The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel

by Charles L. Grant

  “Shit,” she said disgustedly.

  Kitt’s eyes widened.

  Fran grinned. “Hey, I thought you lived in New York.”

  “Yeah, but I never said stuff like that.” A half-trembling smile. “I ever said something like that, god, my mother would wash my mouth out with soap, I’d be grounded for a year.”

  “Yeah, well —”

  A faint whirring startled her. A brief metallic sputtering, and suddenly bells in the steeple clanged tunelessly, and so rapidly she didn’t think to count them until Kitt said, “Nuts, it’s five already.”

  Fran didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be. That meant she’d been walking all afternoon, walking all over and not once leaving town.

  “Hey,” said Kitt, “I gotta go. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” Fran said, still staring at the church, at the dark rectangles in the stone tower the bells hid behind.

  Five o’clock?

  Then Kitt faced her toward Mainland Road, gently. “Two blocks down that way, turn left, two blocks more. I know you’re not lost, but that’s where you live anyway.” A grin that exposed a missing tooth on the bottom. “See you.” And she ran in the opposite direction, dragging her shadow behind her until she rounded a corner and disappeared.

  I don’t like this place, Fran decided as she headed for the place where she lived now, it wasn’t home; I don’t like a place where people know where you live when you didn’t even tell them.

  But by the time she reached her front walk, she hated herself for already recognizing a few of the houses, for thinking they weren’t all that bad, not really, some of them were actually kind of pretty in a weird sort of way. Different colors on one place. Red and cream; dark blue and white; grey and maroon. They were big enough that it kind of looked good. Not old, not like she first thought; at least not falling-down old.

  Even the house where she lived now — two stories and lots of that stuff her mother called gingerbread, fresh white and dark green, and her room right over the front-porch roof on the left, she could tell from the curtains her mother had hung in the open window. They waved at her. Slowly. Reaching out and sighing, sliding back in. Suddenly she was mad enough to want to run in and tear them down from their rods, stamp all over them, drag them through mud and dirt and leave them in the street where cars would run over them; and just as suddenly it left her, and left her puffing as if she had run a million miles, making her so tired that she nearly had to crawl to the steps, sit down, elbows on knees, cheeks in palms.

  Trapped.

  “Fran?” Her mother calling from inside. “Fran, we’re going to eat in a few minutes.”

  “Yeah, okay.” She hunched her shoulders, made herself small, like the small brown bird with the touch of yellow on his head that sauntered across the grass like he owned it. He stabbed at something on the walk and moved on, popping into the bushes that separated her house from the one next door.

  When she looked back to the street, someone was standing on the sidewalk.

  She sat up abruptly; it was a boy. He wore a baseball shirt with the sleeves rolled up, baseball pants, and sneakers that had a black band around the edge. His hair was thick and brown, and streaked with light, as if he spent most of his day in the hot sun.

  “Hi,” he said, not shy at all.

  She sort of smiled, keeping most of it in because she didn’t want to act like a jerk, because he was, after all, only a boy even if he was cute.

  He looked the house over. “You just moved in, I bet.”

  She nodded.

  He kept one hand in a hip pocket. Any minute now she expected him to start chewing tobacco.

  “Fran, supper!”

  She grimaced.

  “Fran.” The boy worked his mouth around it like something he hadn’t ever eaten before and wasn’t sure how it tasted.

  “Short for Frances,” she told him brusquely, blinking rapidly because she didn’t know she still had a voice, or could use it. “I hate Frances. I hate Fran too, but it’s better than nothing.”

  He grinned, his cheeks fat like a chipmunk after a full meal. Then, to her embarrassment, he pointed at his cheeks, poked at them. “I’m Chip,” he told her. “Because I look like a chipmunk.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Everybody. You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know, turn around, I’ll see if you have a stripe and a tail.”

  He laughed. “All right, Fran! Hey, you got a last name?”

  Suspicious, she frowned. “What for?”

  “So I can look you up in the phone book, dope, and call you sometime.”

  Maybe, she thought at him, I don’t want you to call me, you ever think of that? Why would I want anyone called Chip to call me? Especially a boy.

  “Lumbaird,” she answered.

  He nodded. “Okay. Mine’s Clelland.”

  She shrugged so?

  He straightened, his face without expression, and she wanted to fall under the steps, under the porch, hide there until the spiders got her.

  “Fran?”

  She turned quickly. “Mom, c’mon, just a few more minutes, okay?”

  “It’s ready,” her mother said sternly from the other side of the screen door. Hardly seen. Only a pale glow from the skin on her arms and face. “And it’s getting cold.”

  “Oh . . . all right.”

  She looked back to tell Chip . . . something, she didn’t know what . . . but the sidewalk was empty. She scrambled to her feet and looked up and down the block, but no one was there. No one. He was gone. Only the trees. Still frowning, she wanted to run down the walk and check behind the bushes there because that’s where he had to be. Hiding. He couldn’t have run that far that fast just when she was talking to her mother.

  “Frances. Now.”

  She stared; she couldn’t see him.

  She heard the door open and took the steps slowly.

