Carnies Page 4

  ‘What’s this?’

  David smiled. ‘It’s a digital camera. On loan from the paper, so be careful with it.’

  ‘Digital?’ Paul groaned. ‘What’s wrong with a real camera?’

  ‘Do you have one?’ David asked. Paul opened his mouth, but a clever comeback didn’t seem to be forthcoming, so closed it again. ‘Exactly my point. Work with what you’ve got.’ He took another leather pouch from the suitcase, and pulled out an even smaller silver device. ‘And this is mine.’

  ‘A vibrator?’ Paul asked, mischief in his voice.

  ‘No, not a...’ David stuttered, turning red. ‘It’s a digital voice recorder. I keep my notes and interviews on it.’ He slipped it back into its case, and put it on a small table near the bed, which also had an electric alarm clock on it. As he reached down to do this, he noticed a smell. At first he thought it was the bed, but then he identified it.

  ‘I think I need a shower and a change of clothes,’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘You get used to the camera. We’ll go and get something to eat in a few hours, then head to the carnival.’

  ‘Can I watch some television, Dad?’ Paul asked in a high-pitched, childish voice.

  ‘Whatever,’ David snapped, and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. Finally some peace, if only for a little while. But only a couple of hours to wait, then he could get to the carnival. To his story.

  He hoped it was worth the trip.

  -5-

  The rain had stopped by the time Paul and David arrived at the carnival. They pulled up in the rough gravel car park outside the Tillbrook football oval. As David parked the car, Paul looked out his window and saw a collection of bright lights and dark tents, and a small booth in front of the park’s gate. It had a sign on top of it:

  DERVISH CARNIVAL ENTRY - $5

  CHILDREN FREE

  Cheap at half the price, he thought. Then again, isn’t everything? What a stupid saying. He opened the car door and got out, as did as his brother. They walked to the entrance, wet grass squelching under their feet. As they drew closer, Paul noticed another sign underneath the first one, a smaller one:

  NO CAMERAS PERMITTED

  He looked to David, frowning a little. David seemed concerned for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Just be discreet.’

  Discretion was never Paul’s forte, but he guessed he could manage it this once and nodded. They went up to the booth. There was no queue. In fact, there were less than a dozen cars scattered around the car park, plus an old silver van parked off to the side, which seemed to indicate that the carnival wasn’t exactly jam packed. That would make it much more difficult to take photographs unnoticed, but at least they wouldn’t have to deal with crowds. Paul didn’t mind them himself. Indeed, he found the chaotic crush of people kind-of comforting, like white noise, but he knew David didn’t handle crowded places well, and never had. And if David was stressed, he would make the whole evening unpleasant for both of them. So a lack of people was a good thing, at least in that regard.

  ‘Two, please,’ David said, pulling out his wallet. For a split second Paul suspected that David would ask for one adult and one child. With him driving and paying, it felt more like a father-and-son outing than a journalistic partnership. Not that their father would have ever taken them anywhere like this... Still, at least David was paying.

  The man in the booth was old and thin, and wore one of those round flat hats like you’d see in old vaudeville routines. In the dim light, it looked maroon. His suit might have been in style when he’d bought it, and probably fitted him then too, but that seemed to have been fifty years or so ago. He looked David up and down, turned his attention to Paul, then back to David again. He smiled a small and not very sincere smile. ‘Ten dollars please, sir,’ he said, the hint of a European accent in his voice.

  David handed over the money, and was given two little tickets in return. As they walked past the booth into the football field, Paul thanked the old man, whose smile warmed a little at that. Then they were inside.

  Paul had been to a few carnivals and circuses in his life, though not as many as most, and almost all in his adult years. His father had disapproved of them, believing them to be godless places, revelling in sins of the flesh, in greed and voyeurism. Even after he’d died, it was like the shadow of his disapproval was still there.

  But once he’d left home, he’d gone to a couple of circuses and carnivals, just to see what all the fuss was about. After all the build-up, he was disappointed. Paul realised that his father had been exaggerating just a tad. About the worst thing he ever saw was a device where you would put some coins into a slot machine, trying to stack a pile of other coins up in such a way that some might fall out the bottom. It was hardly Sodom and Gomorrah.

  The Dervish Carnival somehow reminded Paul of the ribald joke of the man who dropped his pants in front of a woman and asked her what she thought, to which she responded, ‘Well, it’s like a penis, only smaller.’ The carnival was made up of tents, yes, and there were food stalls and games and rides, but everything seemed scaled down. And old - there was no plastic or steel here, instead, everything seemed to be made of wood and canvas. If the Amish held carnivals, this was what they’d look like. It wasn’t too impressive to his jaded eye.

  David, on the other hand, seemed spellbound. He was muttering into his voice recorder while looking around. Words like ‘rustic’, ‘traditional’ and ‘quirky’ were all that Paul could make out from the mumbling. He assumed the recorder would pick it up, otherwise the story might be pretty jumbled. But at least the photos would be good.

  Or they would be, if he was taking any. He’d forgotten about the camera hidden in his pocket. He took it out, suddenly grateful that he had the tiny digicam instead of his bulky old SLR. Being discreet with one of those would be like trying to hide an elephant under a handkerchief.

