The Rib From Which I Remake the World

by Ed Kurtz

  “To do what?”

  “I can say ‘I don’t know’ all night, Jojo.”

  Jojo frowned and downed the contents of the glass. He sighed and shivered, stood up and planted his hands on his hips. “I’m going to need two things,” he said. “A gun and a razor.”

  “I’ve got a razor, but no gun. What’s the razor for?”

  “I need a shave,” Jojo said.

  The reverend smiled, but it melted away the instant the voices came alive in the yard beyond the window. There were people out there, in the dark, shouting at the house. Shannon leapt back. Jojo went to the window and tugged the curtain away to look through.

  “Who’s out there?” the reverend asked, his voice shaky.

  “Don’t know, but there’s half a dozen of ’em.”

  “What do they want?”

  As if they heard his question, one among them screamed back, “We want the monster! We want Jojo Walker!”

  Jojo drew in a deep breath, his chest expanding like a balloon, and turned to face Shannon.

  “Christ, I wish you had a gun,” he said.

  And there it stood, just like in her dream. Theodora let out a tiny squeak, something she tried and failed to suppress, and stared with bulging eyes through the sheriff’s windscreen at the church of her nightmare. The chief difference laid in the fact that her nightmare littered the churchyard with bodies, whereas now the bodies lurched forth, toward the house, screaming at the tops of their voices.

  She glanced from the people back to the clapboard church, but the church was no longer there—in its place rose a towering conglomerate of edged, knife-like spires cutting into the gathering dawn. The spires, black as onyx, pronounced martial power and spiritual invincibility for the angular structure from which they sprang: an impossibly immense byzantine coffin, an inverse church that would remain enshrouded in pitch even at the height of day.

  Nearer, backlit dimly by the approach of purple daybreak, skeletal shapes jigged and goose-stepped and danced before the horizon, making jagged circles around a slow moving cart dragged by mules. Some of the shapes wore high, pointed caps while others were bald or had the flouncing tentacles of a jester’s hood twisting around their heads. A hurdy-gurdy and a shrill calliope screamed jangling, dissonant tunes at one another—a deafening cacophony of noise without order. Cackling laughter added to the noisome chaos, and a chorus of falsetto voices cried out, “Jojo! Jojo! We want Jojo!”

  Torches were lit, their explosive orange flames giving faces to the shadow skeletons. Theodora recognized those that were not caked with pancake make-up and grotesque red mouths: Russ’s mistress Lana, a waitress from the Starlight Diner, Tuck Arnold. Over the deafening din of the jerky music and screaming voices, these three bellowed a cheerful song as they danced alongside the slow moving congregation—

  “The Dog-Faced Boy

  He growls and bites!

  Growls and bites!

  Growls and bites!

  The Dog-Faced Boy

  He growls and bites!

  We’ve come to bite him back!”

  Theodora whispered, “Jojo.”

  “I guess you see ’em too,” Rich said. Theodora nodded slowly. “Well, at least I ain’t crazy—or at least no more crazy than you are.”

  “What is this?” Charles asked, sitting up straight as a rod with fearful, staring eyes. “Is this like what ya’ll saw at the movie theatre?”

  “I don’t think the show is over yet,” Theodora said. “What we saw at the Palace was just the first act.”

  “Jeepers,” Margie said, immediately embarrassed that the word had escaped her lips.

  “Jeepers is right,” Rich said, applying the brakes and slowing the police car to a halt. “Look at that.”

  The sheriff gestured with his head and all eyes in the car rotated to the house, a single story A-frame structure with healthy yellow light leaking from the windows. The front door swung open violently and a burst of bright light splashed into the early morning gloom. Someone stepped out from inside, brightly illumined from the indoor lights behind him and the sheriff’s headlamps in front of him. Theodora gasped and Margie yelped.

  Ernie Rich said, “Well, if that don’t beat all. It’s a goddamn werewolf.”

  “We’ve come to bite you back!” Betty Overturf screeched, her lips pulled up as if by invisible hooks, forming a skull’s smile.

  “Hi, Betty,” Jojo said calmly. “Sorry to see you like this.” He wasn’t quite sure if he meant her awful state or his. Either way, it fit.