  Her mother guided her into the kitchen, to the sink and the soap. “Did you have a good walk, honey? Did you meet anyone?”

  She told her about Kitt, about how the girl knew where she lived.

  “Honey, in a town this small everyone knows everyone and where everyone lives.”

  Great.

  “And I met a boy named Chip,” she added as she dried her hands on paper towels.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yep.” She looked up at her mother and ignited her best smile. “I think he’s a ghost.”

  * * *

  The storm woke her.

  She had been listening to it all day, grumbling like an old man off in the distance, stomping around the hills as if he couldn’t make up his mind which way to go. Dark clouds and once in a while a gust of wind that picked up dust and blew it into the house, snapped the shades, snapped the curtains, fluttered the fringe on the living room carpet. Then calm. Not quiet, just still. The old man, out of breath, waiting for his strength to return. A peculiar smell that Daddy said meant rain was on the way. A tickling along her arms once in a while that Mom told her was lightning getting ready to strike.

  They had been working for what felt like forever, putting the last things away, cleaning floors and windows, moving furniture to get the rugs down, moving the furniture back, taking breaks to get into the car and drive around the Station. Exploring. Finding a park that was huge, almost like another country even though they only stayed on the paths; eating in places called the Inn and the Cove and the Cock’s Crow; seeing the movie theater that didn’t look like one she ever saw but at least it gave her hope; looking at her new school on High Street that made her depressed because it was stone and something else old even though it was right near the park entrance; seeing the library, a sort of modern building that she knew right away just didn’t belong. Once, driving across the railroad tracks and into the valley where she saw the farms and a quarry and Pilgrim Creek and she wanted to scream because there wasn’t anything out there but grass and crops and a couple of cows that didn’t even bother t
o look up when they drove by.

  Then working again, and eating, and sleeping, and working because her parents said they wanted it all out of the way before the real summer began and it was too hot.

  The storm woke her.

  She hadn’t even had time to find Kitt or Chip, and neither of them had stopped by, though a couple of other kids had — Elly Gulsing and Susan Dumont, who looked like sisters but weren’t, and who spent that first hour telling her about the school and the teachers and the boys and stuff. Elly, who for god’s sake wore a dress and sounded like she owned everything but the churches, said there was always something going on at the park pond, Fran ought to come over as soon as she was allowed; Susan, who dressed normally and had enormous dimples and was heavier but not really fat, said you can get ice cream and stuff at stands in the park, sometimes they spend all day there if they have enough money for a hot dog lunch. Fran said it sounded great, but she couldn’t imagine spending a whole day, wasting all that daylight, sitting around watching ducks and talking and making plans to take over the world. Boring. It sounded boring.

  They came by a couple of times, alone or together, talked, left, and left behind bits of themselves that Fran passed on to her parents — like Elly’s father being some sort of banker in Boston, like Susan being a twin but her sister had died of cancer two years ago, like Kitt’s father owning the delicatessen on High Street and letting his daughter’s friends swipe some summer fruit now and then.

  The storm woke her.

  Then a man came by, Mr. Chase from the hardware store, with a station wagon filled with kids. He knew Daddy and wanted to know if they wanted to go to the Travelers with him. Mom didn’t think so, Daddy said there was still a ton of things to do around the house, but before Fran could protest, they made a miracle happen — they let her go without them, with a promise to listen to Mr. Chase and not go off on her own.

  A miracle.

  She almost cried.

  And before she could think, the air smelled of sawdust and spun sugar, mustard and hamburgers, grease and machines. Elly was there, and Susan, and Kitt, and time passed in a gulp of soda, a smear of mustard licked off her thumb, and suddenly Mr. Chase said time for one more ride.

  She picked the carousel, picked an ostrich, and prayed that the bird would jump off the platform and run her home. A hundred times in a circle, a million times, laughing, almost forgetting how miserable she was when she saw Chip on a stallion a few rows ahead. She called. He didn’t hear her. He was talking to a skinny girl with straight hair riding beside him. Fran called again. He looked over his shoulder, stared, grinned recognition, waved, but the music was too loud for her to hear what he said when he tried to call back.

  After the ride, feeling dizzy, she tried to find him, but Mr. Chase was waiting at the exit to take them all home.

  The storm woke her.

  A sound like slow-ripping metal sat her up abruptly, clutching the sheet to her chest; an enormous explosion of thunder and the storm wasn’t an old man anymore, it was a bull running wild. At first she was scared. Cambridge didn’t have storms like this. Not with lightning that lasted forever and seared shadows into the walls; not with thunder that lasted forever, crashing, then echoing, and echoing again, the bull running away and turning around to charge one more time.

  Kicking up pebbles of rain that bounced off the porch roof and smashed against her window.

  But as it settled in, the thunder constant but not as loud, the lightning fierce but not as hot, the house no longer vibrating, she scolded herself for acting like a baby. A calming count to seven. She left her bed, padded to the window, squinting against the bright flares, scratching her sides, through her hair, leaning dose enough to the pane for her breath to make a cloud she wiped away with the heel of her hand.

