do this again!” She lunged at him, the knife slashing his shirt but missing his heart, causing a deep cut down the left side of his torso. He swore her eyes were blood red, glowing in the darkness. He held her off with his hands as he hit her hard to the temple, hoping that would kill her. She just came back harder. He still didn’t reach for his knife. She cut him again, another stab at his heart, another miss. Frankie got his hands around her neck as she landed the knife deep into the muscle of his back. He choked her and thought she should be passing out; it felt like he was breaking her neck. She kept stabbing him. He heard footsteps behind him, and then a shot; it was The Mechanic. The shot missed; she clipped his back with the knife again. Another shot rang out, this time connecting right through Katrina’s forehead.
Frankie stared into her eyes. They didn’t change. He felt her body go limp. He felt the weight of her body as his hands supported her. Her eyes continued to stare at him, but she was dead as if she’d always been dead. He wiped the spattered blood from her forehead off his face. More footsteps, police. He heard them talking to The Mechanic. Frankie dropped to his knees and screamed. He knelt there for a long time.
From the cops came ten thousand questions, rapid fire: whose gun, who are you, who was she, where, why, who, why, when. Frankie just blanked it all out. He turned to the Mechanic; he reached out his arm as the police continued to ask questions and they hugged each other. They were both a bloody mess. Another cop entered and informed the two of them that the ambulance was just outside the door, and asked if they could walk. They walked out together and over to the ambulance.
The ambulance doors shut and a different flurry of activities began: needles put in their arms for IVs, drugs pumped, more questions, the same questions from different people, sirens wailing, bumps in the road. Through the window, they could see the fires were now extinguished for the most part. The Mechanic asked one medical technician how many died there; does anyone know? The tech just shook his head, “A lot: too many, both customers and carnies. A lot. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I was in Vietnam.”
At the hospital, Frankie considered using a fake name, but he figured they would tie him to the truck and figure out who he was anyway. He had no idea if he was wanted for the death of John Quarry. He just muttered under his breath, “I guess I’ll find out.”
Emergency room, recovery room, back to the emergency room, medical discharge, prescriptions, cute nurses, grumpy doctors, cops, and ten thousand questions. None, thankfully, were about the murder of John Quarry. Just about this girl: how well did he know her? Frankie pretty much just played it off as, “I’m just a truck driver heading south, taking a little break from the road.” They seemed to buy it. Both the Mechanic and Frankie said they thought the girl was a little crazy; their stories seemed to jive. Frankie just hoped the Mechanic didn’t mention he’d been fucking her for a few months. Frankie said he passed out drunk in his truck, woke up to this shit storm, went to check on the girl, found her, and she attacked him. He thanked the Mechanic, via the cops, and hoped there were no more questions.
The investigators came back to his emergency-room bed, said they had no more questions for now. Then the usual—Don’t leave the area. They would be in touch if they had any more questions. Frankie’s only thought was how fast could he get out of South Carolina. There was a broker in north Alabama that would give him a load south, somewhere near New Orleans. He would go find the boss’s friend and head on into Texas.
Chapter Twenty-six:
A Motel
Frankie took a cab back to the carnival grounds. It looked like a war zone. The Mechanic, who real name he finally found out was Earl, remained in the hospital. His injuries were significantly worse than Frankie’s. “Hardcore little fuck” was what Frankie called him after all this. He definitely had to go see him before he left.
The grounds crawled with cops; ambulances and coroner’s vehicles were parked near where the worst of the carnage had taken place. People walked all over, taking pictures and putting up yellow police tape. Frankie walked up to one of the cops, told him who he was, and said he needed to get his tractor. He was told to wait. He might have to wait until the scene was cleared. His tractor might be evidence. This is where Frankie tended to lose his mind. He didn’t get along with cops. He was trying to now, but there was no logic to the investigation. This crazy bitch killed a whole lot of people and he needed his truck to get the hell out of here. He stood there and waited, realizing he wanted no attention drawn to him or the truck. News crews were there too. Frankie heard the word “massacre.” He realized quickly he was not going anywhere for some time. Another cop arrived, with more authority, who asked Frankie a ton of questions.