  Betty chuckled: a low, throaty sound. Beside her, a white-faced clown opened his yellow eyes and joined her in laughter. Strapped to his torso was the hurdy-gurdy, which he cranked jerkily to fill the air with music like broken glass.

  Inside the house, Shannon shouted, “Are you nuts? Get back in here and shut the door.”

  “It’s not real,” Jojo muttered. “Can’t be.”

  “For Christ’s sakes, it’s magic,” Shannon yelled. “Haven’t you listened to a word I said? Get back in here!”

  “Magic, he says.”

  He took a step back, wrapping the fingers of one hand around the edge of the door, when he spotted the automobile up a ways on the drive. The car’s unmistakable green and white colouring was just barely visible in the emerging light. Jojo grinned and said, “Ernie fucking Rich.”

  He leapt out of the house and slammed the door behind him before falling into a sprint for the police car.

  “Oh Jesus, here he comes,” Theodora said, bracing herself and starting to breathe too rapidly.

  Rich snatched up the 10-gauge from the floor.

  “Next thing it’ll be Dracula,” he grunted as he kicked the door open and stepped out of the car. He pointed both barrels at the fast approaching apparition and bellowed, “Hold it right there, you! This is Sheriff Ernie Rich talking!”

  “Get that damn blunderbuss out of my face and toss me a rod, Ernie,” Jojo called back, nearly upon the car.

  “Jojo? Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me, you bloated old moron—now toss me that iron!”

  “It’s a trick,” Margie blurted out, her voice rising and frantic. “It’s a trick! Shoot him!”

  “Be quiet, child!” Rich barked back.

  Jojo skidded over loose dirt and gravel and stopped, gasping for air, where the sheriff could take in the startling sight of his former deputy’s hair-covered face.

  “Jesus Christ, Jojo,” Rich said.

  “Gun, Ernie.”

  A shrill scream erupted from the travelling circus as a clown with a high-peaked cap broke away from the group and came spinning wildly at the police car.

  “JojojojojojojoJOJOJOJO,” the clown cried crazily as he scrambled toward them.

  Rich pumped his shotgun and blasted the clown, winging him. His flouncy white sleeve came apart in a red mist. It did not slow him down.

  “JOJOJOJOJOJOJOJO!”

  Jojo spun around and saw the revolver jammed beside the seat in the car. He snatched it up and pulled the hammer back with his thumb. He swung it up and the clown smashed his forehead against the barrel the moment Jojo squeezed the trigger. He expected blood, bits of skull and brain. Instead, the clown’s head burst like a balloon filled with cream—a wet, white explosion and then it was gone, as if the clown had never been there at all.

  Which Jojo presumed was more or less the truth.

  “What in the hell,” Rich said.

  “I’ve got to get to that carriage,” Jojo told him, flipping the cylinder to see how many cartridges were left. There were five. Good man, Ernie, he thought.

  “Now hold on a minute, damnit,” the sheriff protested. “We haven’t got the slimmest damn clue as to what’s going on around here—”

  “I do.” Jojo jammed the cylinder back in place and cocked the gu
n.

  “Care to enlighten me, son?”

  “We’re cursed, Ernie. The whole rotten town is cursed. Started back in twenties when I was just a pup . . .” He laughed at his unintended joke. “. . . the last time the circus came to Litchfield.”

  Sheriff Rich yanked the hat from his head and rubbed his pink scalp. “I wish you’d make sense, man.”

  An automobile door slammed shut and Theodora rounded the car to where the two men stood, her face stolid and grim. She grabbed the sheriff’s shoulder roughly and insinuated herself into the conversation with ease.

  “I—I think he’s right, Sheriff,” she said, her eyes burning like coals. “I remember that circus. Don’t you?”

  “Hell, I never been one to go for that sort of thing.”

  “I was there,” she went on. “I remember now. And I saw you, Jojo. You were . . .”

  “. . . in a cage,” Jojo finished for her. “I tried to escape.”

  “The magician . . .”