  Lightning, this time silent, and the houses across the street were without color; lightning, silent, and the rain in the street was silver fire and silver sparks; lightning, and someone stood under the branches of the tree at the foot of her new driveway.

  She almost didn’t see him.

  A dark figure that blended in with the bole, and it took two more strikes before she knew he was really there.

  Chip?

  No; it must be after midnight.

  It was too dark in spite of all the light, and he was too far away from the nearest streetlamp to be seen without the lightning. But he stood there nevertheless, a shadow beside a shadow, not moving even though the wind slanted the rain and turned the street to a river of deep black ice.

  He stood there; she could see him.

  What a jerk, she thought; she wasn’t afraid, just curious why his parents would let him out so late. Unless, she thought with a grin, he had snuck out. In the storm. Which instantly made her want to know why.

  To see you, stupid.

  Oh sure, tell me another one.

  Really, I’m not kidding.

  Quickly she grabbed up her bathrobe and ran out of the room, keeping on her toes even though the wind had found a voice to howl with and moan. This afternoon the stairs had been carpeted, the last thing done before Mom declared the moving officially over, and she hurried down, not really sure she wouldn’t slip in the soft pile, ran into the living room and pulled aside the drapery, and the shade.

  Waited.

  Only a few droplets quivered on the glass here, the porch roof keeping most of the rain away, and when the lightning came again, distant, wan, almost weary of the game, she pressed her forehead against the cold pane and couldn’t see him no matter how hard she stared. She bit down on her lower lip gently, pulled at it with her teeth. Another bolt, and she couldn’t be sure.

  “Damn,” she whispered, moved into the foyer and checked the staircase to be sure no one else was awake and prowling around. Then she opened the front door, and shivered as cold and damp swirled hungrily around her ankles, burrowed into the skin on calf and shin, tightened the planes of her stomach and buttocks.

  She still couldn’t see him.

  Thunder, loud and stomping away.

  A second check of the staircase. She opened the screen door and, with a deep breath, stepped onto the porch, hugging herself when the storm cold leaped out of the shrubs and grabbed her, telling herself she was a jerk, a dope, a real first class idiot, she was going to catch pneumonia and her father would kill her.

  This time she saw him.

  Without the lightning. When her vision adjusted. When the rain, just for a second, was split by the wind, she saw him standing by the tree, one arm around the bole as if to keep himself from being blown away. He was dressed the way she had first seen him, but she frowned when she realized that he wasn’t touched by the storm — his hair wasn’t flying, his clothes weren’t wet.

  She wondered if she should wave, let him know she had seen him.

  “Looking for your ghost?”

  She screamed and froze, became rigid when hands took her shoulders and lifted her, held her, and a voice whispered god, I’m sorry over and over again, turned her around away from the wind and she could see over her father’s shoulder and could see that Chip was gone. Her teeth began to chatter. She bit her tongue, yelped, and he took her inside, straight to the kitchen, sat her at the table and turned on the light over the stove. A small light. Just enough for her to see him, but not his eyes.

  Without speaking he warmed some milk in a pan, poured her a small glass, poured himself one and sat.

  “Nightmare?” A soft question.

  The old man, the bull, was gone, leaving the rain behind to rattle across the roof and splash out of the gutters.

  She hated warm milk, it was for little kids and old people, but it tasted good when she sipped it

  “No. The thunder woke me.”

  “It always sounds louder with all these hills around, all this open space.” He chuckled. “They’re no worse than the ones back in Cambridge, they just sound that way.” He pointed at the ceiling. “It woke me too. Your mother, on the other hand, that woman will slee
p through World War III.”

  She nodded.

  “So, what were you doing on the porch?”

  A shrug.

  A yawn.

  “Fran.”

  In the dim light she could see a smile, gentle.

  “I know it’s been hard, really I do. But we’re all done now, and you can meet some more kids, have a good time the rest of the summer. I just . . . I didn’t realize how much work it would be, and I’m sorry. Must be kind of lonely, huh?”

  A shrug.

  A wider yawn.

  The milk had cooled; she pushed the glass away. He stood, and held out his arms. “C’mon.”

  She was too old and they both knew it, but to make him happy she let him pick her up, let her chin rest on his shoulder while he turned off the light just as the old man returned, turned into the bull, and slammed the house with a jolt that startled them both. Her father laughed. She snuggled closer, hands tucked against her neck as they moved down the hall and started up the stairs.

  She yawned so hard her jaw popped, and she giggled, felt her eyes begin to close and was glad they did because if they hadn’t, if she had been wide awake, she would have had to tell her father that Chip was standing on the porch.

  Fever dream.

  Hot and cold monsters fighting in her blood.

  Hot hands and cold hands pressed tenderly against her cheeks, brushing damp hair from her brow, settling a thin blanket beneath her chin.

  Chip walking through the wall to say hi. Checking out the room. Telling her it was nice. Waving good-bye when the sun went down.

  Blood on the inside of her cheek when she bit it.

  Warm hands.

  Cool hands.

  “I just don’t understand it.”

  “For crying out loud, Lanette, how many times do I have to say I’m sorry? I didn’t realize she was that wet. She wasn’t outside that long. And she was fine when I put her to bed.”