Totentanz

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Fucking Poundridge," he muttered. His hand brushed involuntarily at the .32-caliber handgun stuck in his belt under his sweat shirt.

  Getting a sudden inspiration, he abandoned the line of games and made his way back to the midway. To his thinking, the midway might lead to the main office. Why wander around this spook land if he could get his business over with and then get out?

  But wander he did. Instead of leading him anywhere direct, the path he chose drew him through most of the amusement park. He passed numerous shuttered, antique-looking custard stands and cotton-candy setups, all in spanking new paint jobs. There wasn't a spot of rust or use marks on anything, not even on the old-time hot dog carts that stood sentinel at every corner. He passed another long street of booths bigger than the others. When he peeked behind one tarpaulin, he found a shooting gallery with red-and-white wheels with bull's-eyes painted on them, along with a double row of conveyor-belted ducks and bears. Overhead there was a complicated gizmo that seemed to bring into life a couple of large dirigibles; painted on each was a face with its tongue sticking out.

  Again he had that feeling that someone was just about to touch him, and he felt a drop in the temperature. There was nobody there; but when he turned back to his inspection of the shooting gallery, the feeling immediately returned. This time he resisted it, and his heart nearly climbed into his throat when a cold hand took hold of his elbow.

  "Jumping Jesus!" he cried out, whipping around. There was no one there.

  He felt for his handgun. A thin, cold sheen of sweat covered him now, and he thought of making his way back to the front gate as fast as he could. But that frightened him as much as the thought of continuing his search. There were probably eyeholes in most of the buildings he was passing, just like the ones in those movies about haunted houses.

  "I know you're out there," he said, and was surprised to find that his voice came out weaker than he had wanted it to.

  He continued walking. The shooting galleries gave way to a clearing peppered with kiddie rides, each corralled by a low white fence stenciled with circus clowns. A faint breeze had risen, and a few of the rides—a caterpillar with a long canvas shell that would cover it when the ride was in motion, and a ride consisting of rockets hung from wires attached to a spoked overhead wheel—were creaking gently. Barney looked at the sky; with the breeze, the day had clouded over; a high sheet of grim clouds was sliding across the faded blueness and making the day nearly as chilly as September.

  Barney shivered in the gray sweat shirt and sat down on the rim of the merry-go-round, hugging himself. He felt very alone all of a sudden. Someone was following him, and he dreaded the moment when whoever it was would appear. It was like putting on a Sunday shirt and then having someone tell you there was a spider on it but not telling you where. The spider was there, all right, and would appear.

  "Why don't you come out?" he said. His voice was like a little child's. He couldn't help it. He wanted to run, but his legs would not carry him if he tried. A change had come over him. He was a veteran of the Korean War, and if anyone had ever told him he would act this way under any circumstances, he would have laughed or hit him. He was not a big man and had kept his leanness over the years, but he had always thought himself big in spirit. He was tough but had only demanded his due, and he knew that though he had no close friends, he had no enemies either. And here he was, wanting to bawl like a baby.

  The feeling of helplessness was oppressive. He fought to overcome it. He got to his feet, noticing now the grotesque faces of the horses on the carousel. Half of them looked not to be horses at all, but other creatures: half-lion and half-bird: goats: a giant hare with eyes as big as hubcaps. "Eyes as big as saucers," he suddenly thought, remembering a story a buddy of his had told him the day before he left for Korea. Who had written it? Whoever it was, Danny Kaye had played the star role in the movie. It was about a soldier who met a witch who told him about three treasures, each guarded by a dog. The soldier went underground and found the three dogs, each in its own room, and each dog had eyes bigger than the one before. The last dog had eyes as big as saucers, and that had always stuck in Barney's mind, though he had never been able to visualize what that would look like. This hare had eyes as big as that, bigger. He thought the soldier got the treasure at the end of the story and killed the witch, but he couldn't re-member. He and his buddy were real drunk at the time, and his buddy had told him, "Go kill some gooks and bring back the treasure!" Those hare's eyes were staring at him, watching . . . .