  “I think he might be in that carriage. He’s come for me, because he thinks I belong to him. And for the reverend, too, since he’s the one who brought the bastard back.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Black Harry Ashford,” Jojo said with a sneer.

  “Wait a minute,” Rich cut in. “I thought it was this Davis fella behind all of it.”

  “It is. They’re one and the same. At least, I think so.”

  “You think so. Christ, Walker—this ain’t right. This just ain’t right!”

  “You’re telling me,” Jojo said with an arched eyebrow.

  He rolled his shoulders and crooked his neck so it popped, and started off across the churchyard toward the carriage and its dancing attendants. Rich grunted and jumped for him, seizing Jojo by the elbow.

  “Hang on a damn minute, Jojo—I don’t understand any of this. And what’s more is you can’t run around blasting holes in people in my town, much less with my peashooter. In case you forgot, you ain’t no deputy no more, Jojo Walker.”

  “I recollect that being your call, Ernie,” Jojo said plainly.

  “Christ Jesus,” the sheriff complained. “Do you know I killed Dean Mortimer tonight? And more, too. This poor woman’s husband. Others. I think I’m going crazy.”

  He released Jojo’s shoulder and put the hand to his forehead.

  “I think I’m going crazy, kid,” he said.

  Jojo looked at his former boss and felt a stab in the heart. A long time had passed since the sheriff last called him kid, an affection from the older man who was as close as Jojo would ever have to a father. Then he met Sarah and the world came crashing down. It was still crashing, faster and harder now, and Ernie Rich was coming down with it. Jojo felt responsible, like he was the one who pulled the switch so clearly labelled Do Not Pull. He reached out and patted Rich on the chest, reversing the old roles.

  “I’m gonna fix it,” he said, not believing it for a minute. “Just stand back, Ernie. I’m gonna fix it.”

  As if whatever he was about to do could bring back Beth and see that he never met Sarah, and he’d go back to wearing tin on his shirt and breaking up brawls between drunk cousins and not remembering how they kept him in a cage full of his own shit and piss. Still, Ernie nodded and wiped a stray tear from one eye.

  “I’d deputize you,” he croaked, “but what’s the point?”

  “That’s okay,” Jojo said with a smile. “My facial hair ain’t up to regulation anyhow.”

  “Fucking magic,” Rich said, brushing a hand across Jojo’s furry face.

  Jojo laughed.

  “Naw,” he said. “Just bad luck.”

  The circus procession was closing in on the house, their crazy, jerky music slowing even as the carriage wheels spun a little faster over the bumpy yard. Theodora moved around to the sheriff’s side and wrapped her hands around the stock of his 10-gauge.

  “You won’t mind if I borrow this, will you?”

  Rich released the shotgun to her, stunned.

  “Miss, that blunderbuss will knock you on your pretty little rump the first time you shoot it,” he said. “I reckon you and Jojo ought to trade.”

  “I’ll take it,” Charles said, claiming the gun for himself. “You take the rifle in the back of the sheriff’s car, Theodora. That way we all armed.”

  “I think I got me a posse,” Jojo said, equal parts shocked and impressed.

  “A woman, a Negro, and a werewolf,” Rich muttered, shaking his head. “Chrissakes, kid—I sure as shit hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Nope,” Jojo answered. “Not a damn clue.” Then, to his compadres: “Ready?”

  Charles ejected the spent shells from the shotgun and replaced them with fresh ones, cracking it shut and assuming a fierce, steely gaze. Theodora returned from the backseat where she found a .22 rifle and a shell-shocked teenaged girl, to whom she whispered, “Sit tight, we’re going to make this right.”

  “You’re in the lead, boss,” Charles said.

  Without another word, Jojo set off in a rapid walk for the nightmare entourage, Theodora and Charles flanking him with weapons in their hands.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Well, you’ve really done it now, Jim,” Shannon scolded himself, cupping his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the horrible, jangling notes from outside the house. “I hope you’re happy, you stupid old fool.”

  The sun was peeking over the edge of the land now, and though some small part of him hoped the light of day might burn up the terrors of the night, he knew it wouldn’t happen. It didn’t. He thought about the note from his friend in Little Rock—get rid of it; i will not tell you again—and wondered briefly if it was too late, if there was still time to be rid of the burnished sigil and everything it brought with it.

