The Great and Secret Show

  "What did they do? Did they fuck?"

  "That matters to you?"

  "Sure it does."

  "To me too. The thought of Fletcher's child touching your sister sickens me. For what it's worth, it sickened Fletcher too. For once, we agreed on something. The question was, which one of us would make it to the surface first, and which would be strongest when we got here?"

  "You."

  "Yes, me. I have an advantage Fletcher lacks. My army, my terata, are best drawn out of dying men. I drew one from Buddy Vance."

  "Where is it?"

  "When we were coming up here you thought somebody was following us, remember? I told you it was a dog. I lied."

  "Show me."

  "You may not be so eager when you see it."

  "Show me, Poppa. Please!"

  The Jaff whistled. At the sound, the trees a little way behind him began to move, identifying the face that had thrashed the thicket to fragments in the yard. This time, however, that face came into view. It was like something the tide had washed up: a deep-sea monster that had died and floated to the surface, been baked by the sun and pecked at by gulls, so that by the time it reached the human world it had fifty eye-holes and a dozen mouths, and its skin was half flayed from it.

  "Gross," Tommy-Ray said softly. "You got that from a comedian? Don't look too funny to me."

  "It came from a man on the brink of death," the Jaff said. "Frightened and alone. They always produce fine specimens. I'll tell you sometime the places I've gone looking for lost souls to produce terata from. The things I've seen. The scum I've met . . ." He looked out over the town. "But here?" he said. "Where will I find such subjects here?"

  "You mean people dying?"

  "I mean people vulnerable. People without mythologies to protect them. Frightened people. Lost people. Mad people."

  "You could begin with Momma."

  "She's not mad. She may wish she were; she may wish she could dismiss all she's seen and suffered as hallucinations, but she knows better. And she's protected herself. She has a faith, however idiot it is. No . . . I need naked people, Tommy-Ray. Folks without deities. Lost folk."

  "I know a few."

  Tommy-Ray could have taken his father to literally hundreds of households, had he been able to read the minds behind the faces that he passed every day of his life. People shopping in the Mall, loading their carts up with fresh fruit and wholesome cereals, people with good complexions, like his own, and clear eyes, like his own, who seemed in every regard self-possessed and happy. Maybe they'd see an analyst once in a while, just to keep themselves on an even keel; maybe they'd raise their voices to the children, or cry to themselves when another birthday marked another year, but they considered themselves to all intents and purposes souls at peace. They had more than enough money in the bank; the sun was warm most days, and when it wasn't they lit fires and thought themselves robust to survive the chill. If asked, they would have called themselves believers in something. But nobody asked. Not here; not now. It was too late in the century to talk about faith without a twinge of embarrassment, and embarrassment was a trauma they labored to keep from spoiling their lives. Safer not to speak of faith, then, or the divinities who inspired it, except at weddings, baptisms and funerals, and only then by rote.

  So. Behind their eyes the hope in them was sickening, and in many, dead. They lived from event to event with a subtle terror of the gap between, filling up their lives with distractions to avoid the emptiness where curiosity should have been, and breathing a sigh of relief when the children passed the point of asking questions about what life was for.

  Not everyone hid their fears so well, however.

  At the age of thirteen Ted Elizando's class was told by a forward-thinking teacher that the superpowers held enough missiles between them to destroy civilization many hundreds of times over. The thought had bothered him far more than it seemed to bother his classmates, so he'd kept his nightmares of Armageddon to himself for fear of being laughed at. The deception worked; on Ted as much as the classmates. Through his teens he'd virtually forgotten the fears. At twenty-one, with a good job in Thousand Oaks, he married Loretta. They were parents the following year. One night, a few months after the birth of baby Dawn, the nightmare of the final fire came back. Sweaty and shaking, Ted got up and went to check on his daughter. She was asleep in her cot, sprawled on her stomach, the way she liked to sleep. He watched her slumbers for an hour or more, then went back to bed. The sequence of events repeated itself almost every night thereafter, until it had the predictability of ritual. Sometimes the baby would turn over in her sleep and her long-lashed eyes would flicker open. Seeing her daddy there by her cot she would smile. The vigil took its toll on Ted, however. Night after night of broken sleep drained him of strength; he found it steadily more difficult to prevent the horrors that came by the hours of darkness invading those of light. Sitting at his desk in the middle of the working day the terrors would visit him. The spring sun, shining on the papers before him, became the blinding brightness mushrooming in front of him. Every breeze, however balmy, carried distant cries to his ears.

