by Landon Wark
"What's wrong?" Clay asked.
"Your shitty sitcom-esque joke is gonna make me barf!"
"Jesus. Don't scare me like that," Clay laughed.
"Yeah, all joking aside, Clay," Paul leaned over Jenny to get a better look at Carmen leaning out of the window. "You better pull over."
Clay slammed on the brake and the massive vehicle skidded on the pavement, swerving its way on the crackling gravel before coming to rest with its passenger side tires in the dry grass of the roadside. A long thin line of watery vomit trickled down the side of the passenger side door and as the passengers looked, some in curiosity and others in disgust, a lone car put on its blinker and slowly passed them on the left.
Fair Ground
Carmen Carruthers breathed heavily, trying to keep her inhales through her mouth to exclude all the horrendous vapours present in the sweltering carnival lavatory. The plastic walls around her receded a little as a narcotic induced euphoria came briefly and left almost what seemed like instantly. There was a passing gladness that there was no spike of anything worse in the drugs, just a lot more of a cut than anything she had gotten in town, weakening the high. In its place was the looming knowledge that whatever receptors in her brain that had first been so enthralled by the painkillers three years prior were now so worn out that she could never go back to feeling good. She could just put off completely falling apart.
And what was worse was that to keep from falling apart, she had brought some strangers into her own personal Hell and wrapped them up into it. They had forked over some of the hard conjured money to some guy who looked like he had crawled out of the woods after being raised by groundhogs. The most world-changing thing imaginable had happened to her and to them and she had dragged them out to buy smack from a fucking circus clown.
They were talking outside the plastic bathroom as she fought back a sob.
"No, we can't use Practical Magic Union or Users," Clay's voice was the loudest. "PMU stands for Pregnant Mare's Urine. It's what they use to make hormone replacement drugs."
Jenny and Paul said something in response. Ezra had left to check in on some friends.
They were good people. And they didn't deserve what she had forced them to do. She could hear what they were going to say already. We're all in bad places. We all need help. But their bad places were all spiritual or emotional, they could put them aside or pick them up multiple times during a weekly therapy session. They didn't need to inject a goddamn substance into their black veins just to make it through a day.
I don't need you to save me.
The last of the axe that seemed to be splitting her skull withdrew, replaced with a vaguely metallic sensation that took its place. Chills dissipated in the heat of the commode and the jittering of her legs went with them. She spit one last time onto the plastic floor, thinking that in another few minutes she might be able to walk without staggering.
"What about just 'The Society'?" she heard Jenny's soft voice.
"I think they used that in that one TV show," Paul replied. "Or was it a movie?"
"The Union?"
"TV show."
Christ, she thought as she fumbled to unlock the door to the increasingly hot commode, not knowing what was worse, their attempts to shoe horn them into some sort of wannabe Illuminati or the names they were coming up with for it.
There was a strange mood to the carnie as Ezra Mansfield sauntered along the outer rim of the booths lining the midway, a tiny bit of a spring in his step. There was magic in the world, after all. And, he had been able to get away from the kids for maybe an hour or more.
Nothing had changed in the week he had been away in that fairyland of a rural mansion that his niece had set up. The geeks were still eating way too much, the strongman was still squatting in the manager's trailer. There were intermittent power interruptions. The carnie was the same. The city was the same. Even the internet, what he could see of it through the flickering of the ancient CRT screen, was largely the same. Largely.
He waved at one of the ticket takers having a break alongside one of the trailers but did not stop. It was not a good idea to converse too closely with some of his old cohorts. They could be pretty sharp as he had become aware of trying to manage them over the last little while. Sharper than the kids anyway.
The spring in his step left him as he realized that he was referring to twenty-seven year olds as kids. Hell, Jenny was in her early thirties.
They weren't bad kids to be sure, as a matter of fact they were a little too good. They had seen a little bit of life and they thought they knew the ways of the world. Clay was smart and determined, but certain no one was going to give him a chance. Paul was in the midst of a spiritual crisis that he would not acknowledge. Jenny's problems were as old as the human race itself. And Carmen, despite having been given every advantage, had discovered that America has no sympathy for deviance, even imposed deviance.
But that was just the veneer. The last two had maybe gotten a nip from the fangs of the world, but none of them had seen down the abyss of its throat. They hadn't seen the big grift.
None of them had any concept of what the future would look like.
Maybe the kid did. Ezra thought that Jonah McAllister, as young as he was, had maybe an inkling of at least what the future could look like, but like the people his niece had gathered to him he lacked the experience necessary to see it accurately. And that was what made him dangerous. More dangerous than any of the others knew.
He managed a weak smile. Being a Cassandra was a mixed blessing.
He was just completing his circuit of inspection around the carnie when out of the corner of his eye he thought he might have seen a shadow sneaking around on the other side of the trailers. He pursed his thin lips and tried to peer around the edge of the trailer facing him.
Dismissing the shadow as a trick of the light Ezra looked at his watch. Speaking of the future: he could delay it a little longer. There was no need to hang out with the oblivious kids just yet.
She knew that they were watching her. There was little question with the way they were all glancing out of the corner of their eyes.
