Soft as sponge, the thing collapsed and sent me sprawling. Dust and (I imagined) dark red spores rose up everywhere, and I skidded on my back in shards of crumbling wood and matted webs of fibre. And lolling out of the darkness behind where the dresser had stood – bloating out like some loathsome puppet or dummy – a second fungoid figure leaned towards me. And this time it was a caricature of Ben!
He lolled there, held up on four fibre legs, muzzle snarling soundlessly, for all the world tensed to spring – and all he was was a harmless fungous thing. And yet this time I did scream. Or I think I did, but the thunder came to drown me out.
Then I was on my feet, and my feet were through the rotten floorboards, and I didn’t care except I had to get out of there, out of that choking, stinking, collapsing—
I stumbled, crumbled my way into the tiny cloakroom, tripped and crashed into the clock where it stood in the corner. It was like a nightmare chain reaction which I’d started and couldn’t stop; the old grandfather just crumpled up on itself, its metal parts clanging together as the wood disintegrated around them. And all the furniture following suit, and the very wall panelling smoking into ruin where I fell against it.
And there where that infected timber had been, there he stood – old Garth himself! He leaned half out of the wall like a great nodding manikin, his entire head a livid yellow blotch, his arm and hand making a noise like a huge puff-ball bursting underfoot where they separated from his side to point floppingly towards the open door. I needed no more urging.
“God! Yes! I’m going!” I told him, as I plunged out into the storm . . .
After that . . . nothing, not for some time. I came to in a hospital in Stokesley about noon the next day. Apparently I’d run off the road on the outskirts of some village or other, and they’d dragged me out of my car where it lay upside-down in a ditch. I was banged up and so couldn’t do much talking, which is probably as well.
But in the newspapers I read how what was left of Easingham had gone into the sea in the night. The churchyard, Haitian timber, terrible dry rot fungus, the whole thing, sliding down into the sea and washed away for ever on the tides.
And yet now I sometimes think: where did all that wood go that Garth had been selling for years? And what of all those spores I’d breathed and touched and rolled around in? And sometimes when I think things like that it makes me feel quite ill.
I suppose I shall just have to wait and see . . .
Freaktent
Nancy A. Collins
My hobby is sideshow freaks. Some call them “Special People”. I used to call them that too, until the Seal-Boy (who was seventy at the time) laughed in my face.
It’s taken fifteen years of hanging round mess tents and caravans of the few podunk carnivals that still tour the rural areas to build enough trust amongst these people so they’d agree to sit for me. They guard their private lives, their real selves, jealously. In the carny, there’s no such thing as a free peek. You see, I’m a photographer.
Two summers back I befriended Fallon, a human pincushion turned sideshow boss. Fallon’s little family isn’t much to write home about. There’s the usual dwarf, fat-lady and pickled punk. Their big draw, however, is Rand Holstrum: The World’s Ugliest Man. Rand suffers from acromegaly. It is a disease that twists the bones and the flesh that covers them. It is a disease that makes monsters.
He was born as normal as any child. He served in Korea and married his high-school sweetheart. He fathered two beautiful, perfectly normal children. And then his head began to mutate.
The acromegaly infected the left side of his face, warping the facial bones like untreated pine boards. The flesh on that side of Rand’s face resembles a water balloon filled to capacity. The upper forehead bulges like a baby emerging from its mother’s cervix, its weight pressing against his bristling brow ridge. The puffy, bloated flesh of his cheek has long since swallowed the left eye, sealing it behind a wall of bone and meat. His nose was the size and shape of a man’s doubled fist, rendering it useless for breathing. His lips are unnaturally thick and perpetually cracked. His lower jaw is seriously malformed and his teeth long-since removed. Talking has become increasingly difficult for him. His hair is still dark, although the scalp’s surface area had tripled, giving the impression of mange.
But these deformities alone did not make Rand Holstrum the successful freak that he is today. While the left half of his face is a hideously contorted mass of bone and gristle, like a papier-mâché mask made by a disturbed child, the other side is that of a handsome, intelligent man in his late fifties. That is what draws the fish. He is one of the most disturbing sights you could ever hope to see.
