TWO
Martin Holland the third got in his truck one day, drove off to the north, and never came back. That was in 1969, while Martin the fourth was doing his thing over in ’Nam. A massive search went on for days, but neither the truck nor the man was ever found. Some theorized that he was kidnapped, with the kidnappers losing their nerve and just killing him. Others felt he was drunk and drove up into the badlands and got lost. Others didn’t really give a damn what happened to him, those types of people being what they are: envious of anyone with more money and material things than they happen to possess.
Martin number four had been adamant that with the birth of his son, the numbers behind the name would cease. So the boy was named Mark. A year later, Linda came along. Alicia said there would be no more.
Good kids, most would agree. Never in any trouble, respectful to elders, and both worked for their money—unlike a lot of kids with monied parents—and made A’s in school. And both kids preferred the company of their father over the company of their mother. Which suited both parents just fine.
Back at the Holland house, with Janet coming over with Gary, Martin leveled with them all about the hallucinations he’d been experiencing. Alicia looked scornful, Janet seemed worried, and Gary did not respond at all.
The doctor took Martin’s blood pressure, his pulse—which had settled down to normal—looked into his eyes and down his throat. “Everything is normal, Martin. Like I said, I think you’ve got a bug roaming around in your innards, just winding up for the big punch that’ll put you down for a few days. You get some rest tonight and take it easy tomorrow.”
Martin shook his head. “Gary, I feel just fine! Maybe somebody slipped some acid into my drink this evening?”
The doctor sat on the ottoman, facing his friend since boyhood. “OK, buddy. Let’s pursue that line. Hey, we’re all out of the sixties, that time of great unrest and social change and experimentation. Did you ever take any LSD at good of’ U of N? Or anywhere else for that matter—like in Vietnam, to name one real good place where nobody would blame you for wanting to get zonked out? I mean, acid, or so I’ve read, can come back on a person.”
Martin shook his head. “No, I never dabbled in acid. I smoked some pot in college.” He waved his hand. “Hell, we all did—remember? Took some speed. But I never got into psychedelics. By the time I got to ’Nam, I’d been clean for over two years. I never liked grass anyway; all it ever did for me was make me hungry, horny, and sleepy—at the same time.”
Gary and Janet laughed at that. Alicia did not. That was too crude for her tastes.
“Gary, I don’t have a fever. I don’t have the sniffles. I don’t have a headache, or sore throat, or any aching in my muscles or joints. It isn’t the flu. And it didn’t start until I saw those carnival trucks begin to roll through town.”
At that, Janet walked to the wet bar and fixed a pretty good bump of bourbon.
“What’s with you, love?” her husband asked.
“Ah, well, here goes—even though you’re probably going to think I’m crazy.”
He grinned at her. “What else is new?”
Janet turned, facing the men. “Gary, I’m serious about this.”
“About what?”
“Some . . . damnit! Something pulled me to the fairgrounds today!” she blurted.
Gary stared at her. “Say—what?”
“Gary, now I told you I’m serious. Don’t make fun of me.” She looked at Alicia for support.
“Oh . . .” Alicia waved her hand. “All right. It was more something pulling me than it was Janet and Joyce. It was probably just my imagination and when I told them, it became infectious, that’s all.” She seemed anxious to dismiss the whole matter.
“Could the carnival have brought some sort of virus in here, Gary?” Martin asked.
“Oh ... maybe. But it would have to be a fast-moving sucker and everybody in that show would have to be infected with it.”
Martin stared at his wife. “You felt a pull? Would you explain it?”
“It was like, well, someone had planted subliminal suggestions in my brain. Then all of a sudden, something triggered them. I just could . . . not help myself. I had to go to the fairgrounds.”
“Weird!” Martin shook his head.
“It’s bullshit!” Gary muttered, careful that the ladies didn’t hear him say it.
