Lampie and the Children of the Sea

by Annet Schaap

  “GO! GET AWAY!” she screams. “What are you doing here? Get away! Leave before it’s too late! Why are you sitting there in a cart, like a cripple? Don’t you know what you are? Jump into the water! SWIM!”

  Fish shakes his head. “I can’t! My head’s too heavy, it’s not allowed, I’ll drown in a second, I can’t even swim!”

  “Oh dear,” says a voice behind them. They all turn to look.

  A big, tattooed man has appeared at the back of the tent. He is carrying two buckets, which he quickly puts down. Then he steps forward and, with one movement, he hauls Fish out of the cart and dangles him by the tail.

  “Well, that’s no good, is it?” sniggers Earl. “It’s about time you learnt – and fast.”

  EARL’S STROKE OF LUCK

  Earl is lazy. He always has to take down the entire tent every time, load it onto the train, put it up again… The Freaks do most of the hard work, but someone has to keep an eye on them, so that they do not sabotage the tent or run away or simply drop down dead.

  They are a bit of a shabby bunch, to be honest, his troupe. The bearded lady is looking less and less like a lady. His Siamese twins have been insane for years now, his mermaid on the verge of death… She used to be his biggest attraction. But that has not been true for a long time.

  She sometimes used to bite the occasional fairgoer. That clearly could not be allowed and so he would punish her by giving her no food for a week, but it always gave the public a proper fright. People would throng around the tank, and at the slightest movement from the mermaid they would all scream. She has not bitten anyone for months though, not even when people prodded her with sticks. A crying shame. His top attraction is nothing more than a waste of space now. No matter how many shimmering tails he paints by the tanks, and signs saying BEWARE! FEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!, none of it helps.

  Boring, people say, and some of them demand their money back. Anyone can put a dead fish in a tank of water.

  “She’s not dead,” he always replies. “She’s just resting, she’s pining for the open waves, that’s what mermaids are like.”

  Excuses! the people say. Catch a new mermaid, a nice fresh one – that’s what we want to see!

  Did they even know what they were asking for? His father, as tall as a tree and as strong as a bear, had told him the stories. About how he had fished this one up out of the bay, purely by chance. How she had fought and fought and never gave up. Gnawed through thick ropes. Smashed glass tanks with her tail. Catch a nice new fresh one? Not likely. But sadly monsters do not just come trundling into his tent for free, of course. At least, not until today.

  “Hello, my little stroke of luck,” says Earl to the dangling boy.

  Lampie screams. Fish screams. The Freaks chunter and hiss.

  “I thought you were sneaking something in here in that cart of yours. Very cunning, my girl, but Uncle Earl is just that little bit more cunning. So, little fishie, go and join your mother in the brine, and I’ll have two for the price of one.” He holds Fish above the dirty water, as the boy twists and screams and desperately tries to bite the hand that is holding his legs.

  “No!” screams Lampie. “Don’t do it! Please! Don’t do it! He can’t swim. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Let him go!” She kicks the fat man’s shins, but he does not even seem to notice.

  “You can’t do this, Earl,” says the dwarf. “This is a free boy.”

  “Free? A boy? This?” Earl holds the wriggling child in front of his face. “If I’ve ever seen a monster, it’s this one here. Ooh, lad, what an ugly head you have.” He turns to the dwarf, who is slowly climbing down from his ladder.

  “What do you think, Oswald? A new tank? Or two in one? Reckon they’ll bite each other’s throats open?”

  Lampie looks around desperately. More of the Freaks have left their alcoves now, the old Siamese twins are slowly shuffling closer on their wooden walking frame, moving it forward a few inches at a time. Their heads are looking curiously at the dangling boy. The Freaks are nudging one another and shaking their heads. But they do absolutely nothing, no one flies at the fat man, no one pulls the child from his hands.

  He can’t stay here! screams a voice inside Lampie’s head. With people staring at him every day. That’s even worse than being under the bed all the time. Fish will either go mad or die.