Had his disease been total, Rand Holstrum would have been just another sideshow performer. But due to the Janusnature of his affliction, he’s become one of the few remaining “celebrity” freaks in a day and age of jaded thrill-seekers and Special People.
When I heard Fallon’s carny had pulled into town, I grabbed my camera and took the day off. The fairground was little more than a cow pasture dotted with aluminium outbuildings that served as exhibition halls. Everything smelt of fresh hay, stale straw and manure. I was excited the moment I got out of my car.
The Air Stream trailers that housed the carnies were located a few hundred feet beyond the faltering neon and grinding machinery of the midway. The rides were silent, their armature folded inward like giant metal birds with their heads tucked under their wings. I recognized Fallon’s trailer by the faded Four Star Midways logo on its side.
As I stepped on to the cinderblock that served as the trailer’s front stoop the door flew open, knocking me to the ground. An old man dressed in a polyester suit the colour of cranberries sprang from the interior of the trailer, landing a few feet from where I was sprawled.
“Gawd damn fuckin’ per-vert!” Anger and liquor slurred Fallon’s voice. “I don’t wanna see your face again, unnerstand? Go and peddle your monsters somewheres else!”
The older man picked himself up with overstated dignity, dusting his pants with liver-spotted hands. His chin quivered and his lips were compressed into a bloodless line. His dimestore salt-and-pepper toupée slid away from his forehead.
“You’ll be sorry ’bout this, Fallon! How much longer you reckon Holstrum’ll be around? Once yore meal ticket’s gone, you’ll be coming round beggin’ for ole Cabrini’s help!”
“Not fuckin’ likely! Now git for I call the roustabouts!”
The older man looked mad enough to bite the head off a live chicken. He pretended to ignore me, walking in the opposite direction with a peculiar, stork-like gait, his knobby hands fisted in his pockets.
“What the hell . . .?” I muttered, as I checked to make sure my light meter had survived the spill.
“Sorry ’bout all that, son. Didn’t realize you was on the outside.” Fallon stood over me, one scarred hand outstretched to help me up. He was still in his undershirt and baggy khaki tans, his usual off-hours uniform. His mouth creases deepened. “Come on inside. I’ll tell you all about it.”
Fallon was in his late fifties but looked older. Thirty-five years of life in a carnival will do it to you. Especially the kind of work Fallon specialized in. For years he had been a pincushion, running skewers through his own flesh for the amusement of others. The marks of his trade could be glimpsed in the loose skin of his forearms, the flabby wattle of his neck, the webbing between thumb and forefinger, the underside of his tongue and the cartilage of his ears. His face was long-boned and heavily creased about the eyes and mouth, the cheeks marked by the hectic ivy-blotches of broken blood vessels. As a younger man his hair had been the colour of copper, but the years had leeched away its vitality, leaving it a pale orange. With his bulbous nose and knotty ridge of brow, Fallon would never be mistaken for handsome; but his was the kind of face the camera loves.
The interior of Fallon’s trailer was a cramped jumble of old papers, dirty laundry and rumpled bed linen. I sat down on the chair wedged beside the
fold-down kitchen table while Fallon busied himself with finding two clean jelly glasses.
“I reckon you’d like to know what that hoo-ha was all about.” He tried to sound nonchalant. If I hadn’t known him better, I would have been taken in. “Seeing how’s you got knocked ass over tea kettle, can’t say’s I blames you.” He set a jelly glass in front of me and poured a liberal dose of whiskey into it. Even though it was well after three in the afternoon, it was breakfast time for Fallon. “What you just saw was none other than Harry Cabrini, one of th’ sleaziest items found in the business, which is, believe me, sayin’ something!” Fallon drained his glass with a sharp flex of the elbow.
“Who is this Cabrini? What does he do?”
Fallon hissed under his breath and poured another slug into his glass. “He sells freaks.”
“Huh?” I put my whiskey down untouched. “What do you mean by ‘sells’?”
