***
A tiny tent at the very back edge of the carnival. A washed-out black, more a gray that remembered being black once upon a time, the flap laced shut, its edges whipping in the cold wind that blew in across the canal.
There was a sign out front, no lettering, just a single spiral of dark, dark red. A small group stood before it, tickets clutched in grubby digits, faces blank.
Smith's heart raced within him as a whiff of scent, a pale aroma, the merest molecule of forgotten essence, tickled his nose. A strange odor, unnamable, part sweet but mostly sickening, assailed his senses and seemed to sink directly through his body to his soul. He gagged, leaned on his stick as a tremor shook his ancient frame. But even as the trembling ran through his body, the smell raising the hairs on his neck in some atavistic demonstration of genetic memory, he was consumed with a desire he had not felt in decades.
It was in there. He knew it was in there. The thing must be on display, like some horrible exhibit from the depths of hell, to frighten the locals into gibbering fits.
But none of those gathered outside seemed eager to be frightened.
Eager, yes.
From inside the tent two hands appeared at the top of the opening. They unlaced the flap and tossed it back.
With polite murmurs and courteous waving of hands, the ticket-holders entered, leaving Smith outside.
Alone.
He stood there, watching with dim eyes as the two hands—they must belong to something, to someone, but he could see only the hands—began to lace back up the opening.
With a cry of horror—or was it of need?—Smith barged forward, striking away those hands that were trying to bar his way. He entered, holding his breath, wondering what he had just damaged. Afraid to find out.
A short Terran, dressed in dingy coveralls that had begun life as a Patrol uniform, shook his head at Smith but made no further complaint as he methodically began to knit up the lacings at the flap. Smith looked around the tiny enclosure.
There were no seats. There was no podium from which an announcer could proclaim information. There was nothing inside, nothing but the few who had entered and himself—
And a small low cage in the center of the room.
The cage was made of thick sections of a rusty metal, with numerous holes or gaps of different sizes at various heights from the ground. The metal sections between the gaps were too wide to allow anything inside the cage to be seen.
That smell—that smell that had haunted Smith's dreams for decades—rose in tidal waves and tsunamis and tornadoes around him. He shook with the eagerness. He shook with the intensity of his need.
But most of all, he shook with fear.
The others approached the cage, gathered about it, silent, focused. They sat down on the sandy floor. Each one extended a single hand, a digit, a pseudopod.
And thrust it through one of the gaps in the cage.
"No," whispered Smith as he stumbled forward, his bad leg threatening to give way under his urgency, his grip tight on his cane. "No," he whispered again as he stood just outside that ring of devotees, each of them shaking and murmuring with unholy pleasure.
"Mister?" said a slurring voice.
Smith turned at the soft touch of a hand on his arm, turned with an upsurge of terror that threatened to unman him.
A tall willowy figure, fair and sleek, with that look of cherubic innocence common to Venusians, stood just behind him.
For an instant Smith thought it was his old friend, the one who had saved him before in a similar situation. But this was a much younger male and there was little of his old friend's devilish gleam in this one's flat empty eyes.
"Are you going to partake?" was the next incredible question, still in that slurring mumble.
Smith glared at the Venusian, his eyes wide in shock. Partake? What was he asking?
Without waiting for an answer, the slender male slipped forward, snaked in between a beefy Terran and a young Martian giroy, and slid a pale hand through an empty gap in the cage.
Smith's stomach gave a lurch as he saw the Venusian's eyes lose that empty look, go wide with the shock of pleasure mingled with pain.
Smith stumbled towards the cage. He had to know. He had to make sure that it was there. Then he had to kill it. He had promised his friend, long ago, that if he ever saw another one, he would kill it, burn it back to the hell that had spewed it forth. He scrabbled for his blaster as he edged his way forward, stepping over and between the assembled crowd to stand at last, his gaunt trembling form looming over the cage.
The top was open. It was not so much a cage as a metal basket, woven by mad gods. This much Smith noticed before the smell greeted him like an old enemy—and his eyes slammed shut. The odor, that hellish sickly sweetness, rose in waves and inundated him, flesh and blood, bone and skin. His soul, that secret part of him that had once been awakened—and damaged for life and almost destroyed—by a thing that gave off that very smell, set up a crying mewing sound. Smith could hear it, like some starving child deep inside him, begging for the poison that would kill it.
