The Howling Trilogy

by Gary Brandner

  The sounds and smells of the carnival as the people started coming in were enticing, but Malcolm stayed in the trailer. He was not yet ready to move among people again. In mid afternoon Styles returned, looking pleased with himself.

  “Good news, boy. At virtually no expense, I have procured a cage,” he said. “We can’t convince the good people you’re dangerous without a cage, now can we?”

  He saw Malcolm’s expression darken and went on quickly. “It isn’t much of a cage, really. It would barely hold a determined pussycat. However, it will do until we can find something more impressive. It was lucky that Clete Matthews still had it from the time he was carrying a chimp act. The thing still smells faintly of chimpanzee, but I daresay we can get used to that, right?”

  “Sure, I guess so.”

  Bateman studied the boy for a moment, then sat down on the rumpled bed. “Kid,” he said, “I want you to understand what’s going to happen tonight. You’ll be in the cage inside the tent with a curtain pulled to hide you till we’re ready. I’m out front talking, turning the tip, as we say, to get the marks to part with their coin and come inside. Then I come in and say a lot of things to you and about you that won’t sound nice. Don’t you pay any attention. It’s show business. I want to get the marks riled at you so you can work up enough passion to… do the thing you do. You just… let yourself go, or whatever it takes, okay?”

  “Okay, Bate.”

  “Fine. We’re going to make us a few bucks, my boy. And maybe have some chuckles along the way.” He pulled out an old-fashioned turnip watch. “Are you ready to go at it?”

  “I’m ready if you are.”

  “Then let us proceed.”

  * * *

  Styles put up the same garish canvas paintings that he had used for his dismantled freak show. There had been no time to prepare a new one, and Bateman reasoned that any pictures were better than no pictures. He climbed up on the platform and observed for several minutes the trickle of locals who passed on the sawdust walkway below him. Then he blew into his hand mike, heard the resultant blast from the speaker, and began to improvise a spiel.

  “Inside, ladies and gentlemen, inside, inside, inside. Inside this tent you will positively not see”––he pointed to the garish pictures in turn––“Colossus the Giant. You will not see Rosa the Bearded Lady. You will not see Flamo the Fire-Eater. All this I promise you. What, then, you ask, will I see on the inside for the price of one lonely dollar? A fair question. I would tell you, my friends. I would describe in detail the wonder inside, but frankly, you would not believe me. You would not believe me, and I would not blame you. For inside, inside, inside, for the price of one dollar, I have for you the most inconceivable, incredible, impossible, astounding, amazing, astonishing sight on the face of the earth.”

  A few strollers stopped to listen to the spiel, grinning at the cascade of superlatives. Styles noted that nobody was reaching for his wallet yet.

  “At monumental expense and superhuman effort the Samson Supershow has brought from faraway shores the most bizarre attraction ever presented in the Western world. Yes, in this very tent, my friends, blessedly caged to keep us from being attacked, is Grolo… the Animal Boy!”

  The tip was building, but not fast. The Wheel of Fortune across the way had twice as many waiting to dump their coins on Umbach’s crooked wheel. Styles forged on.

  “Before your very eyes––no mirrors, no tricks with the lights––before your very eyes Grolo will become the fearsome, the terrible, the fantastic… Animal Boy!”

  The showman continued to improvise in this vein while a few people paid their dollars and straggled into the tent. For the first time since he had watched Malcolm’s remarkable transformation this afternoon, Bateman began to have doubts. What if the kid couldn’t do it? What if he hadn’t really done it in the first place? Styles had put down a few belts of Old Overholt earlier to brace himself for delivering the bad news to his people, and it would not be the first time he had seen things that did not happen.

  He pulled aside a flap and peeked into the tent. One good thing––if the kid did funk out on him, he wouldn’t have a lot of money to refund. Not more than a dozen people stood on the dirt floor waiting for the show. Might as well get on with it, he decided.

  Styles broke off the spiel and entered the tent. He stepped up onto the low platform at the far end and paused dramatically with a hand on the worn velvet curtain.

  “My friends, in the next few moments you are going to see something no other human eyes have––”

  “Get on with it, old man,” said a teenager who had come in with two friends. “We already heard the bullshit.”

  “Yeah,” said a man with the weather-beaten face of a farmer. “Let’s see what you got back there.”

  “Very well, my friends,” said Styles without breaking stride. “Your impatience is understandable. Without further ado I give you… Grolo the Animal Boy!”

  He snatched aside the curtain to reveal the chimp cage. Seated inside, for the top of the cage was too low to allow him to stand, was Malcolm. He looked around at the small crowd, his eyes large and apprehensive.

  After the first intake of breath, a muttering rose in the crowd.

  “That’s an animal boy?” somebody said.

  “What else does he do?”

  “It’s just another phony!”

  “Fake!”

  “I want my money back!”

  The last comment triggered Bateman Styles to action. He glared into the cage, giving Malcolm a wink that the marks could not see.

  “I don’t blame you one bit, my friends, and believe me, every penny will be refunded to you. You see, it is not only you but myself as well that has been flimflammed here. I was given the most solemn assurances that this was, indeed, the authentic Animal Boy you may have read about or seen on television. I am embarrassed to admit to you that this young imposter hoodwinked me.”

