Carnival

by William W. Johnstone

  “The kids aren’t back yet, Alicia?”

  “It’s still early, Martin. It’s not even nine o’clock.”

  “Damn! So much has happened it feels like it should be around midnight.”

  “How is the boy?”

  “His vital signs are perfectly normal. The boy says he doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t remember anything except the horrible visions of fire and the monsters coming out at him. He’ll be checked for epilepsy down at Scottsbluff.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yes. But there was definitely a smell of charred wood on and around the boy.”

  “Was anybody cooking on the outdoor grill at the center?”

  “No. I looked.” He yawned hugely. “I hate to go to bed so early, but I’m just plain beat.”

  He waited for their ritual goodnight kisses. They did not come.

  Alicia sat and looked at him. “Then you go on to bed. I’m going to read for awhile.”

  Both Martin and Alicia were avid readers, preferring books over the tube, and they had encouraged their kids in that direction.

  Martin liked adventure books. Alicia preferred horror stories.

  * * *

  For some reason, or reasons, that none could explain—although no one had asked, many of the townspeople, young and old, had gathered at the fence surrounding the fairgrounds. They stood, mostly in silence, and stared at the darkened trucks and vans and trailers of the carnival people.

  There were still a few of the locals working in the long sheds and pavilions that would house the cattle and sheep and goats and pigs. Others worked in the small booths that would display the cakes and pies and other local culinary endeavors. One by one, those booths began to go dark as the shadows thickened and the hour grew later. They shut it down and went home.

  Outside the fence, the people remained. Standing and staring in silence.

  The girls drove by in the pickup truck. “Wonder what the fascination is over there?” Jeanne asked, her eyes taking in the knots of people standing by the fence.

  “Turn around and come back,” Susan said. “There’s Binkie.”

  Jeanne found a place to turn around and came back, stopping at a knot of young people.

  “Hey, Binkie!” Linda called from the truck. “What’s up?”

  A boy left the crowd and walked over, to stand by the pickup and stare at the girls. Jeanne, behind the wheel, and the farthest away from him, could not see his eyes.

  But Susan and Linda could. His eyes were odd-looking. Something seemed to dance behind them. If it wasn’t such a stupid thought, both girls felt it looked like tiny flames.

  Linda asked, “What’s everybody doing, Binkie?”

  “Nothin’ much. Standin’ around is all.”

  Something was the matter with his voice, too. It was very flat-sounding. Totally without inflection. Weird.

  “Why are you.standing around, Binkie?” Susan asked.

  Binkie shrugged and stuck his hand inside the cab, trying to fondle Linda.

  “Goddamnit, Binkie!” she yelled at him. “Keep your hands to yourself!”

  “OK,” the boy said, very matter-of-factly.

  The girls noticed a giant of a man walking among the shadows, behind the fence. “God! would you look at that!” Jeanne breathed. “It’s a giant!”

  “Probably got a dick a foot long,” Binkie said with a grin.

  The girls groaned in unanimous disbelief. It just wasn’t like Binkie to try to grab a feel or say something like that. Binkie was everybody’s favorite. Binkie buddied with the boys and palled around with the girls. Everybody liked Binkie.

  “He’d probably show his dick to you if you’d ask him,” Binkie added.

  “Binkie!” There was exasperation in Linda’s voice. “Knock that off. Who are you out here with?” Then her eyes found Karl and Robie and the others. “Oh, not them, Binkie. Not that bunch.”

  “They’re my buddies. You wanna see my dick, Linda?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Linda said wearily, not understanding what had gone wrong with Binkie.

  Jeanne put the truck in gear. “Goodnight, Binkie. You’d better go home and sleep it off.”

  Driving away, Susan said, “What’s got into Binkie? I never heard him talk that way before.”

  “I don’t know,” Linda replied. “But I don’t think it was the beer. Place is getting weird. All those people just standing around the fence.”