  He knew it was.

  Shannon bit his lower lips and shuddered at the song that rose above the choppy music: a chorus of wavering voices that sobbed the words even as they laughed them.

  “Jim an’ Satan had a race—

  Hal-le-lu! Hal-le-lu!

  Jim an’ Satan had a race—

  Hal-le-lu! Hal-le-lu!”

  “Hal-le-lu,” the reverend mumbled wetly. “Goddamnit it all to hell.”

  “No such place and no such entity to damn it,” a small, calm voice said behind him.

  Shannon pivoted on one heel to find a visitor standing in the middle of his kitchen like he belonged there, like he’d always been there. Barker Davis added, “I am surprised you haven’t figured that out just yet. And perhaps a bit amused.”

  “Why are you here?” Shannon growled at him.

  “Don’t be rude, Jim. After all, you invited me.”

  “I—I was . . .”

  “What? Trying to make a point? I’d say that you have. Nothing is real. Everything is perspective. Life is a dream. Have you learned these lessons yet?”

  “Lies.”

  “All of it, yes.”

  Shannon slumped into a kitchen chair, his arms dangling lifelessly between his knees.

  “But why here? What’s Litchfield got to do with it?”

  “I’d wager your friend out there could answer that question,” Davis said, pointing at the window. Shannon looked and saw Jojo Walker marching pointedly toward the caravan, a silver gun gripped in one hand. A woman—Russell Cavanaugh’s wife, he thought—and a black man followed close behind. “He thinks he’s come to kill me. Like you, he thinks there are rules that cannot be broken. Like you, he will learn different.”

  “For God’s sakes, I did it because I thought nothing would come of it,” the reverend emotionally protested. “That’s the only reason I bothered with it, with this damn book and this damn sigil. I was only trying to justify my faithlessness.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  Shannon shut his eyes and squ
eezed out a salty tear. “Yes. I suppose I have.”

  “And now you wish to rescind your invitation because you didn’t really mean it. Did you know that was what Tuck Arnold said in the moments after he beat his wife to death?”

  “Oh, no. Oh, oh, no,” Shannon moaned.

  “He took a wrench from his store—priced at twenty-five cents—and smashed her head in until he couldn’t recognize her anymore. And he said, ‘I’m sorry, Helen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.’ Now, do you suppose that made any difference to poor, dead Helen Arnold?”

  Barker Davis split his pitted face into a toothy grin and laughed a low, gravelly laugh. Jim Shannon groaned and broke into a series of wrenching, breathless sobs. He thought, not for the first time, about ending his own life, and about the myriad ways one could go about it, but he was much too tired to act on any such impulses. Perhaps after a good sleep, he decided while his back convulsed and shoulders shook; a nice long rest. Then the crushing reality of life and death and nothing ever after could claim him and there would be no one to answer to, just as he had always secretly hoped would be the case. A sputtering sigh broke up the pattern of his sobs and grasped the sides of his head as though that was the only way to keep it from tumbling off his neck.

  “Life’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Mr. Davis?”

  “It’s merely a dream,” the showman assured him. “Why don’t you go climb into bed and see where it leads?”

  “Yes,” Shannon agreed, smearing a hand across his wet face. “Yes, I think I should.”

  He stood up, stumbling a little, and staggered across the kitchen to the hall.

  Davis said, “The last reel is about to begin. I think it’s going to be good.”

  The Last Reel

  Chapter Twenty

  Brightly painted in vibrant, living hues, the circus wagon was a work of art, decorated on all sides with intricate wood carvings and lying mirrors and gold leaf. An ornate, three dimensional Samson struggled with a snarling lion on one side, the long-haired fighter’s jaw coming off in graphic detail, and David battled Goliath on the other side, the giant crushing the boy’s ribcage with a single powerful grasp. Jojo noted the inverse stories the reliefs told: heroes undone. A glimmering gold face shone down from above a retractable section he took for a hidden door—it was the face of Barker Davis, realistically pitted and grinning like a devil, laughing at whoever came near enough to see it.