Across the midway Carmen caught Paul and Jenny trying not to look at her while they were throwing rings over pegs.
They were looking as if she might transform into Mr. Hyde at any moment.
They really didn't know anything about that world, Carmen reasoned. Neither had she for longer than should have been possible. Her family had, unknowingly, shielded her from the majority of it. Only now was it catching up to her. Was she in the process of recruiting a whole new shield for herself?
The thin bulge in her pocket pressed into the flesh of her thigh and for a moment she looked around with paranoia at the assembled carnival workers.
Imagine shooting magically created serum into your veins.
The way Clayton had described matters, the three most likely outcomes were: nothing, it worked as expected, bloody fucking carnage. And anything in between. But just buying tiny packages of the shit on the street carried the same risks along with getting dragged in front of her dad in court to boot. So, yes, she was about to become PMS's (why the hell had that gotten traction in her brain?) guinea pig. Yes, she was about to have access to all the smack she could possibly ever want.
She shuddered.
It was a fine line to walk, requiring willpower. Willpower was not something that came up often when talking about writers.
Clay walked up to her, clutching an ice cream cone in each hand.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
"Better. And you don't have to ask that every five minutes," she replied, dodging around the cone he offered and taking the one he clutched closer to himself.
"So... from what I can gather," he said. "The standard stuff should work. From what I gathered the kid—Jonah's first indication that something was going on was the plants in a greenhouse were growing faster. They didn't suffer any ill effects."
"I'm not a plant,"
she said.
"Right. But plants require pretty specific chemical compounds in their cells to grow. Duplicating the compounds didn't change their effectiveness. And this stuff... well it originally came from plants. Right?"
"Could we not talk about this right now? I need... just a break from my own existential terror."
"All right. Fucking carnivals. The last time I came to one of these things I was... maybe fifteen," he said. "My dad gave me, like ten bucks. Cheap old fart. I had to stand by the Zipper while my friends rode it."
"Nice to not have to worry about money for a while isn't it?"
"Yeah."
Jenny and Paul walked over, her usually dower mouth curling up a little at the edges.
"Are you okay?" Jenny asked.
"You don't need to ask every five minutes, Jen," Clay said. "She's not some china doll."
Jenny's dower mood returned in the wake of the ribbing.
"The bank's closing in twenty minutes and Ezra's nowhere to be found. We're going to take a run through the haunted house," Paul said.
Clay frowned. "Lame. How old are you?"
"You don't like haunted houses?" Jenny asked.
"Ghosts are not scary," Clay continued.
"Well, I kind of like to see the work that they put into it."
"I'm with him," Carmen said. "Local carnival spook house: lame. But, ghosts are scary."
"Nope. How about you, Paul? As a man of God: Ghosts, scary or not?"
"Depends on their disposition. I take it you don't believe in ghosts."
"I believe my eyes. If I saw a ghost. Like, if I was absolutely sure it wasn't a hallucination... still not scary."
"Seriously?" Jenny started them walking toward the ramshackle carnival ride a couple of dozen meters away. "Vengeful spirits from beyond the gra..."
She trailed off and her pace slowed, but Clay, seemingly oblivious to her broken sentence kept going.
"I just got proof there's an afterlife. What the hell am I afraid of?"
"Hell," Paul said simply.
"Hell is different from ghosts. The existence of one does not imply the existence of the other."
"The existence of the supernatural always implies the existence of God."
"I hate to break it to you," Clay replied. "But as more things get taken off the supernatural list, your god's just getting smaller. And now... I don't know about you, but miracles are looking pretty scientific lately."
There was silence amongst the group.
"Hey, I'm sorry," Clay said. "My dad, he's big on that whole... thing. I just... I like to push his buttons, is all."
"Regardless." Carmen pushed Clay aside and continued walking towards the haunted house. "We all know the question that's on the table here. Be it resolved: does the existence of—" She looked around suspiciously. "Magic implies the existence of the divine?"
"All miracles do," Paul said.
"Maybe it's really witchcraft," Clay said. "Maybe we all secretly sold our souls to some demon-god by passing through the door of that house."
"I don't recall sacrificing any cats or virgins for quarters," Paul muttered.
"Yeah," Carmen picked up the ball. "Maybe the kid—"
"Jonah," Jenny interrupted.
"Maybe Jonah is on the run from some secret cult. Black robes, weird tattoos, the whole megillah."
"He doesn't seem like the weird tattoo type," Jenny said, her voice nearly cracking with a laugh.
"That's why he's on the run," Carmen let her own voice rise a little bit.
They reached the worn steps to the haunted house with its fading paint and rusting metal tracks running towards the door, Jenny and Paul wincing at the loud mechanical sounds and blaring sound effects.
"And then he started his own cult out in the country," she continued. "With a bunch of dumb yokels as his unwitting acolytes."
Carmen turned around as the laughter died away.
Amid the silence that followed the question Clay turned around in place. "And where the hell is Ezra? I thought that fat bastard was just going to tell off his old boss or something. How the hell long could that take?"