  They stopped at an intersection and Jeanne spotted Linda’s brother, Mark. Linda rolled down her window and waved at him. Amy Newman sat on the passenger side of the Camero. Martin’s deal with the boy was: I’ll make the car payments for you, but you have to pay for the insurance and gas and upkeep. It was an agreement that both sides honored.

  Mark lowered his window and smiled at the girls. Nearly everybody liked Mark. Except for Karl Steele and his bunch of near-thugs. Mark was too straight-arrow for them. He wasn’t a prude or a preach, but he didn’t drink and didn’t do drugs, and if he gave his word, that was that. Like his sister, Mark was fair-skinned, with blonde hair and blue eyes. A handsome young man.

  He told them about Jimmy Harold.

  “You mean he just fell out and started having fits!” Jeanne asked.

  “Yeah. And he was talking in a foreign language and yelling that the monsters were coming and he was burning up. And something else: you could really smell the smoke around him. It was strange.”

  For a reason she could not fathom, Susan suddenly shuddered.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Linda asked.

  “I don’t know. Mouse ran over my grave, I guess.”

  Linda got out of the truck and walked over to her brother. She stood between car and truck. “Have you been down to the fairgrounds, Mark?”

  “No. Why go down there?”

  “There’s about a couple hundred people down there. All crowded up by the fence.” She paused and her brother picked up on it.

  “What’s wrong, sis?”

  “It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you, Mark,” Amy broke in. “Something weird is happening in this town. I can feel it.”

  “But it isn’t anything tangible,” Linda said. “But for some reason, I’m a little jumpy.”

  She expected Mark to laugh at her and was surprised when he did not. Even more surprised when he agreed with her. “I thought it was my imagination. I still think we’re making more out of it than we should. You girls take it easy.” He dropped the Camero into gear and rolled on.

  Linda turned her head, looking at Jeanne. “What now?”

  “I think we should go home.”

  “I’m with you.”

  * * *

  Martin was asleep in five minutes, dropping into a gentle darkness.

  Then the gentle darkness lifted its outer veil and the sleep became a chamber of horrors.

  The man became frightened. He was being driven by a fear like none he had experienced before. Not even in ’Nam. Somebody, or something, was chasing him. Running after the boy, cursing as the boy ran through a long barn.

  Boy?

  Martin had mentally been torn from the present and hurled unwillingly back into time, his sleeping body separating from his mind; one rested while the other took him on a journey into terror.

  He was no longer running. And he could see with perfect clarity. His senses, all of them, were working overtime. He was in a hay-filled stall. But how did he get there and what was that crying and those painful noises? Where were they coming from? That animal-like grunting.

  The tow-headed little boy peeped through a crack in the wall of the horse stall in the livestock pavilion. He could see a girl with her dress up around her waist, the bodice all ripped open. Her tanned bare legs were spread wide, while a man, naked from the waist down—that was all Martin could see of him—was between her legs. He was hunching and grunting and saying all sorts of crazy things. And just to the left of that couple, another girl and guy were doing the same thing.

>   “You know you been wantin’ this, Mary,” the man closest to Martin said. It was not a mature voice. A young man’s voice.

  The girl turned her head and Martin recognized her. Mary Mahoney.

  “Goddamn you!” Mary cursed the young man in a husky voice. “Goddamn you all to hell! My daddy’ll kill you for this.”

  The young man’s voice hardened. “Shut your damn slutty mouth, girl! And keep your voice down, or I’ll really hurt you.”

  Mary began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto the bales of hay.

  Martin hunkered down in the hay-filled stall, the movement of his feet kicking up dust. He shifted positions until he could see the face of the other girl. June Ellis. Both Mary and June were in high school. Both of them about fifteen. But the boy could not see the faces of the young men.

  But their voices sure were familiar to him.

  “We gonna do this regular from now on,” the other young man panted.

  “My daddy’ll cut you like a gelding!” June raised her voice.

