Sideshow. Part 18

Justin and Reardon followed Bo Johnson out to the car, which had been idling by the curb the whole time they were inside the general store. They climbed into Tricia Reardon's dark blue Hyundai, Justin in back, Bo under the wheel and Mickey in the pa.s.senger's seat.

Bo propped his shotgun against Mickey's seat, the wooden stock on the floor, the barrel pointed at the roof. "Hold it in place," he said. "So we don't hit a pothole and splatter your pal there all over the back seat."

Mickey held the barrel and Bo slipped the car into gear. Then he pulled away from the curb, past the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, the windows down and the wind in their hair, heading for a showdown Justin wasn't sure they'd survive.

On the way through town, they told Bo everything they knew, how Mickey had shown up at Justin's this morning, ranting and raving about a Ferris wheel sprouting up from the ground like a runaway vine, a crazy trick of the eye seen only in movies and cartoons. How after Bo had kicked Reardon's bike over outside Jim Kreigle's general store, he and Justin had ridden out to G.o.dby's field to see things that couldn't have been real, but somehow were as real as the sky above them: the tall man, with his long arms and wiggling fingers, making a flatbed truck magically shed its tarp, although no one stood around the thing to help remove it.

"Just threw those long arms of his high into the air," Reardon said. "Lowered them and that tarp slid off like a crew of men had pulled it off."

They told him about Fred Hagen, how angry he'd looked when the tarp slid down, revealing those men and women locked inside their cages, the armless and legless man beside them. How that look of anger had turned to one of stark-raving fear when the tall man's impossibly wide smoke ring hung suspended in front of his face, revealing some kind of image inside it Justin and Mickey couldn't make out, but seemed to have had the Deputy shaking in his boots.

"Rubbed his fingers together and fire sprouted off *em," Justin said.

"Bulls.h.i.t," said Bo, and Reardon said, "It happened."

They told him about flat sheets of canvas rising from the ground, about all the strange people who had come streaming from the weather-beaten tents those sheets of canvas had grown into.

How the smoke ring changed shape as it rose, turning an average every day cloud into a carbon copy image of the black top hat Hannibal Cobb wore, how that cloud, or whatever it was, hung frozen in place in the sky above them, and hung there still yet. The men lined up like zombies in front of Ziggy Bower's Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill; old man Terwillegher and Fred Hagen's crazy old grandfather, staring up at that cloud as if it were talking to them.

"Ran across his yard hollering something about the carnival," Reardon said.

They told him about Hannibal Cobb's Kansas City Carnival, about the cars in the clearing, all the people they'd seen walking the midway, and how the same people were walking it when they left four hours later. The exact same people, from the men and women to Cindi (with an I) Stewart, down to those boys squirting water into the same two holes they'd been firing at when Justin and Mickey'd first walked into the place.

"That's funny," Bo said. "'Cause I saw Cindi Stewart sitting on her front porch with her parents about eight o'clock tonight."

"No s.h.i.t," Reardon said.

"No s.h.i.t," said Bo.

They told Bo Johnson everything that had happened tonight, from the Alligator Boy and The Amazing Rubber Woman, right down to what they'd just witnessed over at Danny Roebuck's house.

They didn't tell him about impossible wishes and dead men rising up from the grave, though. Justin didn't think they would ever tell anyone about that.

They were on the outskirts of town now, on a tree-lined lane heading for the old dirt road that would take them out to G.o.dby's field.

"My old man came home ranting and raving about a carnival this afternoon," Bo said. "All wide-eyed and crazy-looking, babbling his bulls.h.i.t all over the place like he'd dropped acid or something. All fired up about the d.a.m.n thing. The h.e.l.l'd I care? I wasn't going to no kiddie carnival like some kind of moron. Got my brothers and sisters all worked up, though, all of *em yelling back and forth, old man telling *em they couldn't go and the lot of *em screaming and hollering *h.e.l.l yes they were going' right back at him. Mom calling him a G.o.dd.a.m.n fool for the way he was acting, while he ran around the house looking for this and looking for that. Got my a.s.s the f.u.c.k out of there. The f.u.c.k would I wanta hang around something like that for?