“Exactly what I meant.” Fallon was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded. He was almost hugging himself. “How d’ya think these folks find their way into th’ business? They drive out on their own when they hear a circus is in town? Well, some do. But most freaks don’t have much say ’bout where they end up. Most get sold by their folks. That’s how Smidgen got into showbiz. Hasn’t seen his family since Eisenhower was in office. Sometimes they get sold by the doctors that was lookin’ after ’em. That’s how Rand got into it. Before he was th’ World’s Ugliest Man, he was laid up in some gawd forsaken VA hospital. Then this intern heard about me lookin’ for a good headliner and arranged it so’s I could meet Rand. I paid him a good hunk’a change for the privilege. Haven’t regretted it since. I’m sure he didn’t think of it as ‘selling’. More like being a talent scout, I reckon.”
“And you’ve bought freaks?”
“Don’t make it sound like that, boy! It’s more like payin’ a finder’s fee. I give my folks decent wages and they’re free to come an’ go as they see fit! The slave days are long gone. But Cabrini . . . Cabrini is a whole other kettle of fish.” Fallon looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Cabrini ain’t no agent. He’s a slaver . . . At least, that’s my opinion. Maybe I’m wrong. But the freaks Cabrini comes up with . . . there’s something wrong about ’em. Most of ’em are feeble-minded. Or worse. I made the mistake of buyin’ a pickled punk offa him a few years back, and he’s been hounding me ever since. Wants me to buy one’a his live ’uns! Buyin’ trouble is more like it! Here, look and see for yourself if I ain’t right.” Fallon leaned over and plucked a colour Polaroid out of the tangle of dirty clothes and contracts. “He left one of his damn pictures behind.” He handed it to me without looking at the photo.
I could understand why. In all the years I’d spent photographing flesh malformed by genetics and disease, nothing had prepared me for the wretched creature trapped inside that picture. The naked, fishbelly-white freak looked more like a skinned, mutant ape than anything born from the coupling of man and woman. Its hairless, under-developed pudendum marked the unfinished thing as a child.
“Where’d he come up with a freak that young? You answer me that.” Fallon’s whisper was tight and throaty. “Most of ’em that age, nowadays, are either in state homes or special schools. Where’s its mama? And how come he’s got more than one of ’em?”
I dropped in on Rand after leaving Fallon’s trailer. I always visit Rand Holstrum when I have a chance. I never know when I might have another opportunity of photographing him. Rand isn’t as young as he used to be, and his ailment is a temperamental one. He’s been told he could die without any warning. Despite the doctors’ prognosis, he remains as cheerful and life-affirming as ever.
I have dozens of photographs of Rand. They hold a weird fascination for me. By looking at them in sequence, I can trace the ravages of his disease. It is as if Rand is a living canvas; a quintessential work-in-progress.
Rand was in the freaktent, getting ready for that evening’s show. He was still in his smoking jacket, a present from his daughter. His wife, Sally, was with him. Rand extended a hand in greeting. It was a purely symbolic gesture. The acromegaly had spread there as well, twisting his knuckles until his extremities were little more than flesh-and-blood catcher’s mitts.
“You remember the wife, don’t you?” he gasped.
Sally Holstrum was decent-looking, as carny wives go. She nodded at me while she hammered up the chicken-wire screen that protected Rand from the crowd while he was on display. The fish get pretty rowdy at times, and a well-placed beer bottle could prove fatal to her husband.
Rand pulled out his wallet, producing a couple of thumb-smudged prints for me to admire. Randy, the Holstrums’ son, was dressed in a cap and gown, a diploma clutched in one hand. June, Rand’s favourite, stood next to her husband, a toddler in her arms. “Randy’s a dentist now . . . Got a practice in . . . Sheboygan . . . Little Dee-Dee can say . . . her ABCs . . .” Rand slurped.
“Time flies,” I agreed. “Oh, I happened to run into some guy named Harry Cabrini today . . .”
Sally stopped what she was doing and turned to look at me. “Cabrini’s here?”
“He was. Fallon threw him out of his ‘office’. I don’t know if he’s still around or not . . .”