Frankie told them he was going to get a room in the motel up the road and wait for them to release his truck. The cop seemed cool, like he understood, and tried to help. Frankie decided it was best to cooperate. He walked to the liquor store and bought supplies for what could be a long day or two or three. He asked the girl where he could go buy some clothes and asked for a cab. She offered to take him when she got off work, in about an hour. He’d become such a good customer, and they had kind of developed a friendship. Frankie liked the idea. Maybe this little layover wouldn’t be so bad.
The young liquor store cashier and Frankie ran around town, got him some clothes, and some beer and cigarettes. Frankie needed his Seconal, but they were in the truck. That was a minor concern. If the cops went through the tractor, they’d find his white crosses and reds—a minor drug charge, but this was South Carolina, 1982. He could end up on a chain gang.
They went back to the motel and Frankie got a room. He asked the girl, quite seriously, if she was over eighteen. She assured him she was twenty-one—a great reassurance.
The room was the standard sleazy motel in South Carolina. The guy at the front desk looked at Frankie out of the corner of his eye as he signed in. The office was so dank and dark Frankie thought he’d made it up. A small black-and-white TV now showed the local news, but he knew somehow, at some point during the day, it would be running soap operas. Really worn, old, ugly, cheap stained paneling surrounded him, mostly covered with pictures of people, mostly men, mostly old white men fishing. It seemed to Frankie that big fish really made old white men happy. The counter was greasy, and the carpet so stained that he actually worried something could crawl up his leg and bite him. He looked outside, through windows so dirty and stained that the world outside looked dismal and gray. Sadly, the world really was dismal and gray; the filthy windows just exaggerated it.
The room was better, but not much. Frankie and the girl sat down on the bed. Frankie poured some vodka into plastic cups, and he mixed the girl’s with orange juice. She leaned on his shoulder a bit, kind of getting comfortable. Frankie looked at her and leaned into to kiss her; he’d been interested in her since he first met her at the liquor store. He suddenly stopped. She was wearing a small cross around her neck. Somehow, suddenly, this small piece of jewelry stopped him in his tracks. He asked her about the cross; she said it was a gift from her mom, who was now dead. He asked her if she was a believer, a Christian. She said she did believe, very much and yes, she was a Christian.
Frankie asked her, “Then why are you here, getting drunk before you fuck me?”
His question shocked her and got her a little angry. “How can you ask that?”
Frankie replied he was not used to being with nice girls, girls of faith. He was more used to women like the now-dead Katrina: women who were a conduit to the other side, a darker place than he’d ever like her to see.
“I feel like I may pull a nice girl like you in with me, where I live, where I go—I don’t want to. I live in a place not unlike Hell. It’s gray and
it always smells rancid. No one can be trusted. Everyone is always out to screw the next, but we are outlaws and we’ve learned to trust each other because we have no other choice. Those of us who throw off the trappings of religion and faith and dive into this underworld understand the thickness of thieves and outlaws.
“You know that girl who killed all those people? I was with her, been sleeping with her until just recently. I was broken when I met her, but she pulled me down to new depths, deep into the belly of evil and darkness. It happened quickly. You’d never know what happened. I come from evil; my grandfather is an angry ghost, my grandma a witch. She was not evil, more of a white witch, but she can touch that other side. I’ve sought that place all my life. I’m frightened and repulsed by you and your faith; I don’t know your God and I have no desire to know him. I take comfort in the darkness. That is where I live.
“When I meet someone like you, I become exposed to your light. It frightens me and confuses me. I don’t want to bring you to my world, but I cannot live in yours. People like me devour and destroy people like you. Our darkness and chaos scares you and confuses you and when you are weak and detracted, we’ll pull you in to be one of us. It does not matter the goodness in your soul. I’ve got no soul; I’m an evil spirit. My darkness and evil will wash out your goodness and you’ll become like me.
“When I was younger, a boy, I used to visit the goodness. I could visit the light and linger there a minute. I could go to the church with the old lady and pretend to understand the joy they all seemed to share. I could go home at night to be alone in the darkness and think about the people in the light, their songs, the strange-smelling smoke, and the strange words. But my comfort was in the darkness, always will be in the silent, chilling darkness. I used to have moments where I could miss the light, autumn days, and colorful trees; turkeys and parades and days of thanksgiving, the colors of Christmas—the pretty green trees, the pure white snow, red poinsettias, and those songs.