by Joe Hart
“Mr. Brennan, this is Sergeant Davidson with the Bright Springs Police Department. I just wanted you to know that a case file has been opened and we are following each and every lead that we have. Please call us at your earliest convenience.”
I responded by taking another swig from the bottle and sat on the floor. The alcohol gradually slowed my thoughts to a bearable speed. I sipped some more. The clock moved from half past three to four. I got the insane urge to call my parents and Jane’s parents. Insane because what would I tell them? I lost my family during the worst storm I’d ever seen? Something was in the house with an enormous grin like the creepy fucking cat in Alice in Wonderland, please bring casserole and help me look for them?
A laugh slipped from my mouth that sounded so strange I stopped the rest that wanted to pour out. It was a twisted and utterly crazy noise that made me think of cliff edges and stepping into an abyss. Outside the window it seemed darker, although the sun was still overhead. Maybe another storm was on its way. I didn’t care. Let it come. Maybe it would bring my family back to me. The last thing I remembered was listening for the sound of thunder in the distance.
A knocking brought me out of a mercifully dreamless sleep. For a moment I thought another storm had arrived. I sat up from the kitchen floor for the second time in less than twelve hours and squinted at the clock. It was after eight, and shadows cast by the sinking sun lengthened in the living room. The knock came again and my synapses finally fired. I jumped to my feet and nearly fell, the whiskey still with me, and it took a few seconds before I could walk again. The knocking resounded through the house, harder than before, more urgent.
“Coming!” I yelled. The mudroom was dark, and when I opened the door to the outside world, I had to squint to see who stood there.
There were two men on my porch. The one who had knocked was old, at least in his seventies if he was a day. The skin on his face was wrinkled in gentle lines that told of more smiles than frowns, and his head was bald, spotted with age, with only a few wisps of white hair that seemed to float in the evening sun. He wore a stained pair of overalls that would’ve looked more at home hanging on the wall at my work. The other man was slight and pale, smaller than the old man, and wore a dirty baseball hat pulled down tight over his forehead, along with a long-sleeved T-shirt and dark pants. His hands were concealed in black leather gloves and his eyes hid behind a pair of scratched sunglasses.
“Good evening, Mr. Brennan,” the older man said. He was a head shorter than me, and when I looked down I saw that his eyes were brown, but a brown like I’d never seen before. They were the color of a newly fallen acorn. He held out a surprisingly large hand for me to shake, and when I did, it felt strange. My fingers registered a roughness on the back of his hand. I looked and saw what seemed to be irregular ridges on the skin there.
“You’re no doubt wondering who we are and what we want,” he continued, breaking me from my inspection of his hand as he let go and dropped it to his side.
“Yes,” I said, trying to clear my throat of sleep and a dried coating of booze.
He nodded. “My name is Ellius, and this is Fellow.” He swallowed, and I saw something in his eyes, something that bordered on regret or sympathy. “This is concerning your family.”
I don’t remember moving, only feeling a small twitch of my muscles. I suppose it was actually the order my brain sent down my nerves in the form of an electrical impulse. One moment I stood in my doorway, no doubt swaying from the still-formidable presence of whiskey, and the next we were on the ground, my hands around the old man’s throat. His brown eyes bulged and skittered to my right, possibly asking for help from his companion, but I couldn’t have cared less at that point in time. I was impervious to harm; I was steel. The smaller guy could have hit me with a chair and I wouldn’t have noticed. The only thing I heard were the words inside my head: My family.
“What the fuck did you do with them?” I said, spittle spraying from my mouth and onto his reddening face. He gasped and scrabbled at my hands. He was strong, surprisingly so for his age, but there was no way I was letting go. I was rabid. “Tell me!” I screamed, and punctuated it by pulling him up and slamming him back down to the ground.
“Not us ... help you,” he rasped. I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the words had I been farther away. I considered choking the rest of his life out right there since he might be lying—probably was lying—but I didn’t know for sure. And even if he was, he was the only possible link I had at the moment.
I let go of his throat and stood up, ready to throw a fist into his tired features at the first sign of trouble. He only lay there beneath me, raggedly sucking air in through his windpipe, as if he were breathing water instead of oxygen. I glanced over my shoulder at the other guy and was surprised to see him kneeling on the porch right where he’d been standing. No, kneeling was too strong of a word. Cowering was more like it. He’d pulled himself into the smallest form he could manage and was protecting his head with his arms. A whimper floated out from his chest, and I realized he was absolutely terrified.
“I’m sorry,” Ellius said as I turned my attention back to him. He worked his fingers against the bruising skin of his neck. His voice still sounded strained and rough. “I should have thought of a better way to begin all this.”
“Where are they?” I asked. I still trembled with adrenaline and anger, but my mind was clearer and I no longer felt the whiskey at all.
He sighed and squinted up at me in the failing light, and for a split second he looked much older than seventy—much, much older. “They are far away and very close.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’ll be happy to answer all your questions, but may I first check on Fellow?”
