The Midnight Circus
Page 9
“You . . .” Donnal began, the old rhythm of his heart spreading a heat down his back. “You are not supposed to come in without knocking, Jay. Without being . . .” He took a deep breath and willed the heat away. “Invited.”
Jason nodded silently, his eyes still on the skulls.
“Did you hear me?” Donnal forced his voice to be soft but he couldn’t help noticing that Jason’s hair was as velvety as mouse skin. Donnal jammed his hands into his pockets. “Did you?”
Jason looked at him then, his dark eyes wide, vaguely unfocused. He nodded but did not speak. He never spoke.
“Go back to your apartment,” Donnal said, walking the boy to the door. He motioned with his head, not daring to remove his hands from his pockets. “Now.”
Jason disappeared through the door and Donnal shut it carefully with one shoulder, then leaned against it. After a moment, he drew his hands out of his pockets. They were trembling and moist.
He stared across the room at the skulls. They seemed to glow, but it was only a trick of the light, nothing more. Donnal lay down on his futon and thought about nothing but the owls until he fell asleep. It was dinner time when he finally woke. As he ate he thought—and not for the first time—how hard winter was on vegetarians.
“But owls don’t have that problem,” he whispered aloud. His teeth crunched through the celery with the same sort of snick-snack he thought he remembered hearing when the owl had bitten into the mouse’s neck.
The next morning was one of those crisp, bright, clear winter mornings with the sun reflecting off the snowy fields with such an intensity that Donnal’s eyes watered as he rode along River Road. By the water treatment building, he stopped and watched a cardinal flicking through the bare ligaments of sumac. His disability check was due and he guessed he might have a client or two as soon as he passed his exams at the Institute. He had good hands for massage and the extra money would come in handy. He giggled at the little joke: hands . . . handy. Extra money would mean he could buy the special tapes he’d been wanting. He’d use them for the accompaniment for massages and for his own meditations. Maybe even have cards made up: Donnal McIvery, Licensed Massage Therapist, the card would say. Professional Massage. By Appointment Only.
He was so busy thinking about the card, he didn’t notice the car parked by the roadside until he was upon it. And it took him a minute before he realized there were three people—two men and a woman—standing on the other side of the car, staring at the far trees with binoculars.
Donnal felt hot then cold with anger. They were looking at his birds, his owls. He could see that both of the Great Grays were sitting in the eastern field, one on a dead tree down in the swampy area of the marsh and one in its favorite perch on a swamp maple. He controlled his anger and cleared his throat. Only the woman turned.
“Do you want a look?” she asked with a kind of quavering eagerness in her voice, starting to take the field glasses from around her neck.
Unable to answer, his anger still too strong, Donnal shook his head and, reaching into his pocket, took his own field glasses out. The red scarf came with it and fell to the ground. His cheeks flushed as red as the scarf as he bent to retrieve it. He knew there was no way the woman could guess what he used the scarf for, but still he felt she knew. He crumpled it tightly into a little ball and stuffed it back in his pocket. It was useless now, desecrated. He would have to use some of his disability check to buy another. He might have to miss a lesson because of it; because of her. Hatred for the woman flared up and it was all he could do to breathe deeply enough to force the feeling down, to calm himself. But his hands were shaking too much to raise the glasses to his eyes. When at last he could, the owls had flown, the people had gotten back into the car and driven away. Since the scarf was useless to him, he didn’t even check for pellets, but got back on his bike and rode home.
Little Jason was playing outside when he got there and followed Donnal up to his room. He thought about warning the boy away again, but when he reached into his pocket and pulled out the scarf, having for the moment forgotten that the scarf’s magic was lost to him, he was overcome with the red heat. He could feel great gray wings growing from his shoulders, bursting through his parka, sprouting quill, feather, vane. His mouth tasted blood. He heard the snick-snack of little neck bones being broken. Such a satisfying sound. When the heat abated, and his eyes cleared, he saw that the boy lay on the floor, the red scarf around his neck, pulled tight.
For a moment Donnal didn’t understand. Why was Jason lying there; why was the scarf set into his neck in just that way? Then, when it came to him that his own strong hands had done it, he felt a strange satisfaction and he breathed as slowly as when he said his mantras. He laid the child out carefully on his bed and walked out of the room, closing the door behind.
He cashed the check at the local bank, then pedaled into Northampton. The Mercantile had several silk scarves, but only one red one. It was a dark red, like old blood. He bought it and folded it carefully into a little packet, then tucked it reverently into his pocket.
When he rode past the barn where he lived, he saw that there were several police cars parked in the driveway and so he didn’t stop. Bending over the handlebars, he pushed with all his might, as if he could feel the stares of townsfolk.
The center was filled with cars, and two high school seniors, down from Smith Academy to buy candy, watched as he flew past. The wind at his back urged him on as he pedaled past the Main Street houses, around the meandering turns, past the treatment plant and the old barns marked with the passage of high school graffiti.
He was not surprised to see two vans by the roadside, one with out-of-state plates; he knew why they were there. Leaning his bike against one of the vans, he headed toward the swamp, his feet making crisp tracks on the crusty snow.