"Hooked up with Johnny Lee and we drove over to Columbia. f.u.c.ked around over there for a few hours and he dropped me back in front of the house. Walked inside to find the whole lot of *em butchered up like a bunch of hogs. Mom's head cut nearly completely off.

"Do I believe this s.h.i.t about a magic carnival? Something f.u.c.ked up happened here today. My old man doesn't get all jacked up about a carnival-beer and liquor and stray young p.u.s.s.y, maybe. But not no carnival. No sir, my old man don't care nothing about no carnival, but he d.a.m.n sure came through the door ranting and raving about one this afternoon. And if I find that c.o.c.ksucker out at G.o.dby's field, I'll blow him straight to h.e.l.l. Him and any long, tall son of a b.i.t.c.h that tries to stop me."

They were on the last paved road now, the final leg of their trek before they'd hit the old country road marking their journey's end. They could see it now, that gigantic Ferris wheel spinning high above the tree tops surrounding G.o.dby's field.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Bo said, as they swung onto the dirt road, dust flying as the speeding car fishtailed back and forth a couple of times before righting itself and barreling down the road.

They slowed to a stop when they broke through the tree line, and then sat there with the engine idling, the headlights casting light on the cars and trucks and old jalopies parked in the clearing. They could see it now, the tents and carts, the booths and the stalls, all laid out in an overgrown field many of the town's forefathers had beaten and raped in, tortured and tormented in, murdered and mutilated in.

"That's your grand f.u.c.king carnival?" Bo said. "Those beat to h.e.l.l tents? Those rickety old booths?"

"It's different," Justin said. "Isn't it, Mickey?"

"d.a.m.n sure is," he said.

And it was different. Gone were the fancy tents and gleaming sheet metal food wagons, all the crisp new stalls and booths, replaced by crimped metal, worn canvas and weathered boards. There before them were the same weather-beaten tents from this morning, the flatbed trucks and the pickup truck they'd spied from their spot in the tree line. And now Justin knew that everything he'd thought was true. Somehow Hannibal Cobb had shown to them a wondrous and magical carnival that didn't really exist. The sights and sounds were all wrong-they weren't even real.

Nothing they had seen down there tonight had been real.

"s.h.i.t, Justin," Reardon said. "What did we eat?"

"Oh, man," Justin said, and Bo said, "The f.u.c.k're you talking about?"

"Who's that?" Justin said, as a group of young boys stepped out of the deep brush on either side of the road. There were five of them, all of them black, and as they approached the car, Justin could see that it was some kids from school, Marvin Jones, his brother Ricky and some of their friends. They stepped out of the tree line, into the moonlight, waving as they walked toward them.

"The f.u.c.k're you guys doing out here?" Bo said.

"Saw that Ferris wheel a little while back," Marvin said. "Come out here to see what's what and been out here ever since."

Marvin stood for a moment, his brother beside him, their friends on the other side of the narrow dirt road, beside Mickey Reardon's open window. A minute pa.s.sed, maybe another. Finally, Justin said, "How long've you been here?"

"Few hours now."

"Were you here when we were here?"

"Got here just in time to see you and Reardon leave and old man Terwillegher walk his crazy a.s.s in there." Marvin said, then, "I wouldn't go in there if I were you."

"Why's that?" Bo said.

"Some bad s.h.i.t happening in there tonight. Crazy, what them rednecks are doing."

"No s.h.i.t it's crazy," Marvin's brother said. "Danny Roebuck's daddy just climbed the biggest tree in G.o.dby's field, climbed all the way to the top and dove head-first to the ground. Splattered his a.s.s all over the place."

"Crazy s.h.i.t," Marvin said, while his brother nodded his agreement.

"Old man Kreigle spinning around like a lunatic in the middle of the field, half the rednecks in town running around those beat-up tents and booths like a bunch of children at the fair, whooping and hollering... skipping. Those crazy rednecks are skipping down there.'

"You seen my daddy down there?" Bo asked him.

"Don't know what he looks like."