  “Help him! Why won’t you help him?” She tugs at the dwarf’s jacket. “You need to do something!”

  He looks at her sadly. “Yes. I know,” he says quietly. “But what? Earl…” he tries again. “Please…”

  Lampie looks around: the tall man is cowering shyly at the back of the little crowd, the bearded lady is holding her hands in front of her face, as if she does not want to look.

  “Is it dinner time yet?” asks one of the Siamese twins.

  “Yes, what are we having?” asks the other.

  Head first, Lampie rushes at the big fat man. He is holding Fish above the water, about to drop him, and studying him, as if he has all the time in the world – and of course he does, doesn’t he? He has the troupe completely under his thumb. No one ever dares to try anything. They know what will be in store for them if they do: cages, chains, no food for a week, and he is sure he can come up with a few even nastier ideas.

  The girl’s head thumps into Earl’s lower back. It hurts a teeny tiny little bit, but most of all it makes him laugh.

  “What’s this, girlie? Have you changed your mind? Have you come for a kiss after all?”

  Fish has wriggled his way up now and he bites the pale arm as hard as he can. His teeth sink in deeply. Earl lets out a scream and drops the boy into the aquarium with a splash.

  “Taking a bite of the boss?” he shouts after him. “I’ll soon teach you, just you wait.” Blood slowly wells up out of the red dots on his arm.

  Wide-eyed, Lampie stares at the aquarium. Fish sinks like a stone, his head banging against the bottom. She claws herself up the fat man’s body, scratching and biting, but he just grabs her by the scruff of her neck and holds her at arm’s length.

  “And now get out of my tent, girlie. I’ve had enough of you.”

  Lampie glares at him with her most poisonous look. She wants to cut off his head, she wants to shoot poison arrows straight into his… And then she notices someone slowly coming up behind him.

  The mermaid is rising up from the dirty water. She is much taller than the fat man and she grabs his neck with her arms and pulls him against the glass. Earl gives a high-pitched scream, staggers backwards and drops Lampie, who tumbles head over heels. Oswald the dwarf reaches out his hand to help her back up.

  “Fish!” she screams at him. “He has to, he can’t… He’s drowning!”

  “Shh,” whispers Oswald. He puts his arm around her shoulders and points with his other hand. Look!

  The mermaid is no longer a grey sponge, but a predator, just like in the paintings behind her. Even worse. Her teeth are flashing, her eyes are spitting fire. Black fire. Gold, orange fire. And she does not let go. Water splashes everywhere. Earl’s eyes are bulging out of his head. With limp arms, he flails around, trying to free himself, trying to signal to his troupe that they have to help him, please, hasn’t he always been such a good boss?

  But the Phenomenal Freaks just watch, they watch as all the air is slowly squeezed out of his body.

  Lampie attempts to peer around the fat man who is fighting to survive. She is trying to spot Fish, somewhere inside the aquarium, but the dirt in the water is billowing up and she cannot see a thing. I need that ladder, she thinks, I have to get into that tank, I have to get him out of there!

  Earl is almost dead when he remembers what his father always used to say: “Nothing will help you against those monsters – they never give up. Don’t let them take you by surprise, always make sure that you…” With difficulty, he lifts one leg, and his hands search for his boot. If only he could reach it, but he can’t – he comes up just short. The mermaid’s steel arms stay in place around his neck
, the world around him is getting darker and hazier. But his fingers keep grabbing and eventually he finds it – the knife in his boot.

  He stabs, somewhere behind himself, and now it is the mermaid who screams. As he feels her grip loosening, he stabs a few more times. She struggles and writhes, her tail thrashing in the water and smashing against the glass of the aquarium. Cracks appear, an entire cobweb of cracks – and then it breaks with a bang. Everything comes pouring out: water, pieces of glass, a fat man gasping for breath, a mermaid who is bleeding, and finally a boy with a fish’s tail, who rolls across the floor and then lies there limply.

  Lampie runs over to him, the water splashing around her feet. The whole tent stinks of filthy, stagnant seawater. She kneels down beside him.