  Speaking directly to Malcolm, he said, “Young man, you are a liar. A cheat. You misrepresented yourself to me and you have tried to steal the money from these good folks out in front. You are nothing more than a contemptible juvenile hoodlum. You should be caged in prison.”

  To the people out front, who were enjoying his tirade, Styles added, “Go on friends, tell this young imposter what you think of him and his type.” Searching for a reference they could relate to, he added, “This is the same kind of punk who tears in here on a motorcycle, freaked out on drugs and who knows what all, and rips up the landscape, then goes roaring back to the city, leaving you to clean up his mess. Go ahead, tell him what you think of him and his kind.”

  The people watching understood that this was somehow part of the show, yet they were carried along by Styles’ florid speech.

  “Boo!” came the first tentative yell.

  “Get out of here!”

  “Dirty biker!”

  “Go home, faggot!”

  Someone picked up a small stone from the ground and threw it. The stone clanked off the bars of the chimp cage.

  Malcolm listened to the shouts and jeers and tried to concentrate on what Bateman Styles had told him to do. Styles had been kind to him and asked no questions, and he did not want to let the showman down. He concentrated. Nothing happened.

  The boos got louder. Styles began to sweat as he anxiously watched Malcolm through the bars. The marks were getting carried away by their own voices. One of them heated a penny with a cigarette lighter and tossed it into the cage.

  Malcolm blanked Bateman Styles out of his mind. He got off the stool and walked forward in a half crouch to seize the bars. He looked down into the taunting faces and summoned hack a series of images. The fire. The trap. The hunters. Dr. Pastory and the table. Kruger and the cattle prod. Kruger hurting Holly.

  He felt it begin.

  The jeers of the crowd died in their throats. For a moment there was silence in the tent. Bateman Styles, along with the paying customers, stared in awe at the boy in the cage.
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  “What’s happening to his eyes?” a plump girl asked her boyfriend.

  “Look at his face,” somebody else said in a strangled tone.

  “And his hands! My God, they’re growing!”

  “The teeth! Holy shit, the teeth!”

  Styles watched the contortions of the boy in the cage. Even though he had seen the process before in reverse, he was stunned by what was happening in there. The growls that came from the boy could surely not be human.

  He let the transformation continue until blackened hairy hands started to bend the inadequate cage bars. Then he caught the message flashed from the dangerous green eyes. This must go no further. Without ceremony the showman snatched the curtain back in front of the cage.

  “That’s it, my friends. I think each and every one of us can agree that we got our dollar’s worth here today. Grolo the Animal Boy. There will be another show in one hour by the clock. Tell your friends. I thank you.”

  The dozen people who had witnessed the performance filed out silently. Once outside, they all began to talk at once, the general topic being speculation on how it was done. They scattered excitedly over the small carnival grounds to spread the word.

  When he had seen the last of the customers leave, Bateman Styles hurried back through the curtain and helped Malcolm out of the cage. He was relieved to see that the boy looked normal again, if somewhat sweaty. Malcolm gave him a tired smile.

  “How did I do, Bate?”

  “Lad, you were sensational. We will never again have a crowd that small, or I do not know this business. How do you feel?”

  “Okay. A little tired.”

  “Think you can do it again in an hour?”

  “Yeah. I found out there’s a kind of a trick I can use to make it easier.”

  “Whatever the trick is,” said the showman, “don’t tell me. There are some things a man should not know. Go catch a nap in the trailer if you want. I’ll call you in time for the next show.”

  “I think I’ll just walk around, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure. If you want to see any of the shows, take a ride, tell ’em you’re working with me. You’re one of us now.”

  One of us. Beautiful words. He really wasn’t, of course, but it was as close as Malcolm had come to belonging anywhere in a long time. He strolled around the small carnival, savoring the tinny music from the merry-go-round, the thumping drum from the kootch show. He inhaled with pleasure the raw smell of sawdust mingled with cooking grease and cotton candy. He gazed happily at the colored lights strung above the walkways. When he told the other carnival people he was working with Bateman, they accepted him without question. Nobody asked what he did or where he came from. He was almost one of them.

  As Styles had predicted, the crowd was much larger for the second show. Many who had been at the opener came back to see it again. Jackie Moskowitz himself came in, positioning himself in the front row, where he would not have to look through people’s armpits. Styles shortened his spiel this time and let the act speak for itself. Again the Animal Boy was a sensation.

  When they closed out the week in Silverdale, there was no more talk of leaving Bateman Styles behind. The Animal Boy did bring in more than the kootch show and the ring-toss combined.

  The sponsoring civic organization was so pleased with their share of the carnival’s take that they invited the Samson Supershow back to Silverdale for another stand late in the summer. Jackie Moskowitz, with holes to fill on his schedule, was only too happy to oblige.

  As they traveled north with stops at Manzanar, Crestview, Mono Lake, Markleeville, Sattley, Ravendale, and a dozen other California towns nobody ever heard of, the fame of Grolo the Animal Boy spread. People were driving fifty or a hundred miles to see the amazing change of boy into beast. Bateman Styles was supremely happy. He had a real attraction again. Jackie Moskowitz was talking long-term contract.

