Cape May County, NJ

 

1

"I don't know what my uncle is thinking these days," Ginger said.

She stood outside George's trailer and stared at the darkened main top looming under the overcast night sky. The circus seemed to be crumbling around her. Even that artist, Caniglia, had blown the show. They were due in Towson, Maryland tomorrow. Why wasn't anyone striking the canvas?

"I mean, why have we been playing all these one horse dates in Jersey anyway?"

"Your Uncle Joe hasn't done much more than smoke his pipe since June," George said. "He won't listen to Shuman and Nolan anymore. It's Oz. He's in charge and he's just been killing time until tonight."

"How do you know?"

"It's all in the book."

That book. That damn book. George spent every free waking moment buried in it. Their sex life had dropped to zilch.

"Okay, what's so special about tonight besides being the last day of summer and the day before your birthday? For which, by the way, I’ve planned something very special. The surprise of your life."

She could barely wait.

He didn't seem to hear. "It's the equinox."

"So?"

"So a lot of weird stuff happens during the equinox. The weirdest thing the world has ever seen could happen during this one."

George seemed bothered by the strangest things lately. He'd made such a big deal about Oz trading in his car and a couple of the trucks for a number of off road vehicles.

"I'm going to take a look around, see what’s going on," George said.

She didn't want to pout but her lower lip seemed to push out on its own. "I thought you were going to stay with me tonight. You'll be twenty three at midnight and—"

"I'll only be a few minutes."

He gave her a quick kiss and walked off. Thoroughly frustrated, Ginger watched him disappear into the darkness, then went inside. Hard to believe how attached she'd become to George. Just a little over three months ago, after Carlo got hurt, she'd been sickened by the thought of touching him, now she couldn't imagine living without him. She had to snap him out of this.

Because she had a birthday surprise for him.

And the best way she could think of to surprise him was to get naked. Quickly she stripped off her clothes, wishing she were in her own trailer where she could put on something sexy and wait for him. But she was in George's, so buck-naked would have to do. She was just stepping out of her panties when she heard the door open behind her. She whirled.

"Surpri—!"

The word died in her throat. It was Oz.

He towered over her, looking like a scientist staring down at a bug. Ginger turned to run but he caught her arm and roughly pulled her around. She tried to cover herself with her free arm.

"Where is he?" The voice boomed through the room. "Where's my book?"

"Not here!" Her voice sounded so tiny after Oz's. "Let me go!"

"You'll tell me or so help me—!"

He reached for his waist. For a blood freezing second Ginger thought he was going to unbuckle his belt and visions of being raped by Oz sliced through her mind. But his hand stopped above his belt, at his lowest shirt button. As he undid it he pulled her closer and shoved her hand—her arm—into the gap. There was no skin there, just a warm, moist empty space that—

Something hard clamped onto her arm just below the elbow.

She screamed and tried to pull free but she was trapped. How? How? She screamed louder and struggled harder as something soft and coarse and very wet squirmed against her forearm, layering it with thick fluid. She retched and looked up at Oz.

Oz said nothing. His eyes were steely, his smile a hard, thin line as he pulled his shirt open, sending the buttons flying in all directions. Fearfully, Ginger lowered her gaze to see what had trapped her arm. She screamed again as the room swam around her.

A mouth. Oh, God, a mouth!

There, in Oz's belly, along his waistline, a huge lipless mouth. Thick, heavy, yellow teeth the size of cigarette packs had clamped down on her arm. The huge tongue within licked her hand again, then spit her out.

Ginger tumbled back and sprawled on the thin carpet, only dimly aware of her nakedness. Part of her could think of nothing but wiping the smelly saliva off her arm, while the rest of her would not allow her eyes to turn away from the hideous deformities of Oz's torso.

For the huge mouth was only part of the horror. Above it, just below the breastbone . . . a vague lump that resembled a nose. And above that sat two egg size eyes—white as eggs, too. So white they could only be blind, but they moved and fixed their blank stare on her.

"No further need for pretense," said the belly mouth in Oz's voice while the normal mouth in the head hung slack and immobile.