There were about fifteen people standing in a semicircle around the dead tree. The largest of the Great Grays sat in the crotch of the tree, staring at the circle of watchers with its yellow eyes. Slowly its head turned from left to right, eyes blinked, then another quarter turn.
The people were silent, though every once in a while one would move forward and kneel before the great bird, then as silently move back to place.
Donnal was exultant. These were not birders with field glasses and cameras. These were worshipers. Just as he was. He reached into his pocket and drew out the kerchief. Then slowly, not even feeling the cold, he took off his boots and socks, his jacket and trousers, his underpants and shirt. No one noticed him but the owl, whose yellow eyes only blinked but showed no fear.
He spoke his mantra silently and stepped closer, the scarf between his hands, moving through the circle to the foot of the tree. There he knelt, spreading the cloth to catch the pellet when it fell and baring his neck to the Great Gray’s slashing beak.
Little Red
with Adam Stemple
SEVEN YEARS OF BAD LUCK. That’s what I think as I drag the piece of broken mirror over my forearm. Just to the right of a long blue vein, tracing the thin scars that came before.
There’s no pain. That’s all on the inside. It won’t come no matter how much I bleed. No pain. But for a moment . . .
Relief.
For a moment.
Until Mr. L calls me again. “Hey, you, Little Red, come here.”
Calls me. Not any of the other girls. Maybe it’s because he likes my stubby red hair. Likes to twist his stubby oldman fingers in it. And I can’t tell him no.
“You want to go back home?” he asks. “Back to your grandmother’s? Back to the old sewing lady?” He’s read my file. He knows what I will say.
“No. Even you are better than that.” Then I don’t say anything else. I just go away for a bit in my mind and leave him my body.
The forest is dark but I know the way. I have been here before. There is a path soon, pebbly and worn. But my fingers and toes are like needles and pins. If I stay here, stray here too long, will I become one of them forever?
Alby faces the wall and traces imaginary coastlines on the white cement. She is dark and elfin, her hair shorn brutally close to her scalp except for one long tress that hangs behind her left ear. “Why do you wind him up like that?”
“Wind up who?” My voice is rough with disuse. Is it the next morning? Or have days passed? “And how?”
“Mr. L. The things you say to him . . .” Shuddering, Alby looks more wet terrier than girl. “If you’d just walk the line, I’m sure he’d leave you alone.”
Having no memory of speaking to Mr. L at all, I just shrug. “Walk the line. Walk the path. What’s the difference?”
“Promise?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, play the game, let them think you’re getting better.” Alby straightens up, picturing home, I figure. She’s got one to go back to. Wooden fence. Two-car garage. Mom and dad and a bowl full of breakfast cereal. No grandma making lemonade on a cold Sunday evening. No needles. No pins.
It’s my turn to shudder. “I don’t want to get better. They might send me home.”
Alby stares at me. She has no answer to that. I turn to the bed. Start picking at the mattress, wondering if there are springs inside these old things. Alby faces the wall, her finger already winding a new path through the cracks. We all pass the time in our own way.
We get a new therapist the next day. We’re always getting new ones. They stay a few weeks, a few months, and then gone.
This one wants us to write in journals. She gives us beautifully bound books, cloth covers with flowers and bunnies and unicorns and things, to put our ugly secrets in.
“Mine has Rainbow Brite.” Alby is either excited or disgusted, I can’t tell which.
Joelle says, “They should be snot colored. They should be brown like . . .” She means shit. She never uses the word though.
“I want you to start thinking beautiful thoughts, Joelle,” the therapist says. She has all our names memorized already. I think, This one will only last two weeks. Long enough for us ruin the covers. Long enough for Joelle to rub her brown stuff on the pages.
I put my hand on my own journal. It has these pretty flowers all over. I will write down my thoughts. But they won’t be beautiful.
CUTTER
scissors fillet knife
a broken piece of glass
I can’t press hard enough
to do more than scratch the surface
and blood isn’t red
until it touches the air
Okay, so it doesn’t rhyme and I can’t use it as a song, but it’s true.
“What did you write, Red?” Alby asks.
Joelle has already left for the bathroom. I don’t look forward to the smell from her book.
“Beautiful thoughts.” I cover the poem with my hand. It is beautiful, I decide. Dark and beautiful, like I am when I dream.
“Little Red.” Mr. L stands in the doorway. “Excuse me, Augustine. I need to see that one.”
He points at me. I go away.
Four-footed and thick-furred, I stalk through a shadowy forest. My prey is just ahead of me—I can hear his ragged breathing, his terror-sweat. Long pink tongue to one side, I leap forward, galloping now. I burst through a flowering thornbush and catch sight of him: Mr. L, naked and covered in gray hair. I can smell his terror. Then I am on him, and my sharp teeth rip into his flesh. Bones crack and I taste marrow, sweet counterpoint to his salty blood.
I wake in the infirmary, arms and legs purple with fresh bruises.
“Jesus, Red,” Alby says. “He really worked you over this time, didn’t he?”
“I guess.” I don’t remember. Seems likely, though.
“Looks like you got him one too, though.”
“Oh, yeah?” I can hardly move, though I turn my head toward the sound of her voice.