“He better not be!” she spat, wagging the claw hammer for emphasis. “If I find that slimeball skulkin’ round this tent again I’ll show ’im where monkeys put bad nuts!”
“Now, Sally . . .”
“Don’t you ‘now, Sally’ me, Rand Holstrum! The trouble with you is that you’re too damn nice! Even to people who don’t deserve more’n what you’d give a dog on the street!”
Rand fell silent. He knew better than to argue with his wife.
“You know what I caught that crazy motherfucker doin’?” she asked as she resumed her hammering. “I came back from the Burger King and found that nutcase taking measurements of Rand’s face!”
“It was . . . nothing . . . I’ve been measured before, Sal . . .”
“Yeah, by doctors. What business does some screwball like Harry Cabrini have doing shit like that?”
Rand shrugged and his good eye winked at me. Just then one of the roustabouts came into the tent with a take-out sack from one of the local burger joints. The grease from the fast-food had already turned the paper bag translucent.
“Got yer food, Mr Holstrum.”
Rand paid off the roustabout while Sally got out the food processor.
“Go change your clothes, honey. You don’t want to get that nice smoker June gave you dirty,” Sally said, as she dropped the cheeseburgers one by one into the hopper. Rand grunted in agreement and shuffled off to change. The malformation of his jaw and the loss of his teeth had made chewing a thing of the past for Rand. Everything he ate had to be liquefied.
“Uh, I’ll see y’all later, Sal . . .”
“Sure, hon. Let me know if you see that Cabrini creep hangin’ around.”
“Sure thing.”
I left just as the stainless-steel rotary knives whirred to life, mulching the half-dozen cheeseburgers into a protein-rich soup.
I lied to Sally. I didn’t mean to, but I ended up doing it anyway.
Twilight arrived at the carnival, and with it came life. The cheesy rides and midway attractions took on a magical aura once the sky darkened from cobalt to indigo and the neon was switched on. The bright lights and thrill rides attracted rubes eager to gawk and be parted from their hard-earned cash. The air was redolent of cotton candy, corndogs, sno-cones, diesel fumes and vomit. Taped music blared from Vietnam-era Army Surplus public-address systems. The motors propelling the death-trap rides roared like captive animals and rattled their chains, yearning to break free. The exhilarated shriek-laugh of the carnival-goer echoed from every mouth. I began to feel the same excitement I’d known as a kid. The sights, sounds and smells of the carnival sparked a surge of nostalgia for days that seemed simpler compared to the life I now lived.
I passed a gaggle of school kids gathered near
the Topsy Turvy. They were searching the sawdust for loose change shaken from the pockets of the passengers, although they risked retribution at the hands of the roustabouts and being puked on by the riders. I smiled, remembering how I, too, used to scuttle in the sawdust in search of nickels and dimes.
That’s when I saw him.
He was weaving in and out of the crowd like a wading bird searching for minnows. His hands were jammed into his pockets. His toupée slid about on his head like a fried egg on a plate. His suit was a size too big for him and all that kept him from losing his pants was a wide white patent leather belt. Oh, and he had loafers to match.
I hesitated a moment, uncertain as to what I should do. He was headed for the parking lot. I wavered. The image of the twisted freak-child rose before my eyes and I followed him.
Cabrini got into a second-hand panel truck that had once belonged to a baked-goods chain. The faded outline of a smiling, apple-cheeked little girl with blonde ringlets devour ing a slab of white bread slathered in butter could still be glimpsed on the side of the van. It was easy enough to follow Cabrini from the fairground to a decrepit trailer park twenty miles away.
He lived in a fairly large mobile home set in a lot full of chickweed and rotting newspapers. Uncertain as to what I should do, I opted for the direct approach. I knocked on the trailer’s doorframe.
There was scurrying inside, then the sound of something being knocked over.
“Who the fuck is it?”
“Mr Cabrini? Mr Harry Cabrini?”
“Yeah, I’m Cabrini – what’s it t’ya?”
“Mr Cabrini, my name is Kevin Malone. I was told by a Mr Fallon that you had . . . something of interest to me.” Silence. “Mr Cabrini?”
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror Page 32