  "Eyes as big as saucers," he said, using it as a litany to break the oppressed feeling in his head. He moved away from the merry-go-round, down the path he had been following. Nothing was quite in focus anymore. He felt feverish. He passed a sherbet stand in the shape of a monkey, and a Guess Your Weight cart. He bumped into something solid and thought someone had grabbed him by both arms, but when he pushed away, he saw that he had run into a strength tester—a long pole with a bell at the top and a pad at the bottom to hit with a sledge hammer. The pole bore gradations all the way up, from a caricature of a man having sand kicked in his face near the bottom, through a series of muscled animals, to the top—a huge, grinning beast that looked like a bear but had a horn in the middle of its forehead and flame issuing from its long-toothed mouth.

  He went on, feeling now as though he had been drugged. He fell down once; when he arose, he saw that it had grown dark. A string of bulbs hung above him, leading ahead, and when it lit, he felt compelled to follow it. There was darkness all around him. He looked to one side and thought he saw in the dimness the face of another hare with enormous eyes, and as he stumbled past it, it seemed that the eyes followed him until the creature was swallowed by darkness.

  The bulbs, clear glass that showed the filament, threw scant illumination on the ground. Blinking against the night blindness that had come upon him, he looked off to the other side to see vague, dinosaur-like outlines against a darkening sky: a long spire with a cage at the top, its gate swinging open; the bony grid of the roller coaster, a tiny string of cars precariously perched at the summit of its first drop; and, seeming to dominate, the huge erector-set Ferris wheel, its hinged seats swaying like eyelashes around its perimeter. "Eyes as big as saucers," he muttered once more, but now he couldn't tell if he had really said it or not.

  He was drunk; he didn't know where he was. He didn't remember getting drunk. He had done it often enough, at home in front of the television or occasionally, when the loneliness of cabin fever had gathered inside him to the point that he would burst, at one of the old-man bars in town where they'd leave you alone with your beer if you wanted, letting you get as rowdy as you liked and always providing companionship (pointing to the television: "Some ball game, eh?"), if not friendship. But now he was drunk on the street. He hadn't done that in a long time—got sick with the DTs and awakened in jail. And what a strange street—dark and darker still, with only a faint string of overhead lights to show the way. Where was he? How did he get here? No matter how many times he blinked his eyes and shook his head, he couldn't clear his mind; his head was so confused and reeling that he didn't know if he was on his feet or on the ground. He was hot, so warm that he felt he must remove his sweat shirt. He fumbled with it, found that he was indeed on the ground and that his sweat shirt was soaked. His pants were soaked too. Had he wet himself? Where am I?

  He remembered wetting himself once, when he was five years old. He was sitting in class, and Sister Margaret was talking, and he wanted so desperately to raise his hand, to beg to leave, but he did not dare. No one was allowed to leave before the end of class. Sister Margaret had made that clear on the first day. There was snow outside, the first snowfall of November, a white dusting that was already melting.

  Christmas was coming, and he could almost smell it. But he had to go to the bathroom so bad that he raised his hand anyway. He was squirming in his seat now. "No," he wanted to say. "No, Sister. I promise I'm not going to the bathroom to smoke. My father
smoked and he's dead now. I'll never smoke cigarettes. Please let me go to the bathroom!"

  But Sister Margaret had her face turned from him. She was printing on the blackboard, her tall, straight back moving up in down in rhythm with her arm. In chalk she wrote The Capital of Bolivia is La Paz. She underlined La Paz. He thought she would turn around then, but she didn't. He dared not cry out because if he did, he would not be able to face his friends at recess. He didn't know if he could face them any-way: although if Sister Margaret turned around and saw his weak, waving hand, she might let him go to the bathroom and then he would be a hero. He would go to the bathroom and his friends would think he had gone for a smoke and he wouldn't say he hadn't. He wouldn't say anything at all, which couldn't be a sin because if they thought he had gone for a smoke, it would be their business and not his.