  Speaking of which, where were all the animals? Most carnivals had camel rides at the very least, if not wild animals to be amazed at and terrified by. The only animals Paul had seen here were some scruffy looking dogs running about the place, getting under people’s feet. No one seemed to mind, though.

  Paul glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention, then raised the camera with one hand and took a shot of the rough corridor of grass they were walking along. Tents walled them in on both sides, offering a variety of items to the casual buyer. There was a food stall selling homemade lemonade and what they called ‘bunny buns’, which Paul had a sneaking suspicion weren’t just a cute brand name. Another had beaded wind chimes hanging from every pole, and the one next to it was even selling fresh fruit and vegetables. It would have felt more like a local weekend market than a carnival... if not for the games.

  Paul slipped the camera back in his pocket, grateful again that it was small enough to take shots without using both hands, so he didn’t have to tuck his cane between his legs and balance on one foot as he did with his old camera. He hated to imagine what he must have looked like doing that, alone on a darkened street in the middle of the night, teetering like a drunk man trying to perform a solo sobriety test. He walked over to one of the stalls, leaving David talking into his recorder. It looked like your typical shoot-down-the-canisters type game, with guns on chains sitting on a wooden plank at the front of the tent and stacks of cylinders arranged at the rear. Above them were the prizes: the ubiquitous wind chimes, plus some stuffed animals that looked like they may have been actual stuffed animals. He wasn’t too keen on winning anything there, but why come to a carnival if you’re not going to be bilked out of your money?

  ‘How much?’ he asked the man inside the tent. He looked as rough as the other people he’d seen at the carnival - unshaven, with a thick mop of black curly hair and heavy eyebrows.

  The man smiled, his teeth flashing. ‘Two dollars, mate. Three shots.’

  ‘You’re on.’ Paul fished out a two dollar coin from his pocket and flipped it across. The man caught it without even looking
, handed him one of the guns, and then he stepped aside and folded his arms.

  Paul put the rifle to his shoulder, aiming along its barrel. It seemed a lot heavier than he’d expected. As he aimed he noticed something odd. There were bales of hay stacked at the back of the tent, behind the canisters and prizes. Once he had the barrel pointed where he wanted it, he pulled the trigger.

  The bang startled him, and the barrel jerked upwards. The man laughed loudly. Paul took a closer look at the rifle.

  ‘Is this... is this a real gun?’ he asked, incredulous.

  The man nodded, his mirth dying down. ‘The look on your face when it went off...’ he managed to say, then began laughing again.

  Paul ran his hand up and down the barrel. He’d never even held a real gun before, let alone fired one. He looked at the man again. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

  This prompted another short bark of laughter. ‘Nah, mate. It’s only a twenty-two.’

  Paul smiled. ‘Cool.’ He aimed again and pulled the trigger. It clicked.

  ‘You have to load the next bullet,’ the man explained.

  ‘The bar near your hand, above the trigger.’

  He’d seen enough movies to know pretty much how that worked. He pulled the bar back, felt something snapping inside it, then pushed it back into place with another satisfying click. Then he aimed and fired again. Missed. Reloaded, fired again. One of the canisters wobbled, but didn’t fall.

  ‘That’s it, sorry,’ the man said. ‘Want another go?’ Paul thought about it. He did want to try again, but he looked around and saw that David was already walking ahead of him, looking back over his shoulder.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said, handing the gun back to the carnie. ‘Thanks.’

  Paul had to jog a little to catch up to his brother, favouring his bad ankle. David was striding towards something, as were a few people around them. Up ahead someone was yelling.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked David, a little out of breath.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ David replied, distracted. ‘Something interesting, I hope.’

  Paul put his hand in his jacket pocket as they walked towards the shouts, feeling the weight of the digicam against his palm. He hoped it was something interesting too. And photogenic, with any luck.

  -6-

  David saw that the noise was coming from outside a sizable tent, bigger than most of the others. There was a podium in front of it, at which a man stood, waving his arms and shouting. He could have been the son of the man selling tickets outside. He even wore the same old style of suit, but he filled it out much more solidly, too much so, in fact. He had a full beard and moustache, and wore sunglasses with small round lenses, despite it being after dark. He kept repeating the same speech over and over again, metered, like a poem, calling loud enough that his voice could be heard pretty much all over the carnival, David would have wagered.

  ‘Come one, come all, come big and come small,

  Come and see sights that you’ve ne’er seen before!

  Are they angels or demons, idols or freaks?

  The blessed or the damned? Step inside, take a peek!’

  Then he’d start all over again, waiting for a decent sized crowd to congregate. David wondered how many times during the night he’d go through this rigmarole. Although he’d hoped to find an old-fashioned carnival, this was beyond his wildest imaginings. A barker gathering the rubes to a genuine freak show, if that’s what it was. Of course, it might be fake, but nonetheless, it was certainly colourful. David palmed the voice recorder and captured the carnie’s spiel. It’d be a great start to the story.

