Smile No More

by James A. Moore

  I lived the deaths of each and every one of my friends and myself again. I burned and they burned and then as I stepped past the confines of the trailer and walked further, I caught other deaths.

  They murdered the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic. Make no mistake about that. It was murder, cold and calculated and very, very violent. Some people got burned, others got shot and still more of my friends and my second family were stabbed or beaten to death by the good people of Serenity Falls, New York. Remember that, because later you’ll need to understand what I was thinking when I came back from the dead. Near as I can tell only two people got out of the show alive. The snake man and Doreen Miles. I don’t begrudge either of them surviving. Oh, I know the details. They told the farmer exactly who was responsible for killing his kin. Exactly who. No mistakes. But that wasn’t enough for Serenity Falls. The town demanded blood for blood, only they demanded it tenfold.

  I counted the dead as I wandered around where the circus had been set up, and I lived each death no less than five times. I memorized them. I needed to, you see, because I needed to understand the reasons for their murders.

  That’s what they were. Murders. Someone came along and killed each and every member of the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic that they could get their hands on. The only ones spared as far as I could tell, were the animals. The people that got away? I think that was an accident, really, not a deliberate kindness.

  I haunted that ground for a long time, day and night, for long enough to let the moon grow full and fade away to the merest sliver in the night sky again. The cold did not faze me, the ice did nothing to chill me and the sun was merely a brightness that was different than the moon.

  I let the hatred grow and fester with each death I experienced again, and I fought against the pull of the ground. I felt the cold hands that pulled at me, tried to keep me away from the living and dead alike, but I refused to succumb. The forces that pulled at me were strong, but not fast enough to hold me.

  Eventually I left the farm. I couldn’t stay there, couldn’t continue to lose myself in the memories of death without risking the loss of everything that made me who I am. So I left and wandered Serenity Falls again, moving from house to house and experiencing the murders that had occurred in each location where death was prevalent.

  Murder was a common thing in Serenity Falls. Old or new hardly seemed to matter. Murder was something the town seemed good at. I wasn’t surprised, merely disappointed.

  The man who spotted me walked along the edge of the cemetery, his face set in deep concentration. He frowned as he stared at the cracked sidewalk surrounding the memorials to the dead and his eyes rose up and followed me.

  I stopped walking, shocked to feel eyes on me for the first time since I had escaped my prison. I stared back just as intensely, half expecting the man was merely thinking and looking in my general direction, but no, he actually stared at me, our gazes locked.

  Finally he pointed a finger at me. “You should not be here.” His words were casual enough, but held a tone of accusation.

  “You can see me?” I stared harder, unbelieving.

  “I can see that you aren’t where you belong….” He spoke then, to himself it seemed, muttered words that meant nothing to me and I felt the hands that had sought me before come back, eager to pull me into the depths.

  I fought them, I tried to escape their grasp, but this time they were more determined than before. The cold fingers caught me, pulled at my essence and drew me down into the nothingness again.

  And I escaped again, this time at a much faster rate. If I had to guess, only a few days passed before I met the stranger again.

  He was an older man, pleasant enough in appearance, with short gray hair and a stocky body that was sliding comfortably into old age. He was as unassuming as anyone I had ever seen, right up until the time he saw me. For one moment only anger swept over him, a cold and dark thing that made him terrifying. Let me clarify this: I had relived my death and the deaths of literally hundreds of people while I wandered Serenity Falls, and despite all of that suffering, that anger and that pain, the man in front of me managed to scare me senseless.

  Then the anger disappeared and was replaced by curiosity.

  He waved his hand and cast me down again.

  I got out of his trap faster than before, comfortable with my ability to escape the confines of the endless prison.

  And this time when I escaped, he was waiting for me, his face set and calm as I slipped away from Hell and settled back in the land I was no longer a part of.

  “You shouldn’t be able to do that.” His tone was conversational.

  “Send me back again you sonofawhore and I’ll do it again.” I was angry and I was scared and I was ever-so-full of bluster. I had no desire to continue playing this game. It was inconvenient to say the least.

  The man laughed. Not at me, exactly, but with great humor. When he looked at me again, he was still smiling.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Rufo the Clown.” I wasn’t willing to give him my real name. I had no desire to speak with him, or to deal with him any longer. I’d have not answered him at all, but anyone who could lock me in the nothingness was someone I wasn’t overly fond of deliberately offending.

  “Well, ‘Rufo,’ I think we might well become good friends.”

  “You sent me to Hell.”

  “Oh, not hardly, my boy. Not hardly. I just sent you to a holding station of sorts.”

  “I don’t much care. You sent me there. Twice!”

  “And you got back and Rufo, my lad, no one has ever gotten back from there on his own. Ever.”

  I could have bragged or preened or pointed out that I was an escape artist, but it didn’t mean anything to me just then. I was scared. I did not want to go back to that place again.

  “Calm down, lad. I won’t be sending you there again. I just had to make sure I knew what I was dealing with.”

