Carnies Page 26

  ‘Betrayed...?’ He thought back, and tried to work out exactly how she had betrayed him, what she’d done to deserve the bloody death he’d dealt her. Was it that knife, that stupid letter opener that hadn’t been quite silver enough for his wishes? Was that it?

  That wasn’t it, his father cajoled. You know that. She was a whore and deserved to die.

  ‘She didn’t deserve to die, David,’ a voice came from behind him, feminine, gentle.

  All eyes in the room turned to Rachel, who stood in the middle of the room, eyes wide open, seeing nothing and everything. Her lips moved, the sounds came from her throat, but the voice wasn’t hers. At first David didn’t recognise it.

  ‘And what about me?’ she asked. ‘Was I a whore too? Did I deserve to die?’

  You made them weak, his father was saying inside David, venom in his words. I made them strong.

  ‘I made them love,’ she responded to the voice inside David’s head. ‘You made them hate. But I know they’re better than that. Better than you.’

  And then David recognised the voice.

  ‘Mother?’ he whimpered. ‘Mummy?’

  Paul’s eyes widened. ‘David, it’s her. She’s the one who gave us this gift, this power.’

  David looked around, confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Not everyone becomes like us, David,’ he said in a husky wheeze. He was obviously having trouble breathing. ‘It’s carried down the bloodline. But the men don’t pass it on. Only the women do. Don’t you see?’ he asked, plaintive. ‘The strength in you, in me... it’s not from Dad. It’s from Mum.’

  Lies, his father said, but there was a tremor in his voice, a hint of weakness.

  ‘Your brother is telling the truth, David,’ Rachel said in his mother’s soft voice. ‘What you see around you, in the people in this room, in your brother, even in yourself... that is good. That is strong. What your father has given you doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you weaker. The hatred and the anger. The mission. It’s destroying you.’

  ‘No...’ David breathed. His fingers opened and the knife fell to the floor. ‘No,’ he said again, without strength. ‘I’ll kill you. I killed my wife. I killed the head of this damned carnival.’

  ‘You didn’t kill Amos,’ Paul said, ‘and you know it.’

  This provoked a loud reaction from the gathering of carnies. Rachel cried out, and a number of the men growled. David looked around, nervous.

  ‘Of course I killed him,’ David said, his voice shaking.

  ‘What are you...?’

  ‘You left him alive, David,’ Paul interrupted. ‘Alive and in agony, mutilated and chained with silver. You didn’t kill him,’ he said again.

  ‘That’s...’

  ‘You didn’t kill him,’ Paul said for a third time. Then he spoke two words that changed everything: ‘I did.’

  Rachel staggered back with a gasp. His mother was gone from her eyes now, and the rest of the carnies fell silent. Every one of them was watching David with angry, hate-filled eyes. Many of them crouched over, their arms and legs twitching. They were a single creature again, and they had only one goal, one burning purpose: to kill David.

  David turned, ran back to the chair and grabbed at the rifle leaning against it. He snatched it up and swung it around, just as a large carnie, the one Rachel had called Carl, charged at him.

  The barrel was almost against Carl’s chest when the gun went off. He tumbled over backwards, dead before he even hit the wooden floor.

  Then hands grabbed his face from behind him, slim hands, nails like claws. They dug into his flesh, drawing blood and sending searing pain through him. He screamed, let go of the gun with one hand, and reached over his shoulder, catching short hair in his fingers. He heaved with all of his strength, and pulled his attacked over and onto the floor. It was the pregnant bitch, Jasmine, her breath knocked out of her, gasping as she writhed on the floor. Blood obscured his vision, and his hands were shaking too much to shoot straight. So he raised the rifle by its barrel and clubbed her across the head, opening a vicious gash in her temple. She stopped writhing.

  The other carnies hesitated then. Men and dogs alike held back, if only for a moment.