  As for Malcolm, he was as close to being content as he could remember since childhood. Sometimes he would awaken in the night from a terrifying dream, then relax as he recognized the tacky trailer of Bateman Styles. There was still the nagging worry that someone would find him and take him back to answer for the business at Pastory’s clinic, but over the weeks that faded, too.

  It happened in mid-July. The Samson Supershow was playing a small town outside Red Bluff. Two men from Los Angeles paid their dollars and walked into the show, and Malcolm’s life was about to be changed forever. By mid-July, with the Samson show playing a town called Castle Rock, Malcolm had relaxed enough to laugh out loud, something he had not done since his days with Jones. He felt sometimes that his life here was too good to last.

  He was right.

  20

  “What am I doing here?” Louis Zeno complained.

  “What’s the name of this town again?”

  “Castle Rock,” said Ted Vector. He was a bony, loose-jointed man with quick eyes. He wore a bag of camera equipment slung over a shoulder.

  “Castle Rock,” Zeno repeated. “That’s not a town; that’s a dance craze from the thirties.”

  “Don’t be so negative. Once you see what I’ve got for us here, you will forever remember Castle Rock as our El Dorado.”

  Zeno came to a stop on the sawdust midway and stared at his companion. “Tell me something. What made you think of me, anyway?”

  “Actually, it was Ed Endicott who suggested you.”

  “The editor of National Expo?”

  “Do you know another Ed Endicott? He said he liked the way you were handling that werewolf business down in Pinyon until you got yourself in trouble.”

  “Yeah, trouble. I could have got myself eaten,” Louis Zeno muttered.

  “So when I told him what I had here, he said you’d be the perfect one to write it.”

  “Wonderful. Now I’m the National Expo’s werewolf man.”

  “You would rather be the two-headed-calf man?”

  “Okay, okay.” They walked on a short distance in silence. Then Zeno said, “You really think this Animal Boy is legitimate?”

  “What the hell, he’s close enough. They’re talking about him all over the state. Ed Endicott was convinced enough to give me an advance, and you know the Expo don’t throw money around.”

  Zeno sighed. “Let’s get on with it, then. This’d better not turn out to be some turkey in a rubber mask.”

  Grolo the Animal Boy had his own sign outside the tent now. Two garish paintings flanked the platform where Bateman Styles was delivering the pitch. One showed a figure with the body of a boy and the head of some nightmare animal with huge tusks leering out from between two trees. The other had the Animal Boy carrying off a terrified, near-naked woman in the tradition of l940s horror movies.

  Zeno stared up at the pictures. “For this you had me drive up from L.A.?”

  “Lighten up, pal. You can’t spend your life writing about Burt Reynolds and Bianca Jagger.” Vector told him. “Anyway, it’s what’s inside that counts.”

  The photographer stopped to click off several pictures of the front of the tent, then they joined the large crowd listening to Bateman Styles.

  “…It is my duty to warn you, friends,” Styles was saying, “to stay well away from the front of the stage. Grolo is inside a sturdy cage of tempered steel, but his full strength when the rage is upon him has yet to be tested. Therefore, for your own safety, please stand clear. Everyone will be able to see everything that happens.”

  He paused and made a mental count of the spectators. “Now let us go in for the first show of the evening. For those of you who cannot fit inside the tent this time, your tickets will entitle you to first admittance at the next show one hour from now by the clock.”

  The showman stood next to the girl selling tickets and smiled contentedly. When he spotted Ted Vector’s camera hag he leaned down from the platform.

  “Sorry, sir, no pictures.”

  Vector looked up in innocent surprise. “What’?” Then he smiled and tapped the camera
bag as though he had just remembered he was wearing it. “Oh, this? I don’t plan to take any pictures inside. I’m a tourist, you know. Never go anywhere without my camera.”

  “Well, as long as you leave it in the bag…” Styles said doubtfully.

  “Absolutely,” said the photographer. He and Louis Zeno paid their money and filed into the tent with the rest of the crowd.

  The people were packed shoulder to shoulder in the tent. There was no air circulating except that flowing in through the entrance. The combined body heat was oppressive.

  Zeno tucked himself in behind Vector and followed the photographer as he pushed his way to a position near the front. He mopped perspiration from his neck with a handkerchief and stared gloomily at the moth-eaten velvet curtain.

  “This’d better be good, Ted. Remember, I could be home among the Beautiful People covering some swinging Hollywood party.”

  “Sure, sure, I know how you cover those parties––you open a can of beer, sit in your bathtub, and fantasize. Watch now, here comes the man.”

  Bateman Styles made his appearance at one end of the curtain. It was a refinement he had added since the crowds became too big for him to walk easily through from the entrance to the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most astounding, the most amazing, the most incredible phenomenon on view in America today. In a very few minutes I am going to pull this curtain aside and reveal to you the Ninth Wonder of the World!”

  “What happened to the eighth?” Zeno whispered to the photographer.