  "Sister!" he finally blurted out, and she turned around. She was in the middle of writing The Capital of Brazil is . . . , and by the look on her face, he knew she would not let him go to the bathroom. And then it was too late. When she turned around and glared at him, his bladder emptied, and as he sat there with the half-finished sentence of "Please may . . ." he felt a warm flush around his crotch and a spreading wet warmth down around the inside of his thighs. He wanted to cry, wanted to pull his hand back down and sit till the end of class, till they were all gone, Sister Margaret and his friends and all the girls to his right and left, and then he would clean up his mess and make his way to the bathroom. But it was too late for that. Sister Margaret saw the look on his face; then she saw the darkness on his navy-blue pants and the small, wet pool by his shoe, and she made an "Oh" sound with her lips. She said, "Barney, I think you should go to the bathroom."

  And here he was, and he had done the same thing. He was on the ground in the dark, and he wanted to say, "Please, Sister, may I go to the bathroom?" but he knew that whoever might be near him would not say, "Barney, I think you should go to the bathroom," and then call the janitor to help clean up his mess. He struggled to his feet. His sweat shirt was off, and his pants, and he felt the cold of a chilled wind around him. The bulbs above, clacking against their braided wire, were gone. There was darkness around him, and he shivered.

  He stumbled ahead. A light—dim and sickly yellow—came into focus. He made his way toward it. Something crossed the light for a moment, moving over it like a cloud, and then he saw it clearly again. The cloud moved across it once more, and he realized it was smoke.

  “Barney Bates," a voice said. It sounded like Sister Margaret's voice, but it couldn't be. Like hers, it was smooth and sure but brooked no opposition. It could help or hurt him. He almost said. "Yes. Sister?" and then realized he had already said it as the voice broke into a low, even laugh.

  "You wanted to speak with me?" the voice said.

  Barney was on the ground again. How did I get here? He pushed his body up into a half-standing position and tried to see who the voice belonged to. But he saw only that weak amber light behind a grille and that momentary passing of smoke.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Well?" Again that laugh, hidden in an in-sucked breath that Barney realized was a pull on a cigarette. Cigarettes killed my father. He was shivering badly now. He realized that he was only in his underwear and socks.

  "My house,” he managed to get out. You . . ." and then suddenly he wet himself again, feeling warmth run down his leg to his sock, and he found that he was bent over. "I'm sorry. . .”

  "Don't worry about it," the voice said. Barney saw something, a thin shape, pass in front of the light, and then the light was gone and he was crouched on a set of steps leading downward. He slipped and regained his footing. He looked back to see a weaker, dark-gray light shut off as a doorway closed from the outside world. He was on a flat surface, cold in his wet socks. He could not stop trembling.

  "Papers . . .” he said, and then he doubled over again, crying out as his bowels emptied into his underpants. "Oh, God. . .”

  "Do you want to go to the bathroom?" the voice asked.

  "Yes.”

  "Does it really matter?"

  “. . . yes . . .”

  "Really?"

  He was on the cold floor, curled up.

  "Stand.” the voice said.

  "Yes, Sister.”

  "I said stand up. Now.”

  "I can't, Sister. Please let me go to the bathroom.” His sphincter convulsed, and he felt a racking pain in his bowels.

  He looked up pleadingly to see his sergeant from Korea standing over him. The man leered. He had always leered. He had been a stupid and vain man, and there had been more than a hint that the mine he had stepped on had not been planted by the North Koreans—or at least had been passed over by the American detachment.

  "Get up," the sergeant ordered.

  "You can't be here," Barney said wonderingly.

  "Of course I can," the sergeant said, and then Barney saw that the sergeant had turned into something else.

  "Oh, God," Barney Bates sobbed.

  The figure was not Sister, or Sergeant Crimins, or the beast with eyes as big as saucers. The figure blew smoke in his face. It was black smoke, and it burned his skin like acid. The face was very white. The eye colors were reversed, the pupils' white speckled with gray, the irises black. He could see no teeth in the mouth.

  "Speak," the voice said, smooth and low and not kind.

  ". . . Oh, God. . . ."

  "You want to see my papers?" the voice mocked, as acidic as the smoke from its cigarette. "Afraid I'll make too much noise?"