  And then, one night, standing guard at Dawn's cot, he heard the missiles coming. Terrified, he picked Dawn up, trying to hush her as she wept. Her complaints woke Loretta, who came after her husband. She found him in the dining room, unable to speak for the terror he felt, staring at his daughter, whom he'd let fall when he'd seen her body carbonized in his arms, her skin blackening, her limbs becoming smoking sticks.

  He was hospitalized for a month, then returned to the Grove, the medical consensus being that his best hopes for a return to full health lay in the bosom of his family. A year later, Loretta filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. It was granted, as was the custody of the child.

  Very few people visited Ted these days. In the four years since his breakdown he'd worked in the pet store in the Mall, a job which had made mercifully few demands upon him. He was happy among the animals, who were, like him, bad dissemblers. There was about him the air of a man who knew no home now but a razor's edge. Tommy-Ray, forbidden pets by Momma, had been indulged by Ted: allowed free access to the store (even minding it on one or two occasions, when Ted had to run errands), playing with the dogs and the snakes. He'd got to know Ted and his story well, though they'd never been friends. He'd never visited Ted at home, for instance, as he did tonight.

  "I brought someone to see you, Teddy. Someone I want you to meet."

  "It's late."

  "This can't wait. See, it's really good news and I had no one to share it with but you."

  "Good news?"

  "My dad. He came home."

  "He did? Well, I'm really happy for you, Tommy-Ray."

  "Don't you want to meet him?"

  "Well, I—"

  "Of course he does," said the Jaff stepping out of the shadow, and extending his hand to Ted. "Any friend of my son's is a friend of mine. "

  Seeing the power Tommy-Ray had introduced as his father, Teddy took a frightened step back into his house. This was another species of nightmare altogether. Even in the bad old times they'd never come calling. They'd crept up, stealthily. This one talked and smiled and invited itself in. "I want something from you, " the Jaff said. "What's going on, Tommy-Ray? This is my house. You can't just come in here and take stuff."

  "This is something you don't want, " the Jaff said, reaching towards Ted, "something you 'll be much happier without. " Tommy-Ray watched, amazed and impressed, as Ted's eyes began to roll up beneath his lids, and he started to make noises that suggested he was about to throw up. But nothing came; at least from his throat. It was out of his pores the prize appeared, the juices of his body bubbling up and thickening, paling, and rising off his skin, soaking through his shirt, through his trousers.

  Tommy-Ray danced from side to side, enthralled. It was like some grotesque magic act. The drops of moisture were defying gravity, hanging in the air in front of Ted, touching each other and forming lar
ger drops, those drops in turn meeting and joining, until pieces of solid matter, like a sickly gray cheese, were floating in front of his chest. And still the waters came at the Jaff's call, each mote adding bulk to the body. It had form now, too: the first rough sketches of Ted's private horror. Tommy-Ray grinned to see it: its twitching legs, its mismatched eyes. Poor Ted, to have had this baby inside him and been unable to let it go. Like the Jaff had said, he'd be better off without it.

  That was the first of several visits that night, and each time there was some new beast out of the lost soul. All pale, all vaguely reptilian, but in every other regard a personal creation. The Jaff put it best, when the night's adventures were drawing to a close:

  "It's an art," he said. "This drawing forth. Don't you think?"

  "Yeah. I like it."

  "Not the Art, of course. But an echo of it. As, I suppose, is every art."