I stared at him for a while, indecision tipping me back and forth. Finally I nodded and gave him some space to stand. I looked to the driveway to see what kind of car they had arrived in, but there were no vehicles besides the truck and minivan in sight. When I glanced back, Ellius was crouched beside the smaller man. He murmured something that sounded like reassurances to him, and I suddenly felt sorry. I wasn’t a violent man, hadn’t been in a fight since the fourth grade, when Sunny Goldbloom took my new hat that my parents had given me for Christmas and filled it with orange juice. Violence was not familiar and I felt strange, outside my skin.
After a few more words of encouragement, both men stood, Ellius helping Fellow up on legs that weren’t entirely sturdy. The older man looked at me and smiled for just a moment.
“What is this all about?” I heard myself say. Simultaneously I wanted another drink and didn’t ever want to touch the stuff again.
“I can explain everything, but I must impress upon you that time is of the essence.”
“They were kidnapped, weren’t they?” I said, knowing the answer down in the pit of my stomach, where all truths reside.
Ellius pursed his lips and frowned. “Yes, they were. But it is more complex than that, I assure you. I now must ask for something from you, Mr. Brennan. I must ask for your trust if you are to ever see your children and wife again. Can you give me that?”
I felt as if I’d been slugged in the guts, hit with a bat and left to marinate in my own misery. “How do I know you didn’t take them?” I asked, my voice wavering just a little.
“You don’t, but I promise you we didn’t. We would not be here if it was not of the utmost importance.” He watched me from the top of my porch, gauging my reaction. Perhaps he knew what my answer would be even before I did. Looking back after everything that happened, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“Okay, I’ve got nothing else. I’ll listen to you,” I said.
“Good,” he said, stepping down the stairs. “Come, Fellow, there’s no time to spare.” The smaller man followed in his footsteps, not looking at me or Ellius, watching only where his feet landed, as if he were afraid the ground would fall away before him.
“Where are you going?” I asked as the
y walked past me, toward my truck.
“You must drive us. I’ll direct you,” Ellius said, examining the passenger door of my Dodge. Gingerly he reached out and pulled on the handle. The dome light came on and Fellow backed up a step from the vehicle. Ellius glanced at him with something like annoyance.
“Just a light, Fellow. Electricity and all.”
The statement was so strange I didn’t even try to compute it at the time, and merely walked toward the truck. After climbing inside I started the engine, which elicited another cringe from Fellow, who sat pressed against the passenger window. I gazed at him and determined it wasn’t an act; the man was truly petrified.
“Is he okay?” I asked Ellius.
“Yes, yes, he’ll be just fine. He’s not used to many things.”
Again the oddness of the old man’s words. I shook my head and reversed out of our driveway.
My eyes traced our home, recalling chasing the kids beneath the maple tree in the front yard, Jane and I reading together on the deck in the sunshine, the laughter echoing in rooms that were now empty.
We backed onto the road, and I put the truck in drive, but held my foot on the brake. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Not far and very far,” Ellius said. When I didn’t drive, he looked over at me, the wrinkles on his face feathered with shadow in the last light of the day. “I’ll direct you, just please hurry, your family needs you.”
I drove.
We passed through the heart of Bright Springs and continued on, the middle of town controlled by the giant retailers promising big savings and lower prices in poly-acrylic letters lighting up against the darkening sky. Grocery stores were mixed in here and there, their entryways glowing, inviting and welcoming. Gradually the north side of the city became older, buildings devolving from cinderblock to brick, composite siding to mortar and brownstone. Ellius said very little, merely pointing in one direction or another when we came to an intersection. When he motioned straight ahead after the last stoplight on the north end of town, I glanced over at him. He wasn’t just giving directions at random. There was a destination in mind; I could see it in the way his eyes searched each street, each sidewalk, each tree. Yet not once did I see him read a street sign.
“Are you taking me to them?” I asked as we sped past a housing block and a multitude of parked cars in front of what must have been a raging party.
“Yes, in a sense,” Ellius said, his eyes never leaving the road.
“Enough with the Zen shit!” I said more loudly than I meant to. Fellow cowered against the far window and turned his head away. The dark glasses still obscured his eyes, but if I were a betting man, I would’ve put my money on them being squeezed shut. “I’ve done what you asked when I really should’ve called the police. Now tell me where we’re going!”
To the old man’s credit, he didn’t flinch, not once. He didn’t even look at me. “It’s just up there,” he said in a quiet voice.
I looked at the street we were on. A hundred yards ahead another road intersected our path, a sweeping curve that went on for nearly half a mile around the edge of a small lake. Barren Lake it was called, if I remember correctly. Its name was in honor of never, in the history of Bright Springs, producing a fish. Its flat surface now stared back at me from across the road as I pulled to a stop, the last rays of the sun catching on its skin in flashing shimmers.
To our left the road continued into the final neighborhood on the north end of town. Lights illuminated windows, the families therein settling down to a quiet evening of relaxation and peace. I swallowed and looked right. The road before us curved away and disappeared behind a stand of trees that lined the far edge of the lake. On the opposite side the county fairgrounds sat empty, eerily somber, the simple white structures boarded up against the weather until the last weekend in August, when the fair would visit and the entire place would come alive with smells of caramel and cotton candy.