  I stared hard. I had no reason to trust him. He’d hardly proven himself worthy of anything but my hatred.

  “Listen carefully, Rufo. You have certain needs, and I know you have a lot of questions. I have certain needs and a lot of answers. We should consider a little bargaining.”

  There at last was a concept that I could understand. Curiosity meant nothing when compared with a chance for real answers.

  “Fine. What do you propose?”

  The man looked at me for a few seconds, a smile playing at his lips, but not quite manifesting, and then he nodded his head. “Here’s my deal. I answer your questions, you do me a few small favors.”

  The laughter that got past my lips was entirely accidental. “What can I do for you? I can’t touch anything. I can’t do anything.”

  “Well, now, that’s not quite as true as you think it is. You just haven’t learned how to do the things I want you to do.”

  You wouldn’t think a middle aged man sliding toward retirement would know much about ghosts, would you? It turns out my benefactor wasn’t just a man speeding toward his golden years. His name was Albert Miles, and he was, well, he was something of a sorcerer.

  We got along famously.

  I could fill volumes about the things Miles taught me. I could fill more volumes about what he made me do in exchange for the knowledge. Instead, I’ll hit the high notes.

  He helped me manifest. Not the easiest thing for ghosts to do, but they can manage it. He helped me learn about being dead, and what it really means. In exchange, I did small favors. Sometimes I looked in on other places and checked on people he wanted to know more about. I became a spy, I suppose. I was very good at it as almost no one ever suspected I was around. Oh, sure, an occasional shiver down the spine but very few people actually saw me, and those that did, well, there are ways to take care of that sort of thing.

  As time went on, I learned to do more. And I became more important to my benefactor.

  It’s rather difficult to fully explain and
I really have no desire to go that far into details, but I became a harvester of sorts. Miles did things in different places all across the world, I suppose, but I worked exclusively in the United States. He set things in motion, you see, certain actions that, when they worked out the right way for him, garnered him power in one form or another, most often in the shape of human souls. I don’t pretend to fully understand everything, and I never needed to. All I needed to do was collect for him. The dead are everywhere. Most of them move on to some other place. Some might even just dissolve. But the ones that were left, they belonged to no one or they belonged to Albert Miles. He made bargains and collected his debts; or rather he had me collect them. From time to time someone would renege on a deal and I was asked to handle the matter personally.

  In exchange, I was granted favors. I started small. I learned about what I needed to know and I asked for his consideration for certain favors.

  Though it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, Albert Miles had certain designs on Serenity Falls. He had plans for the place that involved the destruction of almost every living being in the area. To that end, he had set certain actions in motion and those actions were in part responsible for what happened to my friends and me. Miles called it being caught in the crossfire and I suppose that was a good enough way to put it. What had happened would have probably happened anyway, and the trouble would have died, but there was a chance that his actions had caused the situation to become more volatile, and had led to the deaths of the entire group instead of only a select few.

  Because he was just possibly complicit in the deaths of my second family, Albert Miles and I came to an arrangement. I helped him and he in turn agreed to bring the dead back to life, because that was within his abilities.

  Sort of.

  It’s complicated.

  I was a ghost. I never expected to have a chance to bring my friends back to life, but that chance existed and I had every intention of making it happen if I could.

  I would have done anything for that second chance, and I did, too. You see, Albert Miles was a very powerful individual, and he was also a madman.

  I started as a collector. I soon became a hit man.

  I came back from the dead on my own, and in the process I became a killer.

  Life and death are just full of surprises….

  Chapter Ten: Looking for Millie (Part Ten)

  There’s an old saying about looking for a needle in a haystack. That’s pretty much all that comes to mind when it comes to searching for my grandniece. I tried to do things the right way. I know that some people will have trouble believing me, but I did. I wrote letters to her last known address, I wrote more letters to Meaghan care of the Carnivale, and I wrote letters to their corporate offices. I wrote more letters for the span of three months than I had in my entire life. And all I got for my troubles was a whole lot of nothing.

  I am not always a patient soul, but for my last family member, I was willing to try.

  The Carnivale never responded. I tried every name I could think of, every possible position within the company, and I got nothing at all by way of response. I would have probably been satisfied with a simple letter telling me that Meaghan was no longer with the troupe, but getting no response at all? Well, that was an insult, to be honest. Seems to me that people could at least pretend a connection to polite society better when I was young. These days they don’t even try.

  Meaghan never responded.

  I waited in Florida for half a year—don’t worry, I found plenty to keep me busy—but I got nothing. And then I decided it was time to move on to the next stage of the game.

  I would be lying if I said I’d kept up with Albert Miles, but I had ways to get in contact with him and he in turn had ways of getting answers, so I hopped a train and made my way up to New England. The weather was cold and Salem, Massachusetts was beautiful. The man lived in an ancient house that was perfectly kept. He didn’t even wait for me to knock. He opened the door as I was climbing the stairs to his home.