The phone rang and Alicia stilled it. “Yes? Oh! Yes, he’s here. I’ll tell him. Is the boy all right? Very well, doctor. Surely.” She hung up and looked at Gary. “That was Dr. Rhodes. He was called over to the teen center. Some boy named Harold went into convulsions and then began screaming about monsters coming out of a fire. The doctor would like for you to join him.”
“That’s odd,” Gary said. “Don made it clear some time back that he doesn’t care for me at all.”
Martin stood up.
Gary looked at him. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?”
“With you.” He lifted a hand, cutting off the doctor’s protests. “Gary, I feel fine. Look, something very odd is happening in this town. And I’m going to find out what it is. Let’s go.”
* * *
The fairgrounds lay quiet. The carnies would start putting up the equipment in the morning; but for now, they stayed in their trailers and campers—a very few in tents. The mess tent was up and open. But nobody was using it.
The road manager of the show, Jake Broadmore, and his front man, Slim Rush, stepped out of Jake’s old trailer to stand in the quiet darkness.
“Our last play-date,” Slim spoke softly and with a slight smile on his lips. He was called Slim because he was five feet, six inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds.
Jake smiled his reply.
“They got the place all fixed up real nice, don’t they, Jake?”
“Real nice,” Jake agreed.
“But it don’t look much like I remember it.”
“They changed it around some. Some rebuilding. Tell the boys there ain’t no big rush in settin’ up. Things don’t crank up for six more days. Next Thursday at noon. Mayor’s supposed to make a speech, then some lady’s gonna sing the national anthem. Same old stuff. But I’ve missed it.”
“Yeah, me too. We got time, lots of it. We wanna do this right.”
“Amen, brother.”
“Almost thirty-four years to the date. I rememer it all well.”
“Will be exactly thirty-four years come next Thursday night.”
Both men’s eyes seemed to burn at the memory.
An extremely tall man walked past them in the night. He was almost eight feet tall. He glanced at the men, nodded his head, and walked on.
“You lookin’ after Dolly?” Jake called.
“Don’t I always,” the carnival’s giant man replied, without pausing.
“Still surly,” Slim muttered.
“Have you ever knowed him when he wasn’t? Looks after Dolly though. Even though he don’t have to no more.”
Dolly Darling was the fat lady. Six hundred and fifty pounds of blob. Five feet, five inches tall. Her special-made truck was her home. Tiny the Giant drove the truck. Backed it right up to a special-made stall in Nabo’s Ten-in-One, wheeled Dolly to the tommy-lift, and lowered her. That’s where she sat, from noon to nine at night. Except when she had to go take a crap—which was an event in itself. The potty was also special-made, and was placed right behind a flap just to Dolly’s right and a couple of steps back. Dolly Darling’s place was between Tiny the Giant and the Dog Man.
The others in Nabo’s Ten-in-One included: Carlson, the world’s most tattooed man, who lay on a bed of spikes. Nuru, the Indian fakir, who stuck needles and pins through his lips and cheeks and arms, and chewed up light bulbs and soft drink bottles. Samson, the strong man, who bent horseshoes and crowbars and who had an I.Q. of about fifty. At the peaks. At the valleys he was a slobbering idiot who was very capable of tearing a normal human being into bloody chunks with nothing but his bare hands. There was Balo, the beautiful young woman who handled snakes, including rattlesnakes and pythons. Lulu, the half man, half woman, with both male and female organs. For a slight extra charge, one could see the Geek, watch him tear the head off living chickens and drink the blood. At the end of the big tent housing the Ten-in-One, was JoJo, the ape man, billed as having been found as a child in the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa—half ape, half man. JoJo was known, in carny lingo, as the main blow-off. Meaning that he could, if he had to, carry the whole show. The blow-off is the most important part of a Ten-in-One. Before the carnival got JoJo, they had only the Dog Man as a human freak.
Nabo himself ate fire and swallowed swords and neon tubing.
“I can’t hardly wait,” Slim broke the silence.
Monroe, the Ten-in-One’s talker, joined them in the night. A circus uses a barker, a carnival uses a talker. It was Monroe’s duty to gather the crowd, usually with a half naked Balo on the platform with him, a fifteen foot snake wrapped around her, the tip, or crowd, gathering, and then Monroe would turn them; in other words, coax the tip into the tent with his line of patter—a talker.