  ‘Get away!’ he yelled, alarmed by the high pitch of his voice. He swung the barrel back and forth across the crowd, shaking his head to clear his eyes of blood, and pulled back the lever to eject the expended shell. Then he pushed it forward to load another bullet into the chamber. ‘P-perhaps I can’t get all of you,’ he stammered, then pointed the gun straight at Rachel. ‘But I can get her,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘David, it’s over,’ Paul said, still pinned to the wall.

  ‘Leave now. They won’t follow you.’

  ‘The fuck we won’t,’ one of the other carnies, a small man in a red-checked shirt, snarled. We’ll...’

  ‘We’ll do nothing,’ Rachel said, interrupting him. She looked over towards Paul. ‘If that is the price for no more killing, then we shall pay it.’

  David was still pointing the gun at Rachel. The end of the barrel was shaking. David looked around the room in a panic. He felt... lost. Alone. Defeated.

  You have lost, his father spat. You hesitated, you weakened, and now you have lost. You couldn’t keep your job, you couldn’t keep your wife, and now you couldn’t do this for me. I am ashamed of you.

  ‘Father...’ David whimpered, tears welling in his eyes.

  Oh, quit your puling, you pathetic worm! His father’s voice was acidic, hateful, poisoned with contempt. I believed you were a soldier of God. But you are weak, like your mother and your brother!

  ‘Please,’ he sobbed, and lowered the gun barrel a little.

  You have failed me. And you know what that means.

  ‘No...’

  They will kill you.

  ‘No...’

  And you will burn in hell for eternity.

  ‘No...’

  Unless...

  David stopped crying then, and paid close attention to the voice in his head. ‘Unless?’ he asked.

  ‘David...’ Paul said. He was trying to distract him. It wouldn’t work.

  You will die now, his father said. Die in the service of God.

  ‘Yes...’ David said, a smile creeping across his face.

  Kill her. Now.

  ‘Yes!’

  He raised the gun again, and aimed it at the middle of Rachel’s pretty forehead, at a pale glimpse of skin between strands of long, dark hair. He closed one eye and his smile widened.

  NOW!

  The gunshot was deafening, and it filled David’s head.

  -45-

  There was a shocked silence. The only thing Paul could hear was the ringing in his ears from the gun’s piercing retort. The high-pitched hum was slow to fade. He looked at Rachel. She was standing with her hands out and her eyes closed, ready for the bullet to slice the air and crash into her like a tiny freight train. But the train never arrived.

  She opened her eyes then and looked at David, who was still pointing the gun at her. Paul looked also. David was standing very still. No smoke was curling from the barrel of his rifle this time. He turned slowly towards Paul and spoke softly, a confused look in his eyes.

  ‘What...?’

  Blood slowly trickled down the right side of his face, emerging from his hairline like a lava flow from a hidden volcano. He reached up and touched his head, then looked at his bloodied fingertips. He blinked a few times, then collapsed to the floor, like a marionette whose strings had all been cut at once. The wound was more visible on the top of his head, where a chunk of scalp had been torn away by the bullet.

  Paul looked at his brother’s fallen body, then turned to the source of the gunshot.

  Ben stood hunched in the doorway, practically filling it with his furry bulk. In his clawed hand he held a gun, one that Paul recognised straight away. It was the revolver he’d been shown before, the one Alvan had given to Ben years before, the one with the single silver bullet in it. The only
silver in the entire carnival.

  And he’d used it to save Rachel.

  Ben lowered his arm and dropped the gun. It hit the wooden floor with a hard thump and bounced a few times. He walked inside. There was still that terrible silence. All the carnies were looking at him with shock and amazement. Following close behind him, Alvan entered the building. He looked around nervously, like a deer that’s inadvertently wandered into a lion enclosure at the zoo. But the carnies didn’t even see him. They could only see Ben, Ben the freak, Ben the monster. But now they saw him in a different way.

  Ben the hero.

  Ben the saviour.

