Sideshow. Part 19

"The Sideshow tent," Justin said. "It's the only place we haven't looked. If she's not there, she's probably running like a bat outa h.e.l.l for town."

Or swallowed whole by that boiling earth out there, Justin thought, though he would never have said it out loud.

The screams were dying now; just a few names were left on the slate.

They slipped out of the tent just in time to see Fred Hagen drawn and quartered by four huge black corpses, who threw what they held of him high into the night. They hurried down what was left of the midway, Reardon in front and Justin in back of him, the ax somehow still in his hand.

The screams were dying now, drowned out by the moans of the walking dead, who had gathered around the last few sobbing survivors, men who were d.a.m.ned but had done nothing themselves to deserve a fate such as this, torn limb from limb by the howling mob, hung by the neck or impaled, drawn and quartered and cast down into the cold, dark earth.

They ran into the Sideshow tent, but no one was there except the cages and the bizarre contents they held inside them, no hiding townsmen or moaning black walking dead, or Tricia Reardon, who Justin had never thought would be there, but hoped for his friend's sake she might be. There was a curtain beyond the cages, one they had not noticed when they'd stood in this tent earlier tonight.

"C'mon," Mickey said, and then ran for the curtain, calling out, "Mom!"

He ran and Justin followed him, into a backroom as dark and disturbing as anything they had yet seen tonight. Before them stood a raised metal gurney, whose slanted stainless steel channels had drained into the old washtub below until it was half full of blood. The gurney, covered with slick traces of blood itself, sat in the middle of the room, next to a bench which had upon it a white s.h.i.+rt and a pair of dark grey pants, a man's Armani jacket and a string tie whose ends looped through a sterling silver medallion. Leaning against the gurney like a bizarre set of crutches were two severed legs, standing stiff and straight over two severed arms that lay crossed atop each other on the hard-scrabble ground.

"Mom!" Reardon called out, but he had to have known she wasn't there, to hope like Justin that she had gotten away and run screaming into the night before any harm could befall her.

"She's not here, Mickey," Justin said. "C'mon. Let's go."

They backed out through the curtain, back into the tent.

They were about to turn and run, when Justin thought of those gigantic ears emblazoned on the side of the tent. He thought of Danny Roebuck, and just like Mickey Reardon a couple of hours ago, he had to know, one way or another.

"Wait a minute," he said, and Reardon said, "Why?"

"Ears," he said, and then nodded at the cages.

They stepped up to the cage nearest the entrance, Reardon with Rusty Piersol's service revolver, Justin still clutching his ax. They looked through the bars at the brightly-colored block of wood, whose clown's laughing face emblazoned on its front had reminded Justin of a child's building block, at the small little body with the gigantic ears, entombed in a jar of formaldehyde-or whatever it was floating around in. Its eyes were open and its mouth was moving slowly up and down. Its legs were moving and its hands were reaching out to Justin and Mickey.

They saw the ears and they knew it was Danny.

They knew it was Danny and they had to get him out, because once this place was gone it would never come back, and wherever it went, Danny Roebuck would be with it, floating around in a dark and murky world that would never release him.

Justin pulled the ax up and over his back shoulder, and swung at the lock as hard as he could: once, twice, three times, five times, grunting with effort as his every swing bounced harmlessly off the cage, until Mickey Reardon stepped up beside him, aiming that .38 caliber revolver directly at the lock.

"Hold up," Reardon said, Justin taking a step back as Reardon fired his weapon, and kept on firing until the gun was empty and the steel door suddenly popped open.

Then they were up to the cage, inside the cage, where Justin swung the ax one final time and the jar burst open, and all the fluid rushed out, carrying Danny Roebuck flopping to the floor of the cage with it.

He sat there, gasping and clutching his stomach, looking up with eyes that to Justin seemed as wide and round as a couple of apples. He got to his knees, and then to his feet, his skin the wrinkled skin of a prune, his body still drenched in that dark and murky fluid.

"Get me out of here," Danny said, and they helped him up out of the cage.

They had just stepped onto the ground when a commotion at the far end of the tent spun them around. They looked down the cages, past The Fat Lady and Sword Swallowing Sammy, The Alligator Boy and The Rubber Woman, past The Hands Of Wonder to the cage at the end of the line, where an armless and legless man with silvery-white hair sat on a pile of straw, moaning and banging his head against the bars. They knew who he was and they knew they couldn't help him. He was beyond their help now, this grey-haired man who had once been one of the wealthiest men in the state.

He had no arms and he had no legs, nor did he have a tongue to speak with. He bashed his head against the bars and Hannibal Cobb's long shadow suddenly found them. They turned to see Cobb standing a few yards away, casting a shadow that couldn't possibly have reached them, but somehow it did. He stood before them, those impossibly long arms of his cast up toward the heavens.

"You shouldn't have come back here tonight," he said. "For no one here tonight can ever leave. You should have gone home and played with your dearly departed father, and you should have been careful of what you wished for."

Cobb laughed.

"Dishes," he said, and then took a step forward as Danny Roebuck, paralyzed with fear, dropped down to his knees and started to pray.

Cobb came closer and Justin stepped forward, swinging his ax. A finger was snapped and The Rubber Woman's arms swept out of her cage like long flowing vines, easily slapping Justin's weapon away from him.

Justin backed up against the cage, watching in horror as Hannibal Cobb's long legs carried him past the ax, straight to Justin and Mickey. One foot on Danny Roebuck's chest and one on the floor, he reached down and grabbed his two adversaries by the neck, grasping and squeezing and lifting them up off the ground, higher and higher as Justin clutched and clawed and grabbed the hat off Cobb's head, but could get no closer, as his life slowly ebbed and the room grew dark, and the ax-head suddenly rose up and swept down in a high arcing swing that ended with a resonant thunk in the back of Hannibal Cobb's skull, sending the tall man down to his knees, those long arms of his reaching around and trying free himself from Bo Johnson, who had slipped undetected into the tent while Cobb was busy crus.h.i.+ng Danny Roebuck, and choking the life away from Justin Henry and Mickey Reardon.