"You'll know if I find him," Bo said. "You'll hear my shotgun go off."

Bo eased off the brake and left Marvin and his crew behind. The car rolled forward, and once again Justin found himself wondering why all of this had happened, why he and Mickey Reardon had to be part of it. They should've been eating pizza at Mickey's house tonight, asleep in their beds by now, not pulling to a stop in the middle of the night in an overgrown field, sitting in the dark beside Jack Everett's sleek new Caddy.

The car stopped and Bo killed the engine, the headlights fading away as he turned to Reardon. "Well,' he said. "This is it."

"We really going down there?" Justin said.

"I am," Bo said, and Reardon said, "d.a.m.n straight I am."

He grabbed Rusty Piersol's revolver, and then nudged the shotgun over to Bo Johnson, who grabbed it, and said, "Huh, guess you've got some b.a.l.l.s down there after all, Reardon."

Bo opened his door and slid the shotgun across his lap, pausing a moment, before saying, "Three tents down there, old man's gotta be in one of *em."

Then he was out the door and into the night, slamming the door shut and heading down through the cars, the trucks and jalopies, his pump-action shotgun close by his side.

"You ready, Justin?" Reardon said.

"I reckon."

"You don't have to come, you know. You can wait for me here."

"If you're going, I'm going, dude. That's the way it works."

"Thanks, man. I appreciate it."

Reardon opened his door and so did Justin. They got out of the car and slammed their doors shut, Reardon with Rusty Piersol's service revolver in his hand, Justin carrying Mickey Reardon's ax. They were by the front of Jack Everett's Caddy, when Justin said, "Why do you think it's changed? Why do you think we can see this place as it really is now?"

"I don't know. Maybe because the night's almost over with. Maybe his powers have dwindled a bit. I don't really give a s.h.i.t. I'm not some comic book hero here to battle his a.s.s. I'm gonna find my mom and get her the h.e.l.l outa here, hopefully without even running into that long, tall son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"I heard that," Justin said, then, "Where're we going first?"

"She wasn't in the Sideshow tent. We'll check the other two."

"Ears wasn't in the Sideshow tent, either. I bet he is, now."

"You just had to say that, didn't you?"

"Sorry, man. I just... maybe we should check all three of *em."

"We will if we have to."

Further down the field now, Justin was glad to see the carnival's entrance unattended. No Hannibal Cobb, no smiling clown, nor even a snarling one. Maybe they'd get out of here without running into him after all, though Justin wouldn't have bet on it, not with the way their luck had been running tonight.

They stepped through the entrance, onto a midway much smaller, much more narrow than the one they had run laughing and giggling over earlier in the night. Smaller and slimmer, perhaps, but much easier to negotiate now that Cindi Stewart and all the other imaginary carnival goers weren't around to impede their progress.

There wasn't anything imaginary about the people populating G.o.dby's field now, though. Just like Marvin Jones had told them, half the rednecks in Pottsboro, South Carolina were running through the place, and a good many from areas just outside of town. Twenty or more people were moving about Hannibal Cobb's midway, and no telling how many more were in the tents. There was Ronnie Nelson's dad, Billy; Fred Hagen and his crazy old grandfather walking right behind him. Ritchie Scovul and Jerry McCrea, and all three of the Purvis brothers, who were standing in a circle around Jim Kreigle, watching him spin round and round in place in the middle of them.

They walked down the midway, past the Sideshow tent with Danny Roebuck's gigantic ears emblazoned on its side, Justin looking up to see if any more changes had been made, fearful he might see Tricia Reardon's smiling face in place of The Rubber Woman, or worse, her head plastered atop the body of that gigantic fat lady. But nothing had changed, and they continued unenc.u.mbered on their way, Reardon's pistol visible in his hand, Justin still carrying the ax. On their way, Justin realized, to a tent whose flapping banner read: Girls! Girls! Girls!

They were several yards away when Justin noticed Hannibal Cobb's lanky frame lurking in the entrance, his long grey hair falling over the shoulders of his black coat; his back turned to them as he watched whatever was going on inside the tent. Music was flowing from the tent, the old b.u.mp and grind it out stripper music Justin had heard countless times on television shows and movies.