  He walked over to Paul, looked at him carefully and tilted his head. Then he grasped the handle of the cane and pulled. The pain, which had dulled to just a general burning all through his chest, flared up again. Paul screamed, but it didn’t last long. With a wet popping noise, the end of the cane came free from his chest. Paul fell to his knees, clutching at the gaping wound. He was still having tremendous trouble breathing, and there was a lot of blood flowing from the hole in his shirt, but it seemed to be slowing down. For the moment, though, he simply knelt there, utterly spent. He looked up slightly and saw his brother’s twisted, misshapen form, silent and still now, peaceful.

  Paul lowered his head and wept.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up through his tears and saw Rachel there. Her expression was both sombre and sympathetic. He reached up with one hand and took hers, and held it tightly for a few seconds, grateful. Then he let her go.

  He shuffled forward on his knees towards David. His body was facing him with its head turned, but its eyes were closed. Blood painted half of his face like a carnival mirror image of Paul’s own wound that he’d received at his brother’s hands. It still burned. His face was still agony, but he ignored it. He reached out to touch David’s head.

  ‘I’m so sorry...’ Paul whispered.

  David’s eyes snapped open, wide and bloody, and Paul cried out and stumbled back. The eyes were wild. There was no sign of intelligence behind them, no humanity. They were the eyes of a wounded animal.

  David opened his mouth and made a deep, horrible noise in the back of his throat, like a frightened cat, and he thrashed around a little. Paul hesitated, then leaned forward again and stroked his brother’s hair.

  ‘Shhhh...’ he said, ‘Shhhh....’

  David’s struggles calmed and his eyes closed again. Paul looked up and saw that both Rachel and Alvan had come over, and were also kneeling by his brother. Paul moved back a little, and the two leaned in and inspected David’s head wound.

  ‘You see?’ Alvan asked her. ‘It looks like the bullet entered here, just behind the ear. The skull must have deflected it. It came out here, near the top of his head, above his right eye.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘I can’t believe the bullet didn’t kill him,’ she said, astonished.

  ‘Maybe it did,’ Alvan said. ‘Look at his movements, his reactions. For all intents and purposes, David Hampden is dead.’ Then he glanced over at Paul and blushed. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  Paul couldn’t find the strength to react. He knelt there and watched his brother’s face twitch and the drool flow from the corner of his mouth. He found it soothing in a strange way, like watching a big dog sleep. Distantly, he heard Rachel call for bandages, saw Alvan elevate David’s head and place a rolled-up jumper underneath it. But all he could really see was his older brother, his surrogate father, his reluctant protector, his nagging, stubborn and annoying master... all gone now. Alvan was right: David was dead. All that was left was instinct, evolutionary memories from twin lineages.

  At that moment Paul wished he had killed him on that night that now seemed so long ago. It would have been better that way, for everyone. And he gave serious thought to killing him now. He could easily just pick up the knife he’d dropped earlier, plunge it into his brother’s chest and pierce his heart the way he’d pierced Paul’s. Only this time it wouldn’t be silver paint scraping against the torn ventricles, it would be the real deal. He’d gasp and thrash and die, and it would be a kindness.

  But Paul couldn’t do it. He’d already done enough. His guilt would last him a lifetime - and perhaps much longer, if his healing abilities maintained him the way he suspected they would. For now all he could do was look at what he’d wrought, and wish he’d never come here, that he’d never been born.

  Ben knelt beside Paul, still towering over him, and looked at him. ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ he rumbled.

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘Do you think Alvan is right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul whispered. ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul.’

  Paul turned and faced him, and saw his own sorrow and guilt mirrored in the creature’s eyes. Seeing that brought back the tears again - just a few - along with a small laugh.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘You did the right thing. You saved us all.’

  Ben sighed. ‘So did you, Paul. In the end, so did you.’ Paul looked back down at his brother, and something inside him broke: a dam that he’d built over the last few days, built out of necessity. He cried then, cried like a child, cried as if the tears could wash away everything that had happened, every mistake he’d made.

  They didn’t, of course. But they helped. A little.

