by Landon Wark
"Do you believe in the Devil, Father?"
Paul's frown deepened. That question was taken for granted around these parts. A more common question was 'Do you believe the Devil's in our government?" or "Why are the schools teaching our kids Satanism?"
"It's Reverend. Sure."
"Before he died. My boy, I wanted to get him Christened, but we couldn't agree on a church and... If the Devil's real, if there's really things like witchcraft or even, if it wasn't witchcraft. If it was a miracle. How do you tell the difference?"
"It's okay, Mr. Wilson. I think you'd just know the difference."
"She made a ball of fire. Right between her fingers in the middle of the air."
Paul frowned, the religious intensity of the air was broken. “You know I think I’ve seen whatshisface do that online.”
Wilson shook his head furiously. “Nope. Not online or on TV. I…” His hands rattled on the pew as he rang the wooden railing, struggling for words. “Closest thing I can think of is going to see Santa at the mall when you were a kid. You remember?”
Paul’s frown deepened.
“If my parents asked me afterward if I believed in Santa I would say I did, I would maybe even believe it too, but there would always be some part of me that remembered seeing the strings that held his beard on his face, or seeing the black hair sticking out from under his wig. And part of me would know… you know? Maybe as a kid you don’t know you know, but you know, you know? But this… I know this was real. You know how I know?”
Paul shook his head. “How?”
“'Cause the next thing I know Jenny was holding one just like it. Maybe it was a little more yellow than the big girl's. And she held it out to me. I could feel... The heat coming off of it. No smoke, no mirrors, no strings. Just that feeling I used to get sitting on Santa’s lap getting washed down the drain. I stared at it there for like… I don’t know a minute or two, and I… I could hear Jenny laughing, like it’s the first time in nearly a year, since… I was scared outta my head. I don’t know if that was God or the Devil in that house, but... I never baptized my boy.”
Paul’s frown deepened yet again. It was clear Wilson was concerned about his wife, but as for the rest… Maybe Newman would have taken him seriously, as he had a tendency to do. Last month a parishioner had painted a mason jar with a cartoon devil for the annual chili cook off and been asked to leave church property. Paul thought this was more a case for an actual psychiatrist rather than an exorcist.
“Well...” Paul bit on his tongue a little bit. “I guess I could have a word with your wife. At least see if there’s anything to be worried about with these people.”
Wilson, sucking in a breath, removed his white knuckles from the back of the pew and wrung them nervously before slipping them through the hair past his temples. He nodded slowly and then exhaled.
"Can you tell my wife that... I'm sorry."
Paul put his hand on Wilson's shoulder in what he imagined would be a reassuring manner.
The next day Paul Kwon went up to the house. He did not return to the church.
There was the smell of animals and food, and feces. Exactly which was which was a topic for scholars.
Jonah McAllister looked around nervously and wondered how anyone could get nostalgic for such an aroma, let alone enjoy it. The mere inkling of the fried messes handed out in grease stained wrappers and containers was enough to make him look for a bathroom. Nevertheless the throngs of screaming children who ran about and poked and shouted at the animals suggested that not everyone shared his point of view.
He backed away as a carny leading a horse pushed through the crowd.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sandy asked, pretending not to notice a trio of kids scurrying away from her great mass.
He bristled. “I never liked the circus.”
She picked up a stick of cotton candy from the vendor, shoving some change at him in return. The man eyed her skeptically. “Everyone likes the circus. Besides, this is a carnival.”
"What's the difference?"
A performer wearing a large grease paint smile over top of his scowling lips walked past in a pair of baggy suspenders, nearly tripping as he tried to skirt the same trio of children that ran from Sandy. He raised a fist covered in an oversized white glove and shook it at the scattering brood like an old man in a cartoon. Jonah shied away, bumping into a speaker that was blaring calliope music.
“I think it’s the noise,” he said.
Sandy arched an eyebrow. “I think you’re afraid of clowns.”
He glared at her. “I’m also not a very big fan of magicians.”
“My uncle’s perfect,” she replied. "And he's an ex-magician. He's management now."