  That got her a hard open palm to the side of her head. She yelped and fell silent except for a low whimpering and the silent fall of tears.

  “Your daddy ain’t jack-shit!” the young man told her, his voice as hard and cruel as the forced act he was a part of. “Dirt farmer on rented land is all he is. Our daddies got papers on both your daddies. They own them! One word from us and your folks don’t have nothing! You wanna see your daddy lose his farm?”

  June said something that Martin could not make out.

  “That’s right,” the young man told her, a cold, mean, smugness in his voice. “So you lay back and shut up.”

  Martin huddled in fright in the stall next to the couples, too scared to try to make a run for it.

  But what was he doing in the stall? How did he get here? Then he remembered. He’d ridden a ride and had gotten real sick to his stomach. He’d gone into the far end of the long pavilion and had lain down on the hay. Gone to sleep. The late autumn warmth had lulled him gently. The grunting and panting had awakened him.

  “No!” Mary suddenly cried out, real pain in her voice. “I won’t do that. You can’t make me!”

  Martin looked. He was making her do it, with a hard hand over her mouth to stifle her screaming. Martin crouched against the stall wall, the scene making him sick to his stomach. He trembled in fright.

  The rape and perversion seemed, in his young mind, to go on for hours. But it was really maybe fifteen minutes—twenty minutes tops.

  The sounds of grunting and cursing faded away. The girls continued their almost silent weeping. Martin peeked through the narrow crack and watched as the young men pulled on their jeans and buckled their belts. Then they bent over to tug on their boots.

  And Martin knew both of them. He bit his lower lip in fright. They were both bullies. His own father called them rich trash.

  Martin moved his feet. The dust puffed up from the hay. He sneezed violently, the dust particles setting him off like a small bomb.

  “What the hell was that?” one of the young men yelled.

  Martin left the stall as fast as his short-panted legs could carry him, running hard, fear making him strong and swift.

  “Get the little son of a bitch!” the hard voice reached him. “And then break his neck!”

  Martin ran and ran, but the longer legs of the older boys were closing the gap as they raced up the seemingly endless middle aisle of the livestock pavilion.

  Martin glanced behind him. His feet slipped in a fresh manure pile. He crashed into a wall.

  Martin was plunged into a painful darkness.

  THREE

  Who was shaking him? And why? What was going on?

  “Daddy!” Linda’s voice came through the fog of years past. “Wake up, daddy!”

  He opened his eyes and looked into the face of his daughter. With a groan, Martin sat up in bed.

  “What happened?” he managed to croak.

  “You were yelling, daddy.”

  It all came back to him. Everything. His mind had finally, after thirty-four years, unlocked the suppression. “Well, it was a nightmare, baby.” He looked at the clock by the bed. Nine-thirty. He had been asleep for only a few minutes. “Where’s your mother?”

  Something flickered in the girl’s eyes, then was gone. “I don’t know. We drove by and I noticed the car was gone. I had them drop me off. They said they’d be back in twenty minutes or so.”

  “Your mother is gone? No note? Nothing?” He slipped into a robe.

  “Not that I can see. She probably drove down to the store for a book or something. You know mother.”

  I don’t know whether I do or not, Martin thought. Here lately, I’m beginning to wonder. He shook his head. “I’m groggy.”

  “How about if I make you some coffee?”

  “That would be very nice.”

  * * *

  He had to tell somebody. And Linda and Martin had always shared secrets, as had Martin and Mark. And she was a grown up girl for her age.

  “... and that’s why I could never remember anything about the fairs and carnivals we used to have here,” Martin wrapped it up for her.

  “So all the rumors I’ve heard over the years are true?”

  “Yes.” He knew what rumors she was talking about; he’d heard the same ones himself as a kid.

  “I guess for a little kid to see something that awful would be enough in itself to cause a memory shutdown. But it was probably that crashing into the wall that did it.”