“It’s begun in town,” Monroe informed them.
“How wonderful!” Jake replied, excitement in his voice. “We’ve waited so long!”
* * *
The Harold boy had settled down by the time Gary and Martin had arrived at the teen center and pushed their way through the kids. Dr. Rhodes knelt by the boy. The boy’s lips and tongue were bloody where he had chewed on them during his convulsions.
There was a peculiar odor lingering around the boy.
“Smells like charred wood,” Martin noted.
“Yes, I noticed.” Dr. Rhodes looked up, “but he has no burns on him that I can find.” He smiled oddly.
Gary thought it was a hell of a time to be smiling. He knelt down beside the boy. “What did you give him, Don?”
“Nothing. He was already quiet when I got here.”
“He was talking crazy,” a teenage girl said. “Some mumbo jumbo language.”
“But it was a language,” another girl spoke up. “I mean, it had definite word-sounds and obvious meaning.”
Don Rhodes looked irritated that the kids had brought that up.
Strange behavior on his part, Gary thought. “It had meaning . . . to whom?” he asked the girl.
“I don’t know, Doctor. But it was a language. I’ve studied languages for the past four years and intend to become a linguist. It was a language.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Rhodes said.
* * *
The Harold boy was taken to the town’s clinic and nurses called in. Members of his family agreed to sit with him during the night, and the nurses would call if his condition changed.
He would be transported to Scottsbluff first thing in the morning.
Dr. Don Rhodes had walked off without another word.
“Odd fellow,” Martin commented.
“More like a horse’s ass would sum it up better,” Gary replied. “But he’s a good doctor,” he grudgingly added.
“Gary, the boy doesn’t belong to one of those religions that go off the deep end every now and then and start speaking in tongues, does he?”
“I thought of that and asked his friends. No. Not according to the kids.”
Gary dropped Martin off at his house. He told Martin to get some rest and if he felt like it, he’d meet him at the club for their regular Saturday morning golf game.
“The kids aren’t back yet, Alicia?”
“It’s still early, Martin. It’s not even nine o’clock.”
“Damn! So much has happened it feels like it should be around midnight.”
“How is the boy?”
“His vital signs are perfectly normal. The boy says he doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t remember anything except the horrible visions of fire and the monsters coming out at him. He’ll be checked for epilepsy down at Scottsbluff.”
“Strange.”
“Yes. But there was definitely a smell of charred wood on and around the boy.”
“Was anybody cooking on the outdoor grill at the center?”
“No. I looked.” He yawned hugely. “I hate to go to bed so early, but I’m just plain beat.”
He waited for their ritual goodnight kisses. They did not come.
Alicia sat and looked at him. “Then you go on to bed. I’m going to read for awhile.”
Both Martin and Alicia were avid readers, preferring books over the tube, and they had encouraged their kids in that direction.
Martin liked adventure books. Alicia preferred horror stories.
* * *
For some reason, or reasons, that none could explain—although no one had asked, many of the townspeople, young and old, had gathered at the fence surrounding the fairgrounds. They stood, mostly in silence, and stared at the darkened trucks and vans and trailers of the carnival people.
There were still a few of the locals working in the long sheds and pavilions that would house the cattle and sheep and goats and pigs. Others worked in the small booths that would display the cakes and pies and other local culinary endeavors. One by one, those booths began to go dark as the shadows thickened and the hour grew later. They shut it down and went home.
Outside the fence, the people remained. Standing and staring in silence.
The girls drove by in the pickup truck. “Wonder what the fascination is over there?” Jeanne asked, her eyes taking in the knots of people standing by the fence.
“Turn around and come back,” Susan said. “There’s Binkie.”
Jeanne found a place to turn around and came back, stopping at a knot of young people.
“Hey, Binkie!” Linda called from the truck. “What’s up?”