"Can I ask you all something? Seriously?" Jenny grasped her arm by the elbow sheepishly. Twenty of her thirty some years seemed to melt away.
"Of course," Clay placed a foot on the stairs next to Carmen.
"I had more sarcastic cool-girl banter, but go ahead." Carmen came down a step.
"We've been making money for a few weeks. It's been great, not... not having all the... pressure I guess, hanging over my head. But... Not to sound ungrateful, but, do you feel like there's more we could be doing?"
"Like what?" Paul frowned.
"I just think there's people out there who need help," Jenny said. "We could pay a lot of medical bills, or buy a school or something."
"And that would drop a lot of attention on us," Carmen said. "Maybe it's best to fly under the radar for now."
"We should be bringing in more people. Do you know what physicists could do with just what the four of us know?" Clay muttered.
"Yeah, make a fucking bomb," Carmen's voice rose and turned the heads of several of the people passing by. "Decide that only the 'worthy' should be able to use it. Patent it and lock it away because someone at the mint is pissed. All of the above."
"Scientists aren't like that," Clay ran his fingers through his hair.
"I agree with her," Paul said. "Use of this thing is going to require some... discipline. She should know better than anyone."
"Okay, great. That makes me feel good," Carmen grumbled.
"The point is, I think the kid's right to be cagey. They don't even know us. We've been around what? A whole week? You two, half as long as that."
"I'm against it," Jenny sighed.
"Me too," Clay said.
"What about the four of us?" Paul pointed around at each of them in turn. "Do we trust each other?"
They all exhaled at the same time. Clay and Jenny nodded and turned their eyes to Carmen.
"Yeah," she said with non-existent enthusiasm. "Okay? Why am I the stand out here?"
"And what about Ezra and Sandy? Do we trust them?"
"Sandy sure. I can't get a read on Ez," Clay replied.
"I think he's okay," Carmen said. "He's just... old, I guess."
"I'll talk with Ezra, get him on board and then we'll take it to Sandy. I don't think we should be driving to the hoop right now, but at the very least maybe we can get a feel for where we're all headed."
As glances were given to the four corners of the group and assents were given Carmen felt a thought creep into her skull, a little traveller attached to the soft beginnings of a migraine in her frontal lobe.
I trust all of you, it said. It's myself I'm not too sure about.
"All right," she said, more to keep that train of thought from leaving the station than anything else. "New topic. If it's not God and it's not witchcraft, then where does all of this stuff come from?"
Greased Lightning
"All right, so, really all you have to do is to put your foot down on the clutch... That pedal there. Make sure the throttle is all the way up into the choke position, but keep your hand on it, 'cause you're gonna have to turn it down right away," Clay adjusted the small lever slightly as Jenny sat, practically frozen in the seat of the lawnmower.
"And if I get out of the seat this thing will stop, right?"
"Yeah, safety feature. Ezra, you taking notes?"
Where he sat under a nearby tree reading some of the pages that Sandy had printed of for them the older man raised a meaty thumb.
"Now. Blades are up. 'Kay, go ahead and turn the key."
The riding mower roared once and then started into a grumbling fit.
"Turn the throttle down!" Clay shouted over the irregular strokes of the machine.
Jenny made a frantic grab at the controls, trying desperately to recall exactly which one of the mystifyingly labelled controls had been the throttle. His hand had just been on it
a second before! The engine coughed and then went quiet.
"I'm sorry," she said, genuinely worried a tongue lashing was coming.
"S'all right," he muttered. "You're sure you don't just want me to do this?"
"I have to take my turn," she replied resolutely.
"Sure. You know what, let's take a break. You have to show me how you got the light to glow on the end of your finger. I can do it when someone says it, but reading linguistic notation is not my forte."
"Well, that's not that hard. The trick is when you hit the fifth syllable there's a clack that you have to make."
"A clack?"
"Where that g is with the double dagger beside it."
"That's a clack?"
"Well, according to Sandy it's supposed to be a click, but if you do it more like a clack then you can adjust how bright the light is, depending on the angle of your finger."
"You're shitting me."
"I shit you not." Jenny allowed a small titter.
"All right, you're down the rabbit hole now. What exactly is the difference between a click and a cla—" He paused mid-word and stepped down from the side of the riding mower. "Who is that?"
Jenny swivelled, her jeans slipping on the vinyl of the seat. Approaching the gate, still dressed in the suit she had last seen him in, its pant legs stained with grass and dirt, its white shirt now hopelessly yellowed with oils and grime, was Bill.
His eyes were ringed by heavy circles and the whites ran through with bulging red vessels. Step after step was placed haphazardly on the dirt and gravel that made up the majority of the road coming up from the highway. If she squinted, Jenny could make out their car, concealed in the trees a fair ways down the road. Any man, any sane man, would have driven the car up farther towards the house before stopping. Bill looked like he was looking at sanity, or at least normalcy, in the rear view mirror.
"Goddamn," Jenny whispered.
"My thoughts too," Clay said.
Jenny swung herself off the seat, standing next to Clay who dwarfed her by a good thirty-five centimetres.
"What are you doing here, Bill?" she asked, trying not to sound too challenging.