  “Fish? Are you?… Fish?”

  His eyes are shut, but he is coughing and gagging. And if you are coughing and gagging, then you are not dead. She helps him to sit up a little and he vomits up some water, and then some more water, and the scraps of food that were inside his stomach. Lampie is so relieved that she starts to shake. She rests the boy’s head in her lap and she strokes his wet hair. When he needs to be sick again, she just lets him.

  “That’s good, Fish,” she says quietly. “Well done, go on.”

  It is only then that she looks up.

  Half of the tent is flooded. Everyone is soaked. The bearded lady is wringing out her pinafore, the bird-woman is frantically splashing about and the old Siamese twins are standing in the corner, both heads sobbing. Lanky Lester and the dwarf are leaning over the two bodies that are lying in the middle of the big, deep puddle. The body on the bottom is panting and coughing. The body on top is not moving. When they lift the mermaid off Earl, Lampie sees that she is as grey as ash, her hair hanging in strings over her face and her arms and tail dangling limply.

  Lampie puts her hand over Fish’s eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” says the boy.

  “Ssh,” Lampie replies. “Nothing. Just don’t look.”

  AROUND THE FIRE

  It is a dark night, the last night of the fair. It is cold and clear, and the moon is a thin line.

  Julie, the bearded lady, has made a fire, and Fish watches the light of the flames casting shadows on the faces of the Freaks around him. They are eating chicken and bread, and there is even some cake. Oswald the dwarf has raided Earl’s supplies; they do not usually have so much good food to eat.

  Lampie has given Fish a plate of food too, but he pushes the chicken around, without eating anything. He just looks. At Julie, who needs two chairs, one for each buttock, at how she bites and chews and makes a mess of her beard. At the bird-woman, who is pecking her food like a chicken herself. At the tall man, who always hunches his shoulders but still sticks up above everything else. The Siamese twins are eating from a single plate on their lap and squabbling over the tastiest morsels.

  Everything is so strange for Edward. Sitting here in the evening air is strange. Not being in his room, not being hidden away, everyone being able to see him – all of it is strange. No one is paying any particular attention to him; only Oswald the dwarf catches his eye from time to time and gives him a wink. His wife is sitting beside him. She is a completely ordinary woman, not fat, not thin, not small. She has a baby on her lap, which she keeps kissing and cuddling. Edward can’t help staring at that too.

  When most of the food is finished, Lanky Lester fetches a small guitar, which seems even smaller in his big hands, and he plays songs that drift into the night. All around them, everything else is quiet; the only other sound is the crickets’ chirping. The fairground is empty. The locals went home long ago. Lampie and Edward are the only ones who have been allowed to stay, because they had such a fright and because Edward almost drowned. Earl is recovering inside his caravan, snoring away, with the door locked tight.

  “We won’t be seeing him tonight,” the dwarf had said. “So there’s no need to be afraid.”

  Edward is not afraid. And that is another strange thing. He feels so odd, and there is suddenly so much to think about (like why he did not drown). About how he briefly had an aunt – and now he doesn’t. And maybe a mother – and what was the truth about that? And how he nearly got caught and put on display for ever and ever, just like these people around him, who have crowds gawping at them every day. How do they put up with it? Why don’t they run away?

  Lampie is sitting beside him, quietly singing along to the songs she knows. She knows nearly all of them. She has put her arm around him, and that is strange too. He just lets her. They are telling stories about the mermaid, about what she was like when she first came, and about how she changed.

  Lester strums a sad song, which Lampie knows too:

  “Sleep with the fishes, roll on the deep,

  Let the kind waves rock you to sleep.”

  But she is not sleeping, she is dead, he knows that. She is wrapped in a blanket inside the dark tent. In his blanket – the dwarf’s wife has given him a dry one, which smells quite different. He pulls it tightly around himself, even though it is not too cold this close to the fire.

  “My beautiful baby,” the woman whispers as she cuddles the child. “Yes, you are. Oh, yes, you are.”