A boy left the crowd and walked over, to stand by the pickup and stare at the girls. Jeanne, behind the wheel, and the farthest away from him, could not see his eyes.
But Susan and Linda could. His eyes were odd-looking. Something seemed to dance behind them. If it wasn’t such a stupid thought, both girls felt it looked like tiny flames.
Linda asked, “What’s everybody doing, Binkie?”
“Nothin’ much. Standin’ around is all.”
Something was the matter with his voice, too. It was very flat-sounding. Totally without inflection. Weird.
“Why are you.standing around, Binkie?” Susan asked.
Binkie shrugged and stuck his hand inside the cab, trying to fondle Linda.
“Goddamnit, Binkie!” she yelled at him. “Keep your hands to yourself!”
“OK,” the boy said, very matter-of-factly.
The girls noticed a giant of a man walking among the shadows, behind the fence. “God! would you look at that!” Jeanne breathed. “It’s a giant!”
“Probably got a dick a foot long,” Binkie said with a grin.
The girls groaned in unanimous disbelief. It just wasn’t like Binkie to try to grab a feel or say something like that. Binkie was everybody’s favorite. Binkie buddied with the boys and palled around with the girls. Everybody liked Binkie.
“He’d probably show his dick to you if you’d ask him,” Binkie added.
“Binkie!” There was exasperation in Linda’s voice. “Knock that off. Who are you out here with?” Then her eyes found Karl and Robie and the others. “Oh, not them, Binkie. Not that bunch.”
“They’re my buddies. You wanna see my dick, Linda?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Linda said wearily, not understanding what had gone wrong with Binkie.
Jeanne put the truck in gear. “Goodnight, Binkie. You’d better go home and sleep it off.”
Driving away, Susan said, “What’s got into Binkie? I never heard him talk that way before.”
“I don’t know,” Linda replied. “But I don’t think it was the beer. Place is getting weird. All those people just standing around the fence.”
They stopped at an intersection and Jeanne spotted Linda’s brother, Mark. Linda rolled down her window and waved at him. Amy Newman sat on the passenger side of the Camero. Martin’s deal with the boy was: I’ll make the car payments for you, but you have to pay for the insurance and gas and upkeep. It was an agreement that both sides honored.
Mark lowered his window and smiled at the girls. Nearly everybody liked Mark. Except for Karl Steele and his bunch of near-thugs. Mark was too straight-arrow for them. He wasn’t a prude or a preach, but he didn’t drink and didn’t do drugs, and if he gave his word, that was that. Like his sister, Mark was fair-skinned, with blonde hair and blue eyes. A handsome young man.
He told them about Jimmy Harold.
“You mean he just fell out and started having fits!” Jeanne asked.
“Yeah. And he was talking in a foreign language and yelling that the monsters were coming and he was burning up. And something else: you could really smell the smoke around him. It was strange.”
For a reason she could not fathom, Susan suddenly shuddered.
“What’s wrong with you?” Linda asked.
“I don’t know. Mouse ran over my grave, I guess.”
Linda got out of the truck and walked over to her brother. She stood between car and truck. “Have you been down to the fairgrounds, Mark?”
“No. Why go down there?”
“There’s about a couple hundred people down there. All crowded up by the fence.” She paused and her brother picked up on it.
“What’s wrong, sis?”
“It’s like I’ve been trying to tell you, Mark,” Amy broke in. “Something weird is happening in this town. I can feel it.”
“But it isn’t anything tangible,” Linda said. “But for some reason, I’m a little jumpy.”
She expected Mark to laugh at her and was surprised when he did not. Even more surprised when he agreed with her. “I thought it was my imagination. I still think we’re making more out of it than we should. You girls take it easy.” He dropped the Camero into gear and rolled on.
Linda turned her head, looking at Jeanne. “What now?”
“I think we should go home.”
“I’m with you.”
* * *
Martin was asleep in five minutes, dropping into a gentle darkness.
Then the gentle darkness lifted its outer veil and the sleep became a chamber of horrors.