  "Oh, God, no."

  The figure laughed, angling its head all the way back theatrically and barking out low, half-strangled gasps, as if its throat was not deep enough to bring up true vocalization. It began to cough and then threw its cigarette down at Barney's feet. Barney moved to pick it up, but the figure made a sharp move of dismissal and he stood where he was, straight up now, and shaking and cold and wet.

  "Time to see my papers, Barney Bates," the figure said, and then it was Sister, and she did not have the knowing look on her face as when she had turned around from the blackboard, but rather the look that said, "No, you can't leave," and Barney saw her bring the ruler out from under her cassock, the one she always seemed to have hidden in her right hand. She raised it above him, and then he remembered his gun. He had a gun and he would use it on her. Miraculously he found it still with him, tucked into his underpants, inside the tight elastic. It was cold against his belly. He pawed it out, pleading, "Sister, just let me go to the bathroom," but as he held it up, her hand, the one with the sharp ruler, came down and knocked it from him. There was great pain in the hand that had held the gun, and as he looked up, he saw that Sister was gone, and in her place was that dark figure again, the horrid, toothless thing with the cigarette and the inside-out eyes.

  Barney tried to say something, but when he opened his mouth, he found that he was already screaming, and as he looked at the hand that had been hit by the ruler, he saw why he was screaming: The flesh had been stripped from his fingers, and that all that remained was the white, dry bone of skeleton. His bony hand was curled up on itself like a claw. And then he saw that Sister, once again, was back and that she had raised the ruler high over him, mouthing the word "No!" and when she brought the ruler down upon him, the scream that he was screaming was ripped raw and bleeding from his throat.

  SEVEN

  Reggie felt someone's eyes on him.

  In the closet, with his comic collection spread around him, something cold settled on his neck. But when he turned, there was nothing to see. He brushed at his collar; the washing-instruction labels on his shirts sometimes dug into the back of his neck and irritated it. But the label had been ripped out.

  A curl of cool air passed over him. Again he turned from the closet to find nothing there. Even the window was closed, the air conditioner off, since the day had stayed so cool.

  I'm here . . . .

  The thought brushed across him, as that cold breath
had. Suddenly he felt dissociated from himself, as light as air. He hadn't felt this way since the day he had been hit by the truck. He was half in the world and half out of it; he felt like he was back in the tunnel with those two figures, one reaching to whisper horribly in his ear, the other watching impassively. And then, as if a cloud had passed over him, the feeling was gone.

  He shrugged and turned back to the closet. It was a small cubicle, barely a couple of feet deep, but all the walls were lined with stacked comic books. These were things he didn't even let the rest of the Three Musketeers put their hands on. They were carefully arranged and cataloged, with big hand-lettered labels his mother had helped him with (after she had finished her calligraphy course and wanted to try it out), and they were stacked according to date. Knowing that the really expensive and famous comics were beyond him, and not really interested in them anyway, he had started gathering some of the more available, although weird, titles. He had all issues of Superman published in the 80s, and he also had the whole short run of Nukla, about a superhero who got his powers from a dose of lethal radiation. He had all of the Twilight Zone comics published in the 1960s.

  The thing that separated him from other collectors, though, and made him a blasphemer in most eyes, was that he actually read his comics. As far as he was concerned, he wasn't collecting so that someday he could unload the whole mess and make some money—he collected comics simply because he loved them. A lot of people didn't understand this, including Pup, who couldn't see the use in doing anything unless you got something out of it. He often asked Reggie why he was always taking his books out of their protective glassine bags and reading them—"junking them up" was the way Pup put it—and Reggie couldn't make Pup understand that he did it because he loved them not for what they were as possessions, but for what they were in themselves.

  "There's great artwork in these books, and some of the stories are as good as the stuff you read in regular books, and the way it all goes together makes it like nothing else," he'd say, but Pup would give him that blank look, half-put-on and half-serious, and Reggie would give up. Pup's problem was that he had too much, since his parents seemed to own half of Montvale and he got anything he whined for. "Too much," Reggie's mother always said, and no one had ever denied it.