“I don’t want to…think about that. No, please…”
“But you have to! Oh, you have to take the consequences of your actions.”
“She didn’t drown!” Wayne said, tears glittering in his eyes. “There was never anything in the paper about it! Nobody ever found her! Nobody ever found her! She must’ve…just run away or something!”
Falconer said quietly, “She’s under the platform, Wayne. She’s caught up underneath there. She’s already swelled up like a balloon, and pretty soon she’ll pop wide open and what’s left will sink down into the mud. The fish and the turtles will pick her clean. She was a wild, sinful girl, Wayne, and her folks probably think she’s just run away from home. Nobody would ever connect you with her, even if they find her bones. And they won’t. There was a demon in her, Wayne, and she was waiting there for you.”
“Waiting for me?” he whispered. “Why?”
“To keep you from getting home, where I needed you. Don’t you think you could have saved me, if you’d known?”
“Yes.”
Falconer nodded. “Yes. You see, there are demons at work everywhere. This country is rotten with sin, and it all festers from a little run-down shack in Hawthorne. She calls dark powers to do her bidding. You know who I mean. You’ve known for a long time. She and her boy are strong, Wayne; they’ve got the forces of Death and Hell behind them, and they want to destroy you just like they destroyed me. They weakened my faith in you, and I reached out for you too late. Now they’ll work on your faith in yourself, make you doubt that you could ever heal at all. Oh, they’re strong and wicked and they should go down in flames.”
“Flames,” Wayne repeated.
“Yes. You’ll have the chance to send them into Hellfire, Wayne, if you let me guide you. I can be with you whenever you need me. I can help you with the Crusade. So you see? I’m not really dead, unless you want me to be.”
“No! I…need your help, Dad. Sometimes I just… I just don’t know what to do! Sometimes I…don’t know if the things I’ve done are good or bad…”
“You don’t have to worry,” Falconer said, with a gentle smile. “Everything’ll be fine, if you’ll trust me. You need to take a drug called Percodan for your headaches. Tell George Hodges, and make him get it for you.”
Puzzled, Wayne frowned. “Dad… I thought you said medicines were sinful, and those people who took medicines were doing the Devil’s bidding.”
“Some medicines are sinful. But if you’re in pain, and you’re confused, then you need something to take the burden off you for a little while. Isn’t that right?”
“I guess so,” Wayne agreed, though he could never remember his father talking about drugs like this before. Percodan, had he said?
“I’ll be here when you need me,” Falconer said. “But if you tell anyone, even your mother, then I can’t come back and help you anymore. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.” He paused for a moment, then whispered, “Dad? What’s being dead like?”
“It’s…like being in a black hole, son, on the blackest night you can imagine, and you try to crawl out but you don’t know which is the top and which is the bottom.”
“But…haven’t you heard the angels sing?”
“Angels?” He grinned again, but his eyes were still gelid. “Oh, yes. They do sing.” And then he put his fingers to his lips, glancing quickly toward the door.
An instant afterward, there was a soft knocking. “Wayne?” Cammy’s voice carried a tremble.
“What is it?”
The door opened a few inches. “Wayne, are you all right?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” He realized he was alone now; the yellow-suited figure was gone, and the room was empty. My dad is alive! he shrieked inwardly, his heart pounding with joy.
“I…thought I heard you talking. You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I said I was, didn’t I? Now leave me alone, I’ve got a long day tomorrow!”
She looked nervously around the room, opening the door a little wider so the hallway light could stream in. The mounted airplane models and large wall posters of military aircraft took up a lion’s share of the room. Wayne’s clothes were strewn on a chair. Cammy said, “I’m sorry I bothered you. Good-night.”
Wayne lay back down as the door closed. He waited for a long time, but his father didn’t come back. You bitch! he seethed at his mother. You killed him a second time! But no, no…his father would return to the world of the living when he was needed; Wayne was sure of it. Before he drifted to sleep, Wayne repeated the word Percodan ten times to burn it into his mind.