Ginger realized that Oz must have spoken through the belly mouth all along, with the head mouth merely lip synching the words. He stepped closer, towering over her. She tried to crawl away but had nowhere to go.

"I'm not going to hurt you. That would be gratuitous—especially at this juncture. I simply want the book. I noticed it was missing tonight and could think of only one person who might have taken it. Give it to me. Now!"

The deafening volume of the last word shattered her nerve. Sobbing, unable to speak, she pointed a trembling finger to the bottom drawer of the bureau to her right. Oz went to it and retrieved the old book. Then he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and tossed it at her.

"Give that to George. Tell him to meet the rest of us at the bald spot if he wants to witness the remaking of the world."

Then he turned and was gone.

 

2

George wrapped his arms around Ginger. Her clothes were back on but he felt her shiver and shudder as she told him what had happened.

"But he didn't hurt you? He didn't . . ."

George could barely bring himself to think about it, let alone say it.

"No. Beyond putting my arm in his muh mouth, he didn't touch me. He said it would be 'gratuitous.' What did he mean by that?"

George understood—perfectly. But how to explain to Ginger?

"He has a machine, the Device, as he calls it, that he's been reconstructing from components retrieved along the route of this tour. Brambles and I found the last Piece back in Long Island. Now he's just been killing time until the equinox, when he can put the Device to work."

"But what's it do?"

"He's been telling us since winter quarters that it's an instrument of change, that it will bring us justice, understanding, acceptance, and compensation, that it will alter the world's perception of us, change our place in the world so that we'll no longer be considered freaks."

"Maybe it's working already," Ginger said, looking up at him and trying a smile. "I don't consider you a freak."

George tightened his hold on her, but even Ginger's warmth and nearness could not ease the cold fear that had been growing within him since he'd begun reading Mysteries of the Veil.

"But Oz hasn't been telling us the whole story—or at least not to me. You see, according to Oz's father and the book I took, there's another world, another reality that borders on our own. Borders isn't even the right word—coexists is better. We somehow occupy the same space but we can't perceive each other. We're separated from that other place—'the Otherness'—by what the book calls 'the Veil,' some sort of barrier that keeps our two realities from intermingling. The Device can breach that barrier, can create a pinhole between the two realities and let some of the Otherness through."

"Is that bad?"

"I'd say so. Look, almost all of us in the Emporium are a special kind of freak. Our deformities are the result of exposure as fetuses to the Otherness that leaked through the Device. This Otherness is a much older, more dominant, more powerful reality than ours. It changes any of our reality it touches."

"Well then how is that pinhole going to help people understand you?"

"It won't. But Oz isn't planning a pinhole. He has a special substance—the book is vague as to what it is or where he gets it, but it acts as a fuel for the Device. And at the proper time and place, he can cause a permanent rip in the Veil."

Ginger drew back and stared at him. "What will that mean?"

"The Otherness will flood into our world, infiltrate our reality, changing it, overwhelming it until both sides of the Veil are the same."

"Why would he want that?"

"Because then you'll be the freaks and we'll be the norms."

"But that's awful. I mean, that's horrible! He'd destroy everything? Why?"

George looked away. "You'd have to spend your life on our side of the fence before you could completely understand."

Ginger rose and paced the tiny room in a tight circle.

"What are we talking about? The whole thing's crazy! Why are you buying into it? Oz is obviously nuts, or he's been dropping acid, or both!"

"Maybe," George said. "But I can't risk him being right. I've got to go find this bald spot."

"Why?" Ginger stepped back and stared at him. "If he's going to make you a normal, why should you want to stop him?"

"Because of you." George rose and faced her. “I’m used to being a freak. I’ve had a lifetime of practice; you haven’t. So I want things to stay as they are. Because with you by my side there’s nothing this world can throw at me that I can’t handle.”

Ginger ran forward and leaped into his arms. She sobbed against his neck, then stepped back.

“I’m going with you.”

Try as he might, he couldn’t talk her out of it.