  "Where are we going now?"

  "I need to rest. Find somewhere shady, and cool."

  "I know some places."

  "No. You've got to go home."

  "Why?"

  "Because I want the Grove to wake up tomorrow morning and believe the world is just as it was."

  "What do I tell Jo-Beth?"

  "Tell her you remember nothing. If she presses you, apologize."

  "I don't want to go," Tommy-Ray said.

  "I know," the Jaff said, reaching out to put his hand on Tommy-Ray's shoulder. He massaged the muscle as he spoke. "But we don't want a search party out looking for you. They could discover things we only intend to reveal in our time!"

  Tommy-Ray grinned at this.

  "How long will that be?"

  "You want to see the Grove turned upside down, don't you?"

  "I'm counting the hours."

  The Jaff laughed.

  "Like father, like son," he said. "Hang loose, boy. I'll be back."

  And laughing, he led his beasts off into the dark.

  IV

  THE girl of his dreams had been wrong, Howie thought when he woke: the sun doesn't shine in the state of California every day. The dawn was sluggish when he opened the blinds; the sky showing no hint of blue. He dutifully ran through his exercises—the barest minimum his conscience would allow him. They did little or nothing to enliven his system; they simply made him sweat. Having showered and shaved, he dressed and went down to the Mall.

  He didn't yet have the words of reclamation he was going to need when he saw Jo-Beth. He knew from past experience that any attempt on his part to plan a speech would only result in a hopeless, stammering tangle when he opened his mouth. It would be better to respond to the moment as it came. If she was dismissive, he'd be forceful. If she was contrite, he'd be forgiving. All that mattered was that he mend the breach of the previous day.

  If there was some explanation for whatever had happened to them at the motel, hours of soul-searching on his part hadn't unearthed it. All he could conclude was that somehow their shared dream—the idea of which, given the strength of feeling between them, didn't seem so difficult to understand—had been rerouted by an inept telepathic switchboard towards a nightmare which they neither understood nor deserved. It was an astral error of some kind. Nothing to do with them; best forgotten. With a little will on both sides they could pick up their relationship where they'd left it outside Butrick's Steak House, when there'd still been so much promise in the air.

  He went straight to the book store. Lois—Mrs. Knapp— was at the counter. Otherwise, the store was empty. He offered a smile, and a hello, then asked if Jo-Beth had yet arrived. Mrs. Knapp consulted her watch before frostily informing him that no, she hadn't, and that she was late.

  "I'll wait then," he said, not about to be dissuaded from his purpose by the woman's lack of geniality. He wandered over to the bookstack closest to the window, where he could browse and watch for Jo-Beth's arrival at the same time.

  The books before him were all religious. One in particular caught his eye: The Story of the Savior. Its cover carried a painting of a man on his knees before a blinding light and the pronouncement that its pages contained the Greatest Message of the Age. He thumbed through it. The slim volume—it was scarcely more than a pamphlet—was published by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, and presented in easily assimilated paragraphs and paintings the story of the Great White God of ancient America. To judge by the pictures whatever incarnation this Lord appeared in— Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Tonga-Loa god of the ocean sun in Polynesia, Illa-Tici, Kukulean or half a dozen other guises— he always looked like the perfect whitebread hero: tall, aquiline, pale-skinned, blue-eyed. Now, the pamphlet claimed, he was back in America to celebrate the millennium. This time he'd be called by his true name: Jesus Christ.

  Howie moved on to another shelf, looking for a book more suited to his mood. Love poetry perhaps; or a sex-manual. But as he scanned the rows of volumes it became apparent that every single book in the store was published by the same press or one of its subsidiaries. There were books of prayers, of inspirational songs for the family, heavy duty tomes on the building of Zim, the city of God on earth, or on the significance of baptism. Among them, a picture book on the life of Joseph Smith, with photographs of his homestead, and the sacred grove where he'd apparently seen a vision. The text beside it caught Howie's eye.