He reached out to stop Reardon, but Reardon had already stopped.

"You see him?" Justin said, and then realized his friend was looking not at Hannibal Cobb, but at a life-sized caricature of his mother emblazoned on the side of the tent. Dressed in a skimpy black bra, thong underwear and a pair of spiked high heel shoes, she smiled down at the midway as if a stripper's life was the only one she'd ever known. Her face, garishly made up, was not the warm and friendly face of the woman Justin had known for most of his life, but a carbon copy of the one on the opposite side of the tent's entrance point.

"C'mon," he said, grabbing Reardon before he had a chance to rush in through the entrance. He led him around the side of the tent, where the two of them went down and under, eventually emerging in a room so dark and dim, Justin found himself looking around to see where the torches were. But, of course, there were no torches. Just as nothing had been powering the Ferris wheel earlier tonight, or lighting up the Sideshow tent, nothing seemed to be casting light about the place they now stood in.

They stood in a dim glow, emanating from G.o.d only knew where-or Hannibal Cobb, Justin realized-Justin looking on in horror as Tricia Reardon moved around a high wooden stage with nothing covering her but a thin, black thong. Her eyes were closed, one flattened hand slipped down beneath the front of her thong, the other rubbing one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as the music played and she danced nearly completely naked for half the rednecks of Pottsboro, South Carolina.

Mickey raised his pistol, and Justin said, "Don't. He'll come right after us, and we'll never get her back."

He lowered his weapon and Tricia Reardon's eyes popped open. She danced to the edge of the stage and looked out across the crowd. Then her eyes found two young boys at the back of the tent and she stopped. She stood there, recognition flooding over her as the music played and the crowd yelled for more, and Hannibal Cobb watched everything unfold: Tricia Reardon mouthing, "Oh, my, G.o.d." Turning and running backstage as the crowd hooted like owls, and Justin and Mickey scrambled down to the ground and back out the same way they had entered.

She ran through the curtains screaming and crying, howling her anguish as she scrambled off the stage and onto the wooden planks, over the planks and into a dark void at the rear of the tent, one that had been waiting for her since the very moment she'd plunged that knife into her husband's chest. A dark and empty void that swallowed her whole and disappeared in a flash of light and a puff of smoke, leaving the cold, cruel world behind her, while Justin and Mickey ran into the tent and up the back steps to the top of the platform.

"Where'd she go?" Mickey said.

"I don't know," said Justin, as a shotgun blast roared through the night and the platform trembled, and all h.e.l.l began to break loose.

Chapter Thirty.

They hurried down the stairs, the very earth moving beneath their feet as they ran out of the tent and into the night, around to the midway, where Hannibal Cobb stood in the center of G.o.dby's field, his head thrown back, those long, thin arms of his cast up toward the sky as his fingers wriggled beneath the waning moon.

"Come!" he cried out. "Come, my children! Your wait is finally over!"

The earth churned and hands began to rise from it, to claw and sc.r.a.pe until arms were visible, the shoulders and heads of those buried down through the ages, by evil men who had settled this land with anger and rage, rape and murder and iron and chains.

The earth churned and Bo Johnson came charging around the corner, blasting holes through the chest of an old black man who didn't seem to care, didn't seem to even notice the pellets ripping through him as he lumbered up the midway. The tattered bib coveralls he wore hung off him like moldering rags, as did the shredded bits of skin that halfway covered his bones, and Justin instinctively knew he had seen this man before, not lumbering up the midway of Hannibal Cobb's Kansas City Carnival, but standing in the entrance with a smile on his face and a clown's suit covering his body. He was impossibly thin; his eyes were wide. His cheekbones, which gleamed in the moonlight through his ragged black skin, looked as brittle as last summer's dried twigs. He had a smoking hole in his chest and one in his stomach, but he came stalking up the midway as if nothing of this world could harm him.