And in her room down the hallway, Cammy Falconer lay in bed with all the lights blazing. She was staring at the ceiling. Every so often a shiver passed through her. It was not Wayne’s voice, in the middle of the night, that had been so bad.
It had been the guttural, harsh mumbling that Cammy had heard faintly through the wall.
Answering her son.
39
THE GAME BOOTHS, RIDES, and sideshows had sprung up from the mud covering Birmingham’s fairgrounds. The rain fell in drizzles and sheets for three days, blasting the state fair business to hell. Still, people continued to slog through the sawdusty mud; drenched to the bone, they sought refuge in the arcades and enclosed shows, but they left the rides alone as light bulbs and wires sputtered under the rain.
That was for the best, Billy knew. Because people wouldn’t be riding the Octopus in the rain, and it would be deprived of what it needed. This was the last stop of the season. If whatever presence that controlled the Octopus was going to strike, it would have to be in the next four days. At night, even while the rain pattered on the Ghost Show tent’s roof, Billy could hear Buck Edgers working on his machine, the hammer’s noise echoing down the long ghostly corridor of the midway. While setting up the Octopus on the slippery field, a roustabout’s shoulder was broken by a piece of metal that toppled from above. Word had gone out about the machine, and now everyone avoided it.
Billy stood outside Santha Tully’s trailer, in a light drizzle that had washed away the last of the night’s customers. He had been here twice since the carnival had reached Birmingham: the first time, he’d heard Santha laughing with a man inside there, and the second time he’d come out through the rows of trailers to find a short, balding figure standing in the shadows not ten feet from him. The man had instantly whirled toward him, and Billy had gotten a quick glimpse of his startled face, wearing dark-tinted glasses, before the man had run away. Billy had followed him for a short distance, but lost him in the maze of trailers. He’d told no one about the incident at the Killer Snakes tent, fearing that the man would find out and put his snakes to work, perhaps on Santha or Dr. Mirakle. But he still desired her, and still needed to see her.
He screwed up his courage, looked around to make sure no one had followed him, and then walked up a couple of cinder-block steps to the trailer’s door. A curtain was closed in a single oval window, but light leaked out around it; he could hear the scratchy whine of a country singer. He knocked at the door and waited. The music stopped. He knocked again, less hesitantly, and heard Santha say, “Yeah? Who is it?”
“Me. Billy Creekmore.”
“Choctaw?” A bolt slid back, and the thin door opened. She stood there in the dim golden light, wearing a black silk robe that clung to the curves of her body. Her hair was a dusky halo, and Billy saw that she wore practically no makeup. There were a lot of lines around her eyes, and her lips looked sad and thin. In her right hand there was a small chrome-plated pistol. “Anybody else out there?” she asked.
“No.”
She opened the door wider to let him in, then bolted it again. The room was a cramped half living area and half kitchen. The bed, an unsteady-looking cot with a bright blue spread, was right out in the open, next to a rack of clothes on their hangers. A dressing table was cluttered with a dozen different kinds of creams, lipsticks, and various cosmetics. On a tiny kitchen table was a
battered record player, next to a small stack of unwashed dishes. Posters of Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen decorated the walls, along with a rebel flag and a Day-Glo Love poster. A door led into a tiny bathroom and shower stall.
Billy stared at the pistol. Santha flicked the safety on and put it away in a dresser drawer. “Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I get jumpy late at night.” Santha stepped past him and peered out the window for a moment. “I was expecting a friend of mine. He was supposed to be here about thirty minutes ago.”
“Anybody special?”
Santha looked at him, then gave him a little crooked smile. “No. Just a friend. Somebody to pass the time with, I guess.”
Billy nodded. “I’d better go, then. I don’t want to—”
“No!” She reached out and grasped his arm. “No, don’t go. Stay here and talk to me until Buddy gets here, okay? Really, I don’t like to be here alone.”
“What’ll he think if he finds me with you?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t release her grip. “What would he think?”