  “Oh, it was. It’s all come back to me now.” He had made no further mention of his wife’s absence and Linda had not brought it up. “I woke up in Ol’ Doc Reynolds’ office. Couldn’t remember a thing. Doc had me sent immediately, that day, into the city and I stayed there for a long time. Skull fracture and neck injuries. Broke my jaw and knocked out some teeth. I was a mess.”

  “And by that time,” Linda was putting it all together, “the trouble had happened between the carnival people and the townspeople, so you missed all that.”

  “Honey, I missed the next eight months, or so. Dad sent me on down to North Platte to stay with my aunt. Aunt Louise. I doubt if you remember her. You were just a little girl when she died.” Linda shook her head. “I never did understand why he did that; and he never told me. Except to make it clear that it was for my own good. Of course, I know now why he did it: somehow he found out that the carnival people hadn’t raped those girls and he was fearful for my life. Anyway, by the time I got back to Holland, the lid had been clamped down tight—nobody talking—and it stayed that way.”

  “What happened to those boys you saw raping the two girls?”

  Martin had not told her any of the names of those involved. The two men were among the richest ranchers in the state and were just as thuggy and no-good as they had been as boys. He drained his coffee mug and said, “Well . . . that happened in mid-October. I didn’t get back here until late August, the next year. By that time, their fathers had packed them both off to college and since nobody told me about the rapes, and I sure couldn’t remember them . . . well, everything appeared all right to me. Except for the burned down fairgrounds’ buildings. I learned about that later.”

  “Do they still live here, dad?”

  He hesitated. “This is between you and me, kiddo. If they found out I remembered and had told you—even now—they’d kill you.”

  She nodded her head in understanding. “I’m cool, dad.”

  “Yeah?” he chuckled. “That word still in use, huh?” He sighed. “Yes, they still live around this area. But they rarely come into town. Two, maybe three times a year, tops. But now I know why they hate me like they do. They’ve been thinking all these years that I would tell on them. They didn’t know that I didn’t remember a thing. I do recall some mighty evil looks I got from them when they’d come back home from college. Not that they went that long, they didn’t. They both busted out within a year. Then I guess they got draft
ed. I don’t really know what happened to them. I don’t think I’ve seen them twenty-five times in that many years.”

  She looked at her father for a moment, her eyes serious. “What do you plan on doing about this?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t know if there is anything I can do about it.”

  The woman in the girl took over. “What do you mean? Daddy, the men who raped those girls are both walking around free! And that’s not right!”

  Martin could but shrug his shoulders. “I know, baby. But I don’t know what I can do about it after all these years. There is probably a statute of limitations on the crime. Besides, the girls—girls, hell! they’re older than I am—have been content to stay quiet about it for almost thirty-five years . . .” He let that taper off into silence.

  “OK. You’re right, I guess. Now, what about these hallucinations of yours.”

  He had completely leveled with Linda. “What about them? ”

  “I think you should see somebody about them.”

  “Who? And for heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Daddy, you saw a lot of combat. I know you did. People talk. And you won an awful lot of medals. Maybe? . . .”

  He smiled and laid a big hand on top of hers. “No, baby. I’m not suffering from a post-Vietnam syndrome, or anything even remotely related to that. I’m one of the lucky ones. I went over there, did my tours, did my job, and tried not to let it get to me. Yes, honey, I killed a lot of people. And I had friends who got killed. Good friends. I will not allow myself to think they died in vain. But unlike so many other ’Nam vets, I came back to a hero’s welcome here in Holland. Parades and so forth. Just like Pete and Howie and Richard did. Your mother and I got married, and we settled right in.”

  A horn honked outside. Linda smiled and kissed her father. “I love you, daddy.”

  “And I love you, too, baby. Now take off. And not one word about this.”

  “Deal! ”

  “And we don’t tell mother we know she took off somewhere, right?”

  The girl’s face hardened. “If you say so, daddy.” The girl’s voice was as hard as her expression.