“That's almost worse.” Jonah shied away from a second clown, following the first with what looked like a bucket of paint and what sounded like questions about the act. He grumbled something before catching himself and began kicking at the base of one of the booths instead.
“At the very least we can get some... I don't know, hiring tips." The truth was she had more than a little stagefright after the incident with the Hernandezes. The results had been acceptable for a first time, she supposed: two recruits interviewed, two recruits inducted... But Jonah had been more focused on the fact there was someone who knew their secret on the loose. So much so that he had insisted on coming along, like some sort of micromanaging boss.
She clutched at a shaggy man passing by carrying a ladder. "Excuse me. We're looking for Ezra Mansfield." The man looked at her with a blank stare that likely transcended the request. "He used to go by the Irreverent Ezra?"
Jonah kicked at the stand a little more, but said nothing. Truth be told he was more worried about leaving the house in the hands of two people he barely knew than he was about the world outside, but he had locked up his notebooks and Sandy had vouched for both the sallow-faced woman and the priest (or whatever he was) so…
“There’s my niece!” A shadow ducked out from behind one of the booths and Jonah found himself face to face with what had to be the fattest man he had ever been in the same room with.
A bowler hat that looked to be little more than a thimble sat in the desert that was the bald spot on his head. A cheap green windbreaker covered in what looked to be oil stains bulged out around his gut and clung heroically to his hips above some funnel shaped jeans. The stubble foresting his jowls bristled as he and Sandy collided into a mesh of fat and hair. Jonah found himself wincing as he continued to kick at the stand, its owner just now becoming aware of what he was doing. He had never been comfortable around family, especially other peoples’.
“You’ve grown,” the man said without a hint of irony. “I haven’t seen you in so long. It seems like just yesterday Alice would bring you out every weekend to see my act. What happened young lady?”
Sandy blushed slightly. “I’ve been busy. How are y—”
Jonah coughed where he stood.
“Sorry. Uncle Ezra, this is Jonah.” Sandy made an awkward movement of introduction.
Jonah eyed the meaty palm that was extended towards him and shook it reluctantly. Why people insisted on doing this was beyond him.
“Oh ho.” Ezra pumped twice and released, nearly sending Jonah sprawling to the ground. “Nice to meet you, young man. The Irreverent Ezra Mansfield, at your service.” With a flourish of his hand he produced a handkerchief from an obvious hidden pocket. “Sandy, are you introducing this guy to the family? Tell me I’m before Cousin Lester.”
“Uh, not exactly...” Sandy and Jonah exchanged perturbed looks. “Listen, Uncle, I have something to show you and I...”
"I'm starting to understand why you wanted to quit that call centre so badly," Jonah muttered under his breath.
Sandy shot him a look that nearly turned his blood to ice. “Is there someplace private we can talk?” she asked Ezra.
The fat man looked to his left and then to his right as if to make certain that no one was listening. “Wel
l… My office is on the other side of the grounds. And Tyson the Strongman is likely in there. He needs a place to mix his protein shakes and it's the only place with reliable air conditioning.”
“Do you have a place or not?”
“Uh…” Ezra looked around again, this time to see if the niece who was amazed by the endless coins he would pull from behind her ears was hiding around the booths somewhere. “Sure, no one will be using the geek trailer. They’re all at lunch in town.”
Jonah fell into step behind Sandy as she allowed Ezra to lead them through the maze of booths and tents that made up the carnival. He was beginning to have serious doubts about this foppish older man. The agreement was that they were looking for the down and the desperate. Ezra Mansfield lacked the kind of quiet desperation which he had seen in the others. Sandy had been good at picking it up, but he was starting to think that in this case her senses were being coloured by the fact that this man was family… He chewed on his tongue thoughtfully as he sidestepped out of the way of an oncoming performer with grease makeup.
Still, he had set the criteria and allowed her to choose. There was a certain amount of trust that was to be involved here.