The earth churned and the tortured souls who had come to a grisly end in this grown-over field began to emerge. Up they came, through soil that boiled and bubbled as if being spewed from a great volcano. Men who had fled this land as slaves, hoping for a better tomorrow in a far off land, only to be dragged kicking and screaming back to their deaths, tortured by men who laughed as they beat them and laughed as they cut them, and laughed as they were tossed into graves they had been forced into digging for themselves.

Up they came, women and children, who down through the ages had found themselves hung from every available tree limb in the clearing, for little or no reason at all. Those tarred and feathered, whose bubbling skin sloughed off in the field as they were dragged screaming across the rocky South Carolina soil; up they came, bearing leg irons and manacles, the ropes and rusty lengths of chain that had kept them company down below for all these years, for decades, for centuries, while the bloodline of those who had cast them down to their graves lived on and prospered.

Until tonight, when all would pay, when all who had done wrong would die by the hands of those who had perished in this very field. Tonight, when all business would be concluded, and all accounts put finally to rest.

The ground shook and the dead rose up and stood upon it, moaning as they moved not like Rick Reardon, like stiff-legged zombies who had forgotten how to walk, but like strong-willed beings with a sense of purpose that would not be denied them. They swarmed the midway, dragging men whose forefathers had enslaved them kicking and screaming across the clearing, to trees where ropes and chains were cast around strong white necks, tossed over st.u.r.dy tree limbs and pulled up, up, and up, while legs kicked and prayers that helped no one in this field before this night would help no one now.

The ground shook and the earth bubbled up, creating a void which gobbled up Bo Johnson, who held desperately onto a thick, strong root as his shotgun dropped down into the abyss, his legs kicked and a stark and terror-filled scream rose up from his throat.

They stood there, Justin and Mickey, watching a mult.i.tude of hands grab Jim Kreigle's shoulders and arms wrap his waist and legs, and another set of strong black hands grab the man who loved the spinning cups head and turn it completely around: once, twice, three times, until bones cracked and skin split, and the head was torn completely away, blood pumping from his vacant shoulders as his body was dropped into a hole and his head tossed in behind it.

They stood there, Justin and Mickey, as Byrum Terwillegher stood not in a canvas-covered booth looking out at every snot-nosed kid who had ever p.i.s.sed him off holding baseb.a.l.l.s in their hands, but in the middle of G.o.dby's field looking out at the corpses of those his fine southern forefathers had tormented down through the ages holding sharp-angled stones, which quickly came hurtling through the night air for him: one stone, two, five stones, ten, tearing him to shreds as he stumbled blindly in the dark, screaming and crying until his jaw was torn away and he fell frothing and bleeding onto the hard South Carolina soil he loved so deeply, breathing one last ragged breath as the ground opened up and took him away.

They stood there, Justin and Mickey, until they could stand there no longer, until they could take no more. They could not watch Jerry McCrea, a man who had never done them harm, be s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the walking dead and dragged to a st.u.r.dy oak tree. They could not watch him impaled upon a sharp, twisted tree branch protruding from its gnarled trunk, and when it happened they finally ran screaming themselves, away from the clearing and into a tent that was not the Sideshow tent, but one that had no banner above it and no drawings upon it. They stood in the dimly-lit tent as the screams of those whose forbearers had d.a.m.ned them echoed through the night. They stood in a tent whose lone artifact was a heavy square slate that sat angled on a st.u.r.dy wooden table in the center of the room, which once had held three columns of names consisting of half the men in and around Pottsboro, South Carolina etched upon it, but now held only one small row of names, which seemed to be dwindling by the second.

They stood there, as one by one the screams dissipated, and one name after another magically dissolved from the slate.

They could hear the screams and the moaning of the living dead, the howling voice of Hannibal Cobb and the sobbing of those who were trapped but had yet to be accosted. They looked up at the slate, relieved to see their names were not written upon it, but knowing Bo Johnson's name had not been on it because he had not been drawn like a living zombie to the carnival, yet he too had been swallowed by the earth.

And it was the knowing of this that made Justin say, "We can't stay here. We've gotta leave. When they're through with them, they'll come for us."

"I can't leave without my mom," Reardon said. "I won't."