Alby grins her pixie smile. “Yeah. Got a big bandage on his neck, he does.”
I lick my lips. Imagine I can taste blood. “Probably cut himself shaving.”
Her smile fading, Alby says, “Whatever you say, Red.”
I try to roll over, turn away from her, but something holds me down: leather straps at my ankles and wrists. One across my waist.
“Five-point locked leather,” Alby says, with some reverence. “You were really going crazy when they brought you in. Foaming at the mouth, even.”
I lay my head back down on the small, hard pillow. Close my eyes. Maybe I can get back to my dream.
Mr. L visits me in the dark room with the leather straps. He has no bandage on his neck, but there are scratches there. I know why. I have his skin under my fingernails. In my teeth.
“Little Rojo,” he says, almost lovingly, “you must learn control.”
I try to laugh but all that comes out is a choking cough. He wanders slowly behind me, his fingers trailing through my red hair, my cap of blood.
“You must learn to walk the path.” In front of me again, he glances up, at the television camera, the one that always watches. Puts his back to it.
“And will you be my teacher?” I ask before spitting at him.
He looks down at me. Smiles. “If you let me.” Then he pats my cheek. Before he can touch me again, I go away.
The forest is cold that night and I stand on a forked road. One is the path of needles, one the path of pins. I don’t know which is which. Both are paths of pain.
I take the left.
I don’t know how far I travel—what is distance to me? I am a night’s walk from my den, a single leap from my next meal—but I am growing weary when the trap closes on my leg.
Sharp teeth and iron, it burns as it cuts. A howl escapes my throat, and I am thrown out of myself.
I see Mr. L standing over the strapped body of a girl. I can’t see his hands. But I can feel them.
He looks up as I howl again, his face caught between pleasure and pain. I tumble through the thick walls and out into the cool night sky, into the dark forest, into my fur body.
I tear at my ankle with teeth made for the task. Seconds later, I leave my forepaw in the trap and limp back down the path.
It is days later. Weeks. Nighttime. Moon shining in my tiny window. They couldn’t keep me tied down forever. The law doesn’t allow it.
I am crouched in the corner of my room, ruined tube of toothpaste in my hands. I have figured out how to tear it, unwind it, form it into a razor edge. I hold it over my arm, scars glowing white in the moonlight, blue vein pulsing, showing me where to cut.
But I don’t. Don’t cut.
Instead I let the pain rise within me. I know one quick slash can end the pain. Can bring relief. But I don’t move. I let the pain come and I embrace it, feel it wash over me, through me. I let it come—and then, I go away.
I am in the forest. But I am not four-footed. I am not thick-furred. I have no hope of tasting blood now or smelling the sweet scent of terrified prey.
I am me: scrawny and battered, short tufts of ragged red hair sprouting from my too-large head. Green eyes big. A gap between my top front teeth wide enough to escape through.
I stand in the middle of the road. No fork tonight: it runs straight and true like the surgeon’s knife. Behind me, tall trees loom. I take two tentative steps and realize I am naked. Embarrassed, I glance around. I am alone.
Before long I see a white clapboard cottage ahead of me. Smoke trails from a red brick chimney. Gray paving stones lead up to the front door. I recognize the house. It is more threatening than the dark forest with its tall trees. Grandma lives here.
I turn to run, but behind me I hear howling—long, low, and mournful. I know the sound—wolves. Hunting wolves. I must hurry inside.
/>
The door pulls open silently. The first room is unlit as I step inside. I pull the door closed behind me. Call into the darkness, “Grandma?”
“Is that you, Red?” Her voice is lower than I remember.
“Yes, Grandma.” My voice shakes. My hands shake.
“Come into the bedroom. I can’t hear you from here.”
“I don’t know the way, Grandma.”
I hear her take a deep breath, thick with smoke, rattling with disease. “Follow my voice. You’ll remember how.”
And suddenly, I do remember. Three steps forward, nine steps left. Reach out with your right hand and push through the thin door.
“I am here, Grandma.”
Outside, there are disappointed yips as the wolves reach the front door and the end of my trail.
“Come closer, Red. I can’t see you from here.”
“Yes, Grandma.” I step into blackness and there she is, lying in the bed. She is bigger than I remember, or maybe I am smaller. The quilt puffs around her strangely, as if she has muscles in new places. A bit of drool dangles from her bottom lip.
I look down at my empty hands. My nakedness. “I haven’t brought you anything, Grandma.”
She smiles, showing bright, pointed teeth. “You have brought yourself, Red. Come closer, I can’t touch you from here.”
“Yes, Grandma.” I take one step forward and stop.
The wolf pack snuffles around the outside of the house, searching for a way in.
Grandma sits up. Her skin hangs loosely on her, like a housedress a size too large. Tufts of fur poke out of her ears, rim her eyes.
“No, Grandma. You’ll hurt me.”
She shakes her head, and her face waggles loosely from side to side. “I never hurt you, Red.” She scrubs at her eye with a hairy knuckle, then scoots forward, crouching on the bed, poised to spring. Her haunches are thick and powerful. “Sometimes the wolf wears my skin. It is he who hurts you.” Her nose is long now.