  “Cecil! What a delight!” He always called me Cecil when he wanted to be on my good side and I always let him. I don’t answer to the name all that often anymore, because there is a lot of baggage that goes with that name, including a very short career in Hollywood. That’s a different story for a different time. The good news is, no one would look at me and make any association with the comedian who showed up and then disappeared less than three years later. They were good years. I enjoyed my second life. That’s all I’ll say about that.

  “I need your help, Albert. I’m at a loss.” I spoke after we’d settled into his living room with hearty mugs of hot cocoa. He made good hot chocolate.

  “You’re looking for your niece, aren’t you?”

  “Grandniece.”

  He nodded his head. “What can I do for you, Cecil?”

  “Let’s not play games. I know you can find her.”

  “Of course I can. But why should I bother?”

  The rage came then. It was a white-hot blast of anger that would have had most people terrified if they had seen me. Albert Miles didn’t so much as flinch.

  “You lied to me, Albert! We had a deal and you lied to me!”

  “I did no such thing. The Hunter got in the way and you didn’t stop him. If you’d followed the plan there would have been no difficulties.” At that moment I think I could have killed him. I had been afraid of Albert Miles since the first time we met, but I think I could have killed him and never so much as blinked. He held up a hand and stopped me from saying something foolish. “Calm down, Cecil. We have things to discuss. I certainly don’t hold you accountable for the Hunter getting in the way. But a bargain is a bargain and I fulfilled my end to the best of my ability as you fulfilled your end.”

  I knew where we were going. “What do you want from me?”

  “What have I ever wanted from you, Cecil? I want your help with certain matters.”

  “And in exchange?”

  “In exchange, I find out all that I can about your grandniece’s whereabouts. I’ll even find out about where your niece is, if you’d like.”

  It was a small thing, really. A simple matter of a young man in Washington State who had discovered certain secrets Albert preferred remain secret. I agreed to handle the matter, and he in turn agreed to find out all he could. He arranged transportation for me and I had the boy dead in a matter of hours.

  When I came back I brought him fresh apples and the boy’s eyes. He wasn’t expecting the apples, but he was delighted to get them.

  We settled in for another cup of cocoa and a long talk.

  Albert sounded genuinely sorry when he told me that Cecilia had died of a drug overdose and that Meaghan had been murdered. He couldn’t tell me who, exactly, had murdered her, but he gave me a short list of names.

  “Meaghan is dead, Cecil.” Albert was direct, but not unkind. “She isn’t at peace, but she’s closer to it that you’ll likely ever get.”

  “You want to explain that to me?” I didn’t take offense. It was simple math, really. I was a ghost for a long time, and I was good enough at being a pissed off dead man that I managed what should have been impossible and escaped from a prison designed solely to hold the dead. Peace had nothing to do with my afterlife.

  “I couldn’t get all the details you’d like without involving serious necromancy. Not the sort where I merely talk to the dead, but where I have to bring them back to this realm to get the answers. If I did that to Meaghan, she would suffer the consequences.” He looked at me hard to make sure I understood exactly what he meant. I did. In order to get answers, he’d have been forced to pull Meaghan away from whatever course her spirit was on in the afterlife. There would have been a chance that doing so would cause her to lose her way in the world that exists after this one. That meant wandering the earth as a ghost. Not really a pleasant experience and I say that as a man in the know.

  “I got names for you. Those names should have answers to your
questions. If the answers suit your fancy, all the better. If not, I’ll bring Meaghan back and you can ask her yourself.”

  “Could you bring her all the way back?”

  “Of course, but you wouldn’t want to pay the price.”

  “Would it cost less if I brought her back and you provided…shelter?”

  “Like what was supposed to happen in Serenity Falls?”

  I stared hard. The rage was still there, the hatred. No matter how he explained it, Albert had betrayed a trust. I should have had my second family back and instead, there was some very interesting wild life in Serenity Falls.

  After the silence had stretched to the point of being uncomfortable, Albert smiled and nodded. “It can be arranged if you decide to do it. But only this once, Cecil. I’m not in the business of resurrection. If I were, I’d have had a far less complicated life so far.”

  He told me the names and he even told me where they could be found. There were several. Not all of them had been involved in her death, but all of them knew something about it. That was enough for me.

  I’ve never thought of myself as a detective, but I have been known to get information when I needed it.

  I can be very, very persuasive when the situation rises.

  The first name on the list was Elizabeth Montenegro. She was one of the other demon girls. I’d seen her perform when I went to see Meaghan. I couldn’t have pointed out which one she was, but that hardly mattered. In the time I’d spent waiting, the show had closed down and opened again, only this time around, Elizabeth wasn’t just a background dancer she was the star of the show.

  According to Albert, the girl had connections in the show, people who wanted to help her with her career in exchange for her silence.

  I intended to see exactly how good she was at keeping her tongue.

  ***

  The footage was blurry. Too blurry to let anyone see exactly who the hell had shot John Booker dead. Only one living officer knew that Michael Carver was at the scene of the murder and that man was already being interrogated regarding his possible connection to the death of the clown-faced killer.