Ezra led the two of them up to the steps of a small trailer. The broken door nearly fell from its hinges as the fat man cast it open, shuffling his bulk in sideways. Sandy followed suit and Jonah slipped in after. The darkness inside vanished with a flick of the switch and Jonah found himself in a room full of patio furniture that looked like it had been sitting around outside since the last ice age and only just brought inside. Aside from those and a grime covered fridge that looked like it might have been dredged up from the Titanic there was nothing else in the trailer. The stifling interior folded around them with the stink of body odour which piled on top of the animal smell drifting in from outside.
“Sandy, if it’s money you want I can’t help you,” Ezra said immediately. “Things aren’t as good as they used to be around here. I've had to let go five performers in the last month. The post-virus glut is officially done.”
“It’s not about money, Uncle,” Sandy interrupted. “Not yours anyway.”
“Thank god,” Ezra crashed onto one of the plastic chairs which sagged in protest. “I love your mom and everything, but...”
Jonah sat in one of the chairs in the corner of the room and tried to think about some of the problems that had arisen in his latest round of research. The plant grafts were working well... most of them anyway. He might be able to transition to higher organisms in the near future.
“Uncle,” Sandy pushed, “would you please sit down? I have something to show you.”
Exactly how much time had passed between sanity returning to the room and when the first word was uttered was unknown, though Jonah’s inner timer estimated that it had been over five minutes. He had to give Sandy’s demonstration credit. While he had had trouble getting people to believe their eyes when it came to this sort of thing she had bypassed the eyes all together and gone straight to the nerves. The little ball of flame might look like a bit of special effects magic that most people were probably used to, but there was no denying the heat emanating from its surface, or the crackling of its tiny yellowish flame.
It was an effective bridge of the real and the unreal. Perhaps being forced to include her with this was not such a bad thing after all.
She watched the man seated across from her with intense, worried eyes.
‘Uncle’ Ezra’s face looked as though all of the blood had drained away, draining most of the fat away with it. His skin had the colour and consistency of tallow, his hair greyed significantly.
"H-how did you create the heat?" he asked. Jonah couldn't help but note his tone, a kind of mix of disbelief and professional jealousy.
Straight down into the underpass there was a gathering. Maybe about four or five or so bodies milled about. Not many, but enough to know that there was something there waiting. Something that would fix whatever the hell was wrong.
Carmen Carruthers walked back up the concrete of the pedestrian ramp towards where the streetlights were just beginning to come in amongst the colours of twilight. The pull of the world in the light was great, but not great enough to overcome the cursed throbbing just behind her eyes, nor the malaise that dogged her, making each step an endurance trial. She twisted her fingers, cracking the knuckles, wishing she hadn't brought as much cash as she had. Not knowing day to day what the cost would be made it necessary, and it set her teeth on edge. The possibility of getting robbed down here was very real, as was the temptation to take more than what she needed.
Though that in itself was becoming something of an uncertainty. How much was going to be necessary today?
Were she thinking correctly she would head back home and pound out another two or three think pieces for the local conservative rag-blogs. She hated being the one to write that drivel, but they were the only game in town that was paying. And they were willing to pay extra for the cover provided to their dog-whistling by her dark skin. In one evening she might be able to make enough to last herself for three or four days.
The urge to simply buy whatever she could and get the hell away increased with the pounding behind her eyes. She placed her fingers to her temples in a gesture that had always helped when she had been a little kid.
"Grrrrah!" she practically shouted, stifling her voice when she spotted the man up on the other side of the overpass who practically mirrored her movements. Mirrored and cop-ified.
It was hard to say exactly what it was about a certain posture that marked someone as a cop. Most undercovers figured it out and managed to change somehow. This one was not one of them. But, he thought he was. Definitely.
Carmen ran her fingers through her hair. Was it the same skin that demanded a premium from a bunch of asshole bloggers that also marked her as a subject of interest for a bumbling Clouseau-esque police tail? Was this novice just following her because he was a good ol' racist sumbitch? It didn't make a difference where her ancestors were from, or that her father was licensed to practice in three countries. All they saw was the melanin.