The man became frightened. He was being driven by a fear like none he had experienced before. Not even in ’Nam. Somebody, or something, was chasing him. Running after the boy, cursing as the boy ran through a long barn.
Boy?
Martin had mentally been torn from the present and hurled unwillingly back into time, his sleeping body separating from his mind; one rested while the other took him on a journey into terror.
He was no longer running. And he could see with perfect clarity. His senses, all of them, were working overtime. He was in a hay-filled stall. But how did he get there and what was that crying and those painful noises? Where were they coming from? That animal-like grunting.
The tow-headed little boy peeped through a crack in the wall of the horse stall in the livestock pavilion. He could see a girl with her dress up around her waist, the bodice all ripped open. Her tanned bare legs were spread wide, while a man, naked from the waist down—that was all Martin could see of him—was between her legs. He was hunching and grunting and saying all sorts of crazy things. And just to the left of that couple, another girl and guy were doing the same thing.
“You know you been wantin’ this, Mary,” the man closest to Martin said. It was not a mature voice. A young man’s voice.
The girl turned her head and Martin recognized her. Mary Mahoney.
“Goddamn you!” Mary cursed the young man in a husky voice. “Goddamn you all to hell! My daddy’ll kill you for this.”
The young man’s voice hardened. “Shut your damn slutty mouth, girl! And keep your voice down, or I’ll really hurt you.”
Mary began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto the bales of hay.
Martin hunkered down in the hay-filled stall, the movement of his feet kicking up dust. He shifted positions until he could see the face of the other girl. June Ellis. Both Mary and June were in high school. Both of them about fifteen. But the boy could not see the faces of the young men.
But their voices sure were familiar to him.
“We gonna do this regular from now on,” the other young man panted.
“My daddy’ll cut you like a gelding!” June raised her voice.
That got her a hard open palm to the side of her head. She yelped and fell silent except for a low whimpering and the silent fall of tears.
“Your daddy ain’t jack-shit!” the young man told her, his voice as hard and cruel as the forced act he was a part of. “Dirt farmer on rented land is all he is. Our daddies got papers on both your daddies. They own them! One word from us and your folks don’t have nothing! You wanna see your daddy lose his farm?”
June said something that Martin could not make out.
“That’s right,” the young man told her, a cold, mean, smugness in his voice. “So you lay back and shut up.”
Martin huddled in fright in the stall next to the couples, too scared to try to make a run for it.
But what was he doing in the stall? How did he get here? Then he remembered. He’d ridden a ride and had gotten real sick to his stomach. He’d gone into the far end of the long pavilion and had lain down on the hay. Gone to sleep. The late autumn warmth had lulled him gently. The grunting and panting had awakened him.
“No!” Mary suddenly cried out, real pain in her voice. “I won’t do that. You can’t make me!”
Martin looked. He was making her do it, with a hard hand over her mouth to stifle her screaming. Martin crouched against the stall wall, the scene making him sick to his stomach. He trembled in fright.
The rape and perversion seemed, in his young mind, to go on for hours. But it was really maybe fifteen minutes—twenty minutes tops.
The sounds of grunting and cursing faded away. The girls continued their almost silent weeping. Martin peeked through the narrow crack and watched as the young men pulled on their jeans and buckled their belts. Then they bent over to tug on their boots.
And Martin knew both of them. He bit his lower lip in fright. They were both bullies. His own father called them rich trash.
Martin moved his feet. The dust puffed up from the hay. He sneezed violently, the dust particles setting him off like a small bomb.
“What the hell was that?” one of the young men yelled.
Martin left the stall as fast as his short-panted legs could carry him, running hard, fear making him strong and swift.
“Get the little son of a bitch!” the hard voice reached him. “And then break his neck!”
Martin ran and ran, but the longer legs of the older boys were closing the gap as they raced up the seemingly endless middle aisle of the livestock pavilion.
Martin glanced behind him. His feet slipped in a fresh manure pile. He crashed into a wall.
Martin was plunged into a painful darkness.