  Edward has already noticed that this is not true. The child has a harelip that twists its whole face and it is completely bald. How can she think it’s beautiful?

  But maybe all mothers think their children are beautiful. Except for his own, that is.

  Lampie is having a wonderful time. Her cheeks are warm from the fire, she is breathing in as much as possible of the delicious smell of woodsmoke, and the tall man seems to know all the songs she remembers from the old days. It is almost like being back there; if she half-closes her eyes, the strange people sitting around the fire could easily be pirates, and the fairground could be a beach by the sea. She listens to the stories they tell, she gnaws on chicken bones – she was starving! – she sings along and sometimes, as she sings, she cries a little too, but that doesn’t matter. It’s that kind of evening.

  The dwarf’s wife makes up a bed for them, on the floor of the caravan. It’s already far too late to go home, says Oswald, and besides they have something to do tomorrow morning.

  Lampie feels soft from the singing, and glowing from the cup of mulled wine she was given, and so she snuggles up next to Fish and goes straight to sleep.

  The boy does not sleep, but lies there, looking into the unfamiliar darkness. He has slowly rolled away from the girl, as he is sure that she does not want his cold legs touching her. Tail. Tail – yes, maybe you could call it a tail. His aunt had a tail, the aunt who he had for a moment and has already lost. He thinks about Earl with his grabbing fingers. And he thinks about his father too, and what he would say if he saw him lying here. With the fairground folk, with the dregs, the failures, where his son does not belong. He thinks a thousand things, about the whole day, about his whole life.

  And among all those thoughts, there is one, as steady as a heartbeat, which will not go away: what it was like, that instant before the aquarium exploded, when he was completely underwater, and how it felt.

  Back at the Black House, Lenny is sitting and waiting by the gate. He will not come inside, not for tea, not for dinner. Martha can call as much as she likes and she can threaten him too, but he does not come. His eyes wide, he stares through the bars and into the darkness, looking in the direction they should be coming from.

  But she does not come, the girl, all night long. It gets cold and dark and the dogs went inside long ago, but not Lenny. Lenny stays and waits.

  LETTER

  Augustus’s eyes are closed, but he is not asleep.

  He can still see her standing there in front of him. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.

  She is in the middle of the room, with her hands up to her cheek. And her mother is behind her. Both of them are looking at him. They can see him everywhere he goes: in his bed, on the toilet, in the lamp room. Up on the walkway is the only place where t
he wind blows them out of his head, just a little, and so that is where he spends most of his time.

  How could you? their eyes say. How could you?

  There is a knock at the door. That woman again with her mush. He does not need anything; his throat is clamped shut.

  “I don’t need anything,” he shouts hoarsely. “Just forget about it today.”

  “Mr Waterman!” she persists. What a shrill voice the woman has. “I’ve got something special for you. Come down and get it!”

  What could it be? A pudding, something sweet maybe. He has no idea, but he is not getting up out of his chair for that.

  “I don’t need anything!” he shouts again. Why won’t she just leave him alone?

  “Your daughter was here this afternoon.”

  What? Lampie? He feels his heart skip a beat. But how? She is where she is and she can’t leave, and even if…

  “That’s impossible!” he rasps. Don’t go getting my hopes up, woman! he thinks. I don’t want any maybes or what ifs – that just makes it worse.

  “It’s true! Lampie, right? Well, she left something for you. Will you come down and get it? And you can take the soup while you’re at it!”

  Something white slides through the hatch and flutters to the floor. A piece of paper. He limps over to it.

  “And here’s the soup! Careful though. It’s dripping!”

  And indeed, a hot drop of soup splashes onto his neck as he bends down to pick up the paper. Augustus barely notices. He can hear her, the woman, rattling on, waiting for an answer and then, after a while, walking away. He stares at the piece of paper in his hand. There are letters on it, big lopsided ones. For a moment he allows himself to think that it could really be from her. That she has come all the way here from goodness knows where to push this through his door. Which means that she still thinks about him. That she does not want to spit on his name.