  ‘Just five dollars a head! The body gets in for free. C’mon, form an orderly queue right in front of me, that’s the way.’ David looked around and saw the crowd shuffling left and right, making a rough line. He joined them. Then they filed forward, each handing over money to the barker, who placed it into a small metal case attached to his belt, and handed back change if required. David got out his wallet and fished out the two five dollar notes the motel owner had given him. They looked and felt greasy. He’d be glad to be rid of them.

  ‘Two, thanks,’ he said to the barker. The man raised an eyebrow, looking a little confused for a moment. David assumed there was a pretty regular crowd, so new faces were few and far between. He wondered why people would pay to see the show more than once. He hoped the reason was entertaining.

  The barker waved them through into the tent. It was hot and humid inside, and there was a sizable stage in the centre of it, which was empty. Around the edge of the tent was a series of smaller stages, each with a display or attraction of some description, past which the queue shuffled. A few were actual people, sitting on chairs and looking bored, but most were just shelves with static items on them.

  The first that David spotted was an oldie but a goodie: a mermaid corpse in a tank. They’d done the usual thing of stitching the upper half of a small monkey to the tail of a fish, then pickling it so it’d stay relatively fresh. It stared, eyeless, out of its tank, which had air bubbles pumped through it to jiggle it around. David sighed and shook his head. Not a good start.

  The next display was a woman sitting in an overstuffed armchair while people walked right up to her, peering close. She was quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes, and long lustrous hair that fell past her waist.

  That made the beard all the more incongruous.

  Paul leaned in close on his cane. ‘Is that for real?’ he asked. David couldn’t believe his brother was talking to an attraction at a freak show. It struck him as a terrible faux pas. He wasn’t really au fait with carnival etiquette, but he felt there should be a barrier between the freaks and the audience, even if only an imaginary one.

  It didn’t seem to bother the bearded woman, though.

  ‘You can give it a tug, if you like,’ she offered, smiling. David decided not to stick around for that. He didn’t want to get that close to any of these people. He moved on to the next exhibit, which seemed to be made up of deformed dog skeletons. The one after that was a man who could pop his shoulders forward out of their sockets, and tilt his head back so far it almost touched his spine. David shuddered and walked to the next stage. This one stopped him in his tracks. It was a shelf with six jars on it, stacked up like the canisters at the shooting game, in two piles of three. Each jar was about a foot deep, and almost that in diameter. They were filled with a pale green liquid. And inside each was a human head.

  David could only stare, trying to work out if they were real or not. He assumed they weren’t, of course, but it was hard to tell for sure, as the liquid blurred their faces and obscured their details. He leaned in for a closer look. They all seemed to be male, of varying ages. None of them looked very happy to be there. One even had a tattoo, just below its left eye. A dark blue teardrop. David shivered a little.

  A hand touched his shoulder. He jumped, startled, and turned around. Paul was standing there, grinning.

  ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’

  David frowned. ‘You didn’t. I was just examining these.’

  ‘Yeah, morbid or what?’ Paul said. He seemed to have the ability to trivialise just about anything. ‘You think they’re real?’

  David looked at Paul. ‘Yes, Paul. They’re real human heads that the carnival has on display. Evidence of murders past, in the open for all to see. Like ‘The Purloined Letter’, only with heads.’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Jeez, David, no need to be sarcastic.’ Then he looked a little confused. ‘The what letter?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  David started to move to the next exhibit, but then the barker came out of an opening at the rear of the tent and walked to the stage. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Could I get you all to gather here before the central stage?’

  The crowd made its way to the middle of the tent, congregating in front of the stage. David and Paul joined them.

  ‘Thank you, thank you. And now, if I can beg your
patience for just a moment, I’ll return in a matter of seconds. Please remain still, and as quiet as possible.’

  The crowd became hushed and expectant as the barker walked back to the rear of the tent and through the opening there. For a few seconds there was almost complete silence, apart from the nervous laughter of a few of the patrons. Then there was a clanking noise, and the barker reappeared at the rear of the tent, dragging a heavy chain behind him, which vanished into the darkness behind him. In his other hand he carried a whip.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, still walking forward, ‘may I introduce to you...’

  A form emerged from the shadows and the chain rose from the ground. David peered into the darkness, trying to see what it was.

  ‘...The Creature!’ the barker finished with a flourish, as the chained form entered the tent.

  There were a few screams from the small number of women present in the room, and even David yelped at the sight of the thing. It was at least seven feet tall, and massive across its chest and shoulders. It was hunched, its spine arched, which made it look even bigger, and its arms nearly reached the ground, claw-like fingernails missing the sawdust by centimetres. Its body was covered in an uneven mat of fur, and in some spots the pale white skin could be seen.

  And its face... it looked as if half its skull had been replaced by that of a huge dog. Its jaw jutted from its face, the skin stretched tight over the bone. The other side was vaguely human, though it was very heavy browed, almost like a caricature of a caveman. The overall effect was monstrous, and David felt himself shrinking back. It reminded him of the times his father would lecture them about demons, the ones that waited in the dark for the sinful. And now here it was, in the deformed flesh, waiting to devour him.