He took a deep breath, savoring the smell even as it horrified him. He could hear the others around him, murmuring their pleasure. He had to save them. He had to free himself, had to prove that he could do what his friend had made him promise so long ago.
The hardest thing Smith had ever done, in a century and more of living on the very knife edge of life, was that simplest and most thoughtless of things.
He opened his eyes.
And looked. Looked inside the cage.
At first he couldn't, wouldn't believe what he saw. Here was no sleek brown girl-bodied thing, with rippling waves of snake-like worms flowing from its skull, with slitted pupils and cat-like grin. Here was no creature of nightmares, no figure of darkness that had haunted him eternally.
Inside the cage lay a thin pale creature with a bloated belly and stick legs. Its hair. What had they done to its hair? Those burgeoning questing tendrils that others of its kind had used to blight souls—for the soul should not be touched—do as you will with the body but the soul should be inviolate—this thing's tendrils were weak and motionless. Feeble, flaccid, almost transparent, a segment of tendril was clutched in each hand or paw or pseudopod that stabbed through an opening. Clutched as a drowning man clutches a lifeline.
Clutched as an addict grabs for a fix.
"You'll have to pay extra for a session, elder sir," a voice called to Smith as he stared at the abomination before him.
Smith tore his eyes away, looked across the cage. A sturdy man stood there, back from the mass of lifeforms, a string of plastic tickets in one hand.
"I said," the man raised his voice as he took in the mass of wrinkles on Smith's face, continued slowly and clearly, "that you'll have to buy a ticket for each five minutes that you touch."
"A ticket?" Smith mumbled, not sure what he was hearing, but not liking the image that was growing in his mind.
"Of course," agreed the man. "Nobody gets it for free, you know. We do have overhead, after all."
"You mean people pay to have this thing suck their souls?" Smith asked, remembering the horror that had filled him the first time he had felt the thing on him. The same horror that had followed him since, dwelt like a living thing in his belly.
"Sure," said the man with a shrug. "It's better than jiverol, better that opiuine. Feels good. No side effects. Kinda hard on that thing, though, all these folks on it all the time, getting the kick. They don't last very long once they're in the cage, you know. But hey, that's life, right?"
Smith looked into the flat even eyes of the man. They were like windows in an empty house, clear and meaningless. He looked down, down at the creature like the one that had almost killed him so long ago, that had become a part of him, a part of his soul.
At least he still had a soul, damaged and torn thought it was. The man, those others here, what did they have, what was there inside them?
The thi
ng in the cage opened its eyes, saw Smith gazing down at it. It looked at him with those slitted, cat-like eyes, cold as Titan's dawn. Smith could read the pain, the pleading in that single glance. Satisfaction surged through him at the sight of the thing in torment as he remembered the pain one of its kind had caused him.
A grin split his lean ravaged face as he turned to go. He took one step.
A thin whining mewed from the creature's throat.
Smith stopped. Turned. The blaster, that had hung unnoticed in one gnarled hand, rose. A beam of energy shot out and burned the creature in half. Twisting wisps of pale pink tendril slithered for an instant in chilly grasps, then were still.
Promise me you'll burn it to hell the minute you see one, Smith, his friend's voice echoed in his head.
I'll—try, he had whispered. His grin broadened as he remembered his reply. He had done it.
From hell instead of to hell, but he had done it.
His soul gave a healing twitch.
#####
About the author of Souls Touched – Reasonable Rates
K.G. McAbee has had several books and nearly a hundred short stories published, some of them quite readable. She takes her geekdom seriously, never misses a sci-fi con, loves dogs and iced tea, and believes the words 'Stan Lee' are interchangeable with 'The Almighty.' She writes steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, horror, pulp, westerns and, most recently, comics. She's a member of Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers and is an Artist in Residence with the South Carolina Arts Commission. Her steampunk/zombie novella, BLACKTHORNE AND ROSE: AGENTS OF D.I.R.E. recently received an honorable mention in the 3rd quarter Writers of the Future contest.
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