Her eyes were luminous in the weak light from a single table lamp, her fingers cool against his rain-dampened skin. Billy said, “Maybe he’d think…something was going on between us.”
“Do you want something to go on between us?”
“I… I hardly know you.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Choctaw. Is it you who’s been sneaking around my trailer at night?”
“No.” Tell her about the man, he told himself; but what good would it do? It would only scare her more, and the police couldn’t prove the snake-man had had anything to do with Chalky’s death. No. In four days, the fair would be over and she’d be leaving, and then that man couldn’t bother her anymore.
“Well, I think it has been you. I think you’ve been sneakin’ around and spyin’ on me! Naughty, naughty!” She grinned and let go of him. “Sit down. Do you want a beer?”
“No, thanks.” He sat down on a faded blue sofa while Santha rummaged through her small refrigerator and popped open a Miller’s.
“Excuse the mess in here. Sometimes I’m as lazy as a leaf.” She sipped from the can, walked to the window, and looked out again. “Damn! Rainin’ harder.” The drops sounded leaden on the trailer’s roof. “I’ve been meanin’ to come by that Ghost Show of yours.” She let the curtain fall and stood over him. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, I do too. I was born in New Orleans, see, and that’s supposed to be the most haunted city in the whole country, did you know that? Spooks just come out of the woodwork. ’Course, I’ve never seen one, but…” She sat down beside him and stretched out her long bare legs. Her thighs showed through a slit in the robe, and Billy saw a fine light down like flecks of copper on them. “Jeez. I don’t think Buddy’s coming, do you? Bastard lies like a rug. Told me he’d get me a job here in Birmingham after the fair closes up.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know, maybe go home. My kids live with my mother. Yeah, don’t look so surprised! I’ve got two little girls. I don’t look like I’ve had two kids, do I?” She patted her flat belly. “Sit-ups. How old do you think I look?”
He shrugged. “Maybe…twenty-two.” He was being kind.
Her eyes glittered with pure pleasure. The drumming of the rain on the roof was hypnotic and soothing. “Do you think I have a good body?”
He shifted and cleared his throat. “Well…sure I do. It’s nice.”
“I’m proud of how I look. That’s why I like to dance. Oh, maybe someday I’ll open up my own dance studio and give lessons, but right now I love being on that stage. You feel important, and you know that people enjoy watching you.” She sipped at her beer and watched him mischievously. “You enjoyed watching, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did.”
She laughed. “Ha! Choctaw, you beat all I’ve ever seen! You’re sittin’ there like a priest in a whorehouse!” Her smile faded a fraction, her eyes darkening. “That’s not what you think, is it? That I’m a whore?”
“No!” he said, though he wasn’t exactly certain she was or wasn’t.
“I’m not. I just…live my own life, that’s all. I do what I please when I please. Is that so bad?”
Billy shook his head.
“Your shirt’s wet.” She leaned toward him and began unbuttoning it. “You’ll catch a cold if you keep it on.”
He shrugged out of it and she tossed it aside. “That’s better,” she said. “You have a nice chest. I thought Indians didn’t have any hair on their bodies.”
“I’m just part Indian.”
“You’re a nice-lookin’ kid. How old are you, eighteen? No, seventeen, didn’t you say? Well, I don’t guess that bastard Buddy is coming tonight, do you?”
“I don’t guess he is.”
Santha finished her beer and set it on the table before her, then returned her gaze to his. She stared at him, a smile working around her lips, until Billy felt his face flaming. She said in a soft voice, “Have you ever been with a woman before?”
“Huh? Well…sure.”
“How many?”
“A few.”
“Yeah. And the moon is made of green cheese.” She leaned closer, looking deeply into his eyes. He was such a handsome boy, she thought, but there were secrets in his eyes; secrets, perhaps, that it was best not to know. Buddy wasn’t coming, that was for sure. It was raining and she was lonely and she didn’t like the idea of sleeping alone when somebody who’d sent her a bunch of rose stems was out there somewhere, maybe lurking around the trailer. She traced a finger down the center of his chest and watched the flesh tighten. “You’ve wanted me all along, haven’t you? You don’t have to be shy about it.” Her finger stopped at his belt buckle. “I like you. Jeez, listen to me. Usually I have to fight the guys off! So why are you different?”