I panned the scene again, checking the rearview to make sure we weren’t blocking anyone, and then turned to my passengers. “Where now?”
Ellius pointed to the right. “There,” he said.
I followed the path of his finger and realized it pointed at the empty fairgrounds. I scanned the parking lot one more time to see if I’d missed any cars parked along its edges in the lengthening shadows, but saw nothing.
“The fairgrounds? That’s where they are?”
“No, but that’s where we’re going,” Ellius said.
“But there’s nothing there.”
“Look again.”
I did ... and froze. There was something there.
Chapter 3
The Ride
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at, and then the object began to materialize. It was like peering through a thick fog and finally seeing what you were searching for take shape in a cloud of moisture. Lines sharpened and rose high into the night air. Smoky walls hardened. Material flapped in the gentle breeze coming off the lake. I held my breath. It was a fair, but not our fair. The rides that sat behind the low fences lining the property were desolate and dark. I could see, even from a distance, that the carnival wasn’t active and looked like it hadn’t been for years. No—not just years but decades. A cloud blocked the last rays of sun and details in the fairgrounds deepened, forcing away the thoughts of denial that flooded my mind.
“How?” was all I managed.
“You see it?” a soft voice said from near the passenger door. I turned my head, almost more surprised by Fellow actually speaking than by seeing a carnival emerge into reality where there hadn’t been one before. His face was turned toward me, the scant eyebrows above his glasses raised.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I see it.” Fellow nodded, a slight grin tugging at his mouth. When I looked back the cloud covering the sun fled, leaving the fairgrounds in better light. The rides and tents dimmed a little and took on the look of a mirage floating just above the ground, there but not there.
“Please,” Ellius said and put a weathered hand on my arm.
I glanced at him and saw the same look he wore on my doorstep: pity barely concealed. I nodded and turned the truck, parking in the far right corner of the lot. Dust billowed from around my wheels as I shut the engine off and opened my door. Fellow and Ellius exited the far side, but by then the rest of the world had faded. I took one step, two, and then stopped just inside the fence.
The midway was set up almost exactly like the fair that visited our town every August. A main alley wound through a maze of booths and tents, their openings bare and unmanned. Ropes and black scraps of cloth dangled from posts and poles, swaying like beckoning fingers. An empty ticket booth sat a few yards away, its interior lined with stained pennants and flags. Steel girders grew from the ground and twisted upward into strange rides that, at first, I’d thought were familiar. Now I could see they were dark doppelgangers of the carnival I knew, their frames bent and broken in places. There was a tilt-a-whirl, slanted and pitted with rust so deep it was the color of ancient blood. A merry-go-round with a solitary headless horse rotated so slowly I thought it would stop at any moment, but it continued emitting a tinny shriek every quarter turn. The black mouth of a funhouse yawned in our direction, a tongue of rotted and falling stairs leading into a pool of shadows that seemed to dance and move. And beyond it all, a roller coaster nearly three stories high stabbed at the evening sky with black rails and a row of three oversized light bulbs perched over its entrance. All were lit, in stark contrast to everything else on the grounds.
I tore my attention away from the carnival and looked at Ellius. The old man’s face was set in a near grimace as he gazed at the midway. “What is this place?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Ellius stared for a few more seconds and then turned his eyes my way. “A dark place of traverse. Somewhere no soul should tread.” I saw movement just behind him and realized Fellow huddled a few inches from the old man’s spine. A tremor ran through his small form
and his hands clenched and opened inside the gloves he wore. “Follow me closely and do not stop, no matter what you see or hear. Do not speak to anything, do you understand?” Ellius said.
The sun finally slipped below the tree line in the west and evening stepped closer to night. The details of the carnival sharpened before us and I blinked, opened my mouth to say something, then shut it again. Ellius took it as a sign of agreement and began to walk. Fellow went next, his steps falling in Ellius’s footprints exactly, like a child walking behind a parent in deep snow. I trailed after, throwing a glance over my shoulder at my truck, alone and abandoned in the empty parking lot. The sight of it saddened me to no end and I turned away, not being able to put a finger on why I would feel morose at leaving my pickup. We entered the midway, the rides towering over us on the left and the open fronts of the carny games on our right.
“Tickets?” a voice hissed.
Looking toward the origin of the voice I saw that we’d drawn even with the ticket booth. It was still dark inside, but now there was a silhouette seated on some sort of stool behind the cracked glass. A gray hand emerged through the ticket slot, pressing a thick sheaf of dripping papers across the counter. The nails on the hand were black and very long. There was an intricate design on the soggy paper beneath the hand, and I wanted to see it. It was strange but familiar, and in the dying light it was hard to make out. I began to step closer when Ellius’s voice made me freeze.
“Michael! Do not stop.”
I started to tell him I hadn’t when I saw that he and Fellow were several paces ahead of me. I turned away from the booth, but not before I saw a multitude of tiny hairs glistening on the papers beneath the hand. When I was within a few feet of Ellius, he leaned forward and grasped my wrist.
“Do not stop again, or I won’t be able to call you back.” He let go and began walking once more in a straight line.