  -46-

  searing hot pain twist cry scream rage fear hands never touch don’t touch burning rest sleep sleep no fight don’t sleep never sleep fading anger moan weaken voices sounds smells relax sleep sleep peace brother sad mad Paul maul fall sleep sleep afraid

  alone

  ’fraid frayed lone own

  father?

  EPILOGUE

  Paul had nearly finished packing the few items he owned into his duffel bag when there was a tap at the door. He turned and flinched at the twinge he still felt in his chest. He smiled at Rachel as she entered the hut. She was dressed in a practical manner, nothing like the heavy velvet dress she’d worn the first time they’d met. Instead she wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her long hair tied back in a jet-black ponytail. But she was still beautiful.

  ‘Hi, Rachel,’ he said, his voice lighter than he felt. ‘I’m almost ready.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked, sounding a little sad. ‘You can stay, you know.’

  He looked at her and felt a familiar temptation: to empty his bag and stay at the carnival, make his new life here. Perhaps, given time, he could become closer to Rachel. Maybe even...

  ‘No, that’s okay,’ he responded, pushing those feelings aside. He knew they weren’t constructive or realistic, let alone appropriate. She was simply making the offer to be courteous.

  He slung his bag over his shoulder carefully. His chest had healed up quite well in the two days that had passed since he’d been impaled. He doubted he’d ever really get used to the speed at which his body repaired itself now. But it was still very sore, and probably would be for weeks. It seemed that the majority of the damage healed the fastest, and then slowed down towards the end. That made sense: get the body up and running again as fast as possible, and leave the little niggles until later. His broken leg was fully healed, with barely a twinge in the shin that Amos had snapped. But the wound across his face was still red and raw. Rachel had stitched it up as best she could, but he’d always have a scar that ran across his right cheek. It was something to remember his brother by every time he looked in the mirror.

  ‘All right,’ he said, looking around the room he’d called home for the last few days just one more time. He’d miss this place, and the people. But he didn’t belong here. He knew that, and so did they. To be frank, he didn’t know where he did belong any more, but it wasn’t here, that was for sure. He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘Let’s go.’

  He and Rachel walked out into the sunshine. It was early afternoon, a beautiful clear winter’s day. The rains had finall
y been swept to the south and been replaced by a clean, cool breeze that wrapped itself around everything it passed, a breeze that ruffled the hair and whistled softly in the trees. Paul smiled wryly and almost wished it was still raining. It would have made leaving that much easier.

  Most of the carnies were hard at work dismantling the camp that had been their makeshift home for so many years. Axes were being swung overhead and slammed into support posts, walls were coming down. Whatever could be kept was being loaded into carts and caravans, the rest was simply to be left behind for nature to reclaim. Dust to dust, Paul thought, melancholy.

  Rachel’s hand touched his elbow and she smiled at him, as if reading his thoughts. ‘It’s all right, Paul,’ she said, ‘we’ve been here long enough. Too long.’ She looked around at the bustle and destruction going on in the camp. ‘We grew complacent. It’s time to move on.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Paul asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Into the woods,’ she said with a smile, looking at the trees around them. ‘There are millions of acres for us to hide in. I think it’s best we stay out of sight for a year or two, after everything that’s happened here.’ She turned back to Paul, still smiling, but there were tears in her eyes also. ‘After that, who knows? Another town, a new carnival... no more history. A fresh start.’

  ‘A fresh start,’ Paul echoed. ‘That sounds pretty good to me.’

  ‘And me,’ a gruff voice said from his side. He turned and saw Ben, carrying a huge piece of timber across his shoulder. He put it down on the ground and stepped over it. He stopped in front of Paul and Rachel, standing there awkward for a few moments.

  ‘Well, I guess this is it,’ Paul said at last, breaking the silence.

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ Ben responded.

  ‘How’s Toby doing?’ he asked, trying to change the subject.

  Ben smiled. ‘He’s recovering. His mother and sister are taking care of him. We’ll send for him once we’ve found somewhere new to stay. If he wants to come back to us.’