“I’m not different,” Billy said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I just…respect you, I guess.”
“Respect me? I’ve learned a long time ago that respect doesn’t keep your bed warm on a cold night. And, Choctaw, I’ve lived through some very wintry ones. And will again.” She paused, running her finger along his belt line; then she grasped his hand and drew it closer to herself. She licked his fingers, very slowly.
He squeezed her hand and said, “I…don’t know what to do. I’m probably not any good.”
“I’m going to turn off that light,” Santha told him, “and get into bed. I’d like for you to get undressed and come to bed with me. Will you?”
He wanted to say yes, but he was too nervous to speak. Santha recognized the glassy gleam in his eyes. She stood up, let the robe fall, and walked naked to the lamp. The light went out. Billy heard the sheets go back. The rain drummed down, punctuated now by the boom of distant thunder. Billy stood up, as if in a dream, and unbuckled his belt.
When he was ready, he approached the bed and saw Santha’s golden hair on the pillow, her body a long S-shape beneath the pale blue sheet. She reached out for him, softly whispering his name, and when he touched her electricity seemed to jump between them. Trembling with excitement and shyness, he got under the sheet; Santha folded her arms around him, her warm mouth finding his, her tongue darting between his lips. He was correct in that he didn’t know what to do, but when Santha scissored her legs around his hips he very quickly learned. Then there was heat, dampness, the sound of hurried breathing, and thunder getting closer. Santha summoned him deeper, deeper, and when he was about to explode she made him lie motionless, both of them locked together, until he could continue for a while longer.
Carnival lights filled Billy’s head. She eased him onto his back, and sat astride him with her head thrown back, her mouth open as if to receive the rain that pounded on the roof. She impressed upon him the varying sensations of rhythms, from a hard pulse that ground them together to a long, slow, and lingering movement that had the strength of a tickling feather. He lay stunned while S
antha’s tongue played over his body, like a soft damp brush tracing the outlines of his muscles; then she told him what she liked and gave him encouragement as he first circled her nipples with his tongue, then her navel, then her soft belly and down into the valley between her legs, where her thighs pressed against the sides of his head and she gripped his hair as her hips churned. She moaned softly, her musky aroma perfuming the air.
Outside in a driving rain, Fitts stood with a raincoat pulled up around his neck. He’d seen the boy go in, and he’d seen the light go out. His blue-tinted eyeglasses streamed with water, but he didn’t have to see anything else. He knew the rest of it. His heart throbbed with rage and agony. A boy? he thought. She would even take a stupid boy into her bed? His fists clenched in his coat pockets. Was there no hope for her? Lightning streaked, followed by a bass rumble of thunder that seemed to shake the world. He’d tried everything he could think of, and now he felt defeated. But there was one thing left.
He would go to the Octopus, stand before it in the gray downpour, and wait for the voice that came out of it to reveal to him what he should do. He stood a while longer, staring at the darkened trailer, and then trudged through the mud toward the midway. Long before he reached the Octopus, he could hear its sibilant whisper in his tormented brain:
Murder.
40
IT WAS THE TWELFTH of October; and tomorrow night the State Fair would be closing down, the carnival season over until spring. The rain had passed, and for the last two nights business had been booming. Billy helped Dr. Mirakle clean up after the final Ghost Show of the night, simply grinning when Mirakle pointedly asked him why he’d look so happy lately.
Billy left the tent and walked down the midway as the lights started flickering out. He shut the noises out of his head as he passed the Octopus, and he waited around back of the Jungle Love show, where Santha had said she’d meet him. When she did come out, fifteen minutes or so late, he saw she’d scrubbed off most of the garish makeup for him.