Justin and Mickey helped Danny to his feet as Bo Johnson drew the ax from Hannibal Cobb's skull, leaving behind a long, wide crack, from which escaped a gush of blood, and a s.h.i.+mmering white phosph.o.r.escent mist that lifted slowly into the air like a buzzing swarm of wasps, the shape of it changing as it slowly rose, from a blank featureless form to the outline of a face Justin knew he had seen before: in the pages of history books, on paintings that hung from the walls of staid old churches, on statues in museums, some without arms and others with them, all with fig leaves adorning their bodies. It sat there, hovering above Cobb's p.r.o.ne and lifeless form, while Justin Henry and Mickey Reardon helped Danny Roebuck across the way, and The Rubber Woman's impossibly thin arms stretched silently across the floor, grabbing Bo's ankles and pulling his feet out from under him as the mist swooped down, seeping into his eyes, into his mouth and up through his nose, until Bo Johnson suddenly stood up and looked around the tent through eyes that weren't his eyes at all.

He walked over to the cages and picked up that stovepipe hat.

"Run," Justin said, when Bo calmly placed the hat upon his head.

"What about Bo?" Reardon said.

"Run!" Justin cried out as Bo turned to face them, and the three boys raced across the tent and out through the entrance, into the night and onto a landscape they no longer recognized, one that resembled the war-torn trenches of some far away country they hoped never to look upon again.

They ran through the clearing and up past the poles, up to Tricia Reardon's car, where Danny Roebuck jumped into the back and Justin and Mickey climbed into the front, Justin in the pa.s.senger seat and Reardon back behind the wheel.

Reardon started the car and roared out of the clearing, up through the tree line and onto the old dirt road, leaving this thing, this ent.i.ty who was no longer Bo Johnson, standing in the middle of the Sideshow tent staring down at his hands, which suddenly seemed impossibly long.

He rubbed his index finger against the flat pad of his thumb and a short plume of flame grew from it, snapped his finger forward like a matchstick and the flame went out. He pulled the long, black coat from Hannibal Cobb and draped it over his shoulders, and then turned and walked to the Sideshow tent's exit.

Red streaks of dawn painted the sky as he walked out of the tent, up the midway, to a tent which had no banner flying above it, no pictures or writing emblazoned on its side. He stepped into the tent, past a blank, square slate that sat angled on a heavy wooden table in the middle of the floor. Under the table was a weather-beaten satchel-a valise, really-one that was very old. The fine pebbled leather, worn down over the years, was soft and smooth. He'd acquired the satchel so long ago that he could scarcely recall from whence it had come. Only that it was his, and it was where he kept the tools of his trade.

He had walked this land since the dawn of time, bringing long overdue justice and retribution to places like Babylon and Samaria, Versailles and Algeria, Auschwitz and Dachau; Juarez, Mexico and Sand Creek, Colorado, and Kansas City, Missouri, where Hannibal Cobb had come to him just as Bo Johnson had come to him tonight, in defense of those who had wandered blindly into their fate, those who did not deserve to be punished, but once inside the circle could never be allowed to leave it.

He took his valise and walked out into the night, this thing, this ent.i.ty who wore Bo Johnson's skin as if he were wearing a cloak. He ventured into the clearing and raised his arms high above his head, wiggled his fingers and out of a dense fog surrounding the clearing came a fat woman with curly black hair, a short man, who wore a straw hat and a red and white striped sports jacket. Out came a young girl in a skin-tight halter top, with blonde hair and gigantic b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and a peg-legged woman whose dark red hair spilled over her shoulders in ringlets and curls. Out came a man who was short and fat, bald on top with a black goatee on his chin, and another man with curly brown hair in a white t-s.h.i.+rt striped with horizontal blue lines, a ring in his ear and one in his nose. Out they came, all of them, into the clearing, and then into the tents and into the trucks, until the only thing left in G.o.dby's field was the thing that was now Bo Johnson, and the tools of Bo Johnson's newfound trade.

Down came his arms and down came the tents, down came the poles and down came the flatbed trucks. Down came the pickup truck, and the Ferris wheel that had spun high above the tree tops; down it came, too, all of it shrinking until nothing was left but the toys of children these things actually were. He picked up the valise and walked through the field, kneeling and grabbing and putting all these items inside it: the Ferris wheel, which now fit into the palm of his hand, the tents, which now were no larger than postcards, the poles no larger than toothpicks. All was picked up and put away in his valise, until nothing was left except a flat wooden sign that read: Bosephus Johnson's Carolina Carnival.

He picked up the sign, shoved it into the case and snapped the case shut.

Then he walked up through the clearing, leaving nothing behind but the torn and mutilated bodies of those whose souls would not be redeemed, and a mult.i.tude of those left hanging from every available tree limb in that overgrown field on the outskirts of Pottsboro, South Carolina.

He walked up the old dirt road and into the rising dawn, one footstep at a time, up the dirt road until his image began to fade, to dissipate like the early morning fog surrounding G.o.dby's field, until the image had faded clear out of sight, leaving nothing behind but the memory of him, and his footsteps on the old dirt road, which mere moments later were also nothing but a memory.

About the Author.

William Ollie lives in Orange Park, Florida, with a wife and two cats. His online presence is maintained at http://www.wmollie.com, and he invites any and all comments to be directed there.

Sideshow is his second published novel.

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