"Christ," she whispered. "I'm fucking Indian. The Brits forced us to assimilate decades ago."
She bit her tongue. It was a childish response. I'm not the kind of person you want to racially profile! I'm better than them! Leave me alone! Those guys are the ones you want to racially profile!
Show some damn solidarity, Carmen. That guy's the asshole here. Not you.
But she was willing to put up with a lot of assholery to be left circling the existential drain by herself.
Regardless of the fucking racism, and regardless of how bad an undercover this guy was, there was no way she could make a buy now. But she still had to, needed to. Maybe if she just went with it, got caught that would be the end to all of this. She might as well. That's where all of this was going anyway. The whole storyline was almost cliched. There was a reason opioids were nicknamed 'the bridgebuilder'. Get hooked, get caught, get a spot in a prison shop making girders.
Well, not quite that simple. Go in for minor surgery. Grab some painkillers for the aches? Sure! This new generation isn't addictive like the last one, right? All studies say... don't worry about it! Lose job as editor of internet magazine. Lose health insurance. And... we're buying heroin under a bridge, trying to avoid some painfully obvious cop.
It nearly drove her mad to think of that racist sumbitch who, despite all the supposed progress of the last few years, was still passing judgment on her from up on the overpass. She had taken the same goddamn path to get here that a lot of his friends were likely still walking. Her father was a member of the country club for Christsake.
She paused, reminding herself that she didn't know the thoughts running through the poor bastard's head. That was maybe what pissed her off the most. Uncertainty.
Carmen pulled her hood closer around her face, walking back up the pedestrian ramp for the last time. Her legs shook with the effort and in the hea
t of the summer dusk a drop of sweat started rolling down her temple into the rings of her dark, loosely curled hair. There was a little shop a few streets over where someone was sometimes selling. Mostly it was meth, but once in a while they had what she wanted. It was a long way to go for a long shot, but the first pangs of nausea were prodding her forward.
As she reached the main street once again she spotted the car, sitting, waiting. It evoked the image of a crouched panther... Albeit an old and decrepit panther, but one that could still cause some serious injuries. The headlights blazed to life, flooding the ramp and a section of the underpass. The horde of people shied away into the darkness. As she shielded her eyes against the glare the urge to flee back down with them welled up in her chest. By the time Carmen's brain decided exactly which direction to flee in the car had pulled up beside her, the driver's window down. A large, round face filled up the empty space.
"Hey, Carmen," she said in a voice that might have sounded familiar if Carmen's head had some of its usual clarity. "Your sister said you might be down here."
Henrietta had ratted her out to her parents a few weeks prior, as if she was somehow eager for the entire world to know that her sister was spiralling down the drain of addiction. She placed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, hoping that the pressure would blunt the rusty nail that was being driven into her brain. She thought she might know this woman from one of the college classes she had taken years ago, but it was not in her current capabilities to dig too far down into ashes of the ol' memory hole.
"What d'ya want?" she managed.
The woman in the car looked her over, obviously taken aback by the state she was in. "I—uh—I think I can give you a hand."
"If you want to give me a hand, you can drive me down three blocks," she said with a groan loud enough to let anyone in earshot know she was beyond caring this might be some kind of elaborate mugging.
"Um, sure."
Sandy Jenkins glanced to her right quickly to catch a glimpse of her latest prospect. Immediately she was struck by a twinge of regret. Riding high from her recent successes she had reached out maybe a little too far. The others had had emotional vulnerabilities, but this was something else. This was something that was running into a physical dependency. She had first met Carmen Carruthers while working in a coffee shop years ago and had an immediate non-sexual infatuation with the other woman when she had come in for the weekly reading nights. Carmen had been a persuasive speaker/writer and Sandy had managed to pick her name out of the byline on some of the posts her father had sent her over the past year. They were still good, and published in some of the larger papers in the big city, and then... After a few months off the map the other woman's name had begun popping up in places that made her a little sad. The regional stereotype about political views was not as far off as Sandy would have liked, but she found some comfort in the hope that Carmen didn't actually believe what was coming out through her keyboard.