  I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said—

  "I called Jo-Beth's house. There's no answer there. Something must have called them away."

  Howie looked up from the text. "That's a pity," he said, not entirely believing the woman. If she'd made the call, she'd made it very quietly.

  "She's probably not going to come in today," Mrs. Knapp went on, avoiding meeting Howie's gaze as she spoke. "I've got a very informal arrangement with her. She works whatever hours suit her best."

  He knew this to be a lie. Only the morning before he'd heard her chide Jo-Beth for being unpunctual; there was nothing informal about her working hours. But Mrs. Knapp, good Christian that she was, seemed determined to have him out of the shop. Perhaps she'd caught him smirking as he browsed.

  "It's not the least use you waiting," she told him. "You could be here all day."

  "I'm not scaring off the customers, am I?" Howie said, defying her to make her objections to him plain.

  "No," she said, with a joyless little smile. "I'm not trying to say you are."

  He approached the counter. She took an involuntary step backwards, almost as though she was in fear of him.

  "Then what exactly are you saying?" he asked, barely able to preserve his civility. "What is it about me you don't like? My deodorant? My haircut?"

  Again, she tried the little smile, but this time, despite her versing in hypocrisy, she couldn't make it. Instead, her face twitched.

  "I'm not the Devil," Howie said. "I haven't come here to do anybody any harm."

  She made no answer to this.

  "I was . . . b . . . b . . . I was born here," he went on. "In Palomo Grove."

  "I know," she said.

  Well, well, he thought, here's a revelation.

  "What else do you know?" he asked her, gently enough.

  Her eyes went to the door, and he knew she was reciting a silent prayer to her Great White God that somebody open it and save her from this damn boy and his questions. Neither God nor customer obliged.

  "What do you know about me?" Howie asked again. "It can't be that bad . . . can it?"

  Lois Knapp made a small shrug. "I suppose not," she said.

  "Well then."

  "I knew your mother," she said, stopping there as though that might satisfy him. He didn't reply, but left her to fill the charged silence with further information. "I didn't know her well of course," she continued. "She was slightly younger than me. But everybody knew everybody back then. It's a long time ago. Then of course when the accident happened—"

  "You can s . . . s . . .
say it," Howie told her.

  "Say what?"

  "You call it an accident but it was. . . was. . . was rape, right?"

  By the look on her face she'd thought never to hear that word (or anything remotely so obscene) voiced in her shop.

  "I don't remember," she replied, with a kind of defiance. "And even if I could—" She stopped, took a breath, then started on a fresh tack. "Why don't you just go back where you came from?" she said.

  "But I am back," he told her. "This is my home town."

  "That's not what I meant," she said, finally allowing her exasperation to show. "Don't you know how things look? You come back here, just at the same time Mr. Vance is killed."

  "What the hell's that got to do with it?" Howie wanted to know. He hadn't taken all that much notice of the news in the last twenty-four hours, but he knew that the retrieval of the comedian's corpse he'd seen in progress the previous day had turned into a major tragedy. What he didn't understand was the connection.

  "I didn't kill Buddy Vance. And my mother certainly didn't."

  Apparently resigned to her function as messenger, Lois gave up on innuendo and told the rest plainly, and quickly, so as to get the business done with.

  "The place where your mother was raped," she said, "is the same place Mr. Vance fell to his death."

  "The very same?" Howie said.

  "Yes," came the reply, "I'm told the very same. I'm not about to go and look for myself. There's enough evil in the world without going out to find it."

  "And you think I'm part of this somehow?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "No. But th . . . th . . . that's what you think."

  "As you ask me: yes it is."

  "And you'd like me out of your shop so I'll stop spreading my influence around."

  "Yes," she said plainly, "I would."

  He nodded. "OK," he said, "I'll go. Just as long as you promise me you'll tell Jo-Beth I was here."

  Mrs. Knapp's face was all reluctance. But her fear of him gave him a power over her he couldn't help but relish.