Needles & Sins

by John Everson

  Talman shook his head and tried to stand, fumbling forward in surprise. He started to fall, but the young boy grabbed at his elbow to steady the performer.

  “Careful, mister,” he said.

  Talman’s chest suddenly burned hot orange like a forge, and he grabbed at the boy’s arm to steady himself. The circus faded away.

  The boy lay in the dark, tears wetting his pillow. A damp curl of fiery hair was plastered to his cheek.

  “But what about mom?” the boy cried.

  “Mom isn’t going to help you anymore.”

  The air shuddered with the crack of a hand on skin. The boy winced and shook with every strike, but he didn’t make another sound.

  Crack, crack, slap.

  The sound of fingers slapping flesh seemed to echo louder and louder as a brutal voice screamed, “you will never, ever, speak to me like that again.”

  “What did you say?” Talman whispered.

  “I just asked if you were okay,” the boy said. “Are you?”

  He opened his eyes and the room was gone, the sounds faded. They stood, a querulous boy and a young melancholy man, behind the freak show tent, hands gripping each other. The grass rippled in a soft summer breeze.

  “Yeah,” Talman said, ruffling the boy’s head with shaking fingers. The image of that head being struck with a fist again and again entered his mind, and as he parted the boy’s hair he noticed a purpled spot deep beneath the carrot twists. “I’m just fine.”

  “Did you get spanked?” the boy asked. His eyes were wide.

  “Not today,” Talman smiled. He held out his hand, and the boy looked confused. After a moment, he pressed smooth, porcelain white fingers to Talman’s own weathered ones.

  “I’m Talman. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Jimmy Jenkins.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Jimmy Jenkins. Did you see the show?”

  “No, but my dad did.”

  “Where is he now?”

  The boy pointed through the aisle of tent posts and taut wires to a couple several yards away. A tall, gaunt man and a plump middle-aged woman engaged in heated conversation, and as Talman watched, the man shook a long finger at the woman, who only turned her back on him to stalk away.

  Talman felt a familiar frisson at the scene, and looked closer at the small boy.

  “Not a good day?” he ventured.

  “Never is,” the boy said. Then Jimmy Jenkins turned and ran away.

  “Wait,” Talman called, but by the time he’d rounded the edge of tent, the youth was gone.

  That night, in their trailer, Skyy stepped up behind him to press a cheek to his shoulder. Talman’s chest burned at her touch.

  “Can I see?”

  He peeled off his shirt and let it drop to the floor before turning around.

  “Always,” he grinned.

  Skyy pressed a soft finger to his sternum and delicately traced the edges of the wound. It had burned, at least a little, ever since Talman had left the tattoo shop. Now he looked down at it with her, and saw the blood-red stain of the illustrated heart matched the throb of the pain it caused.

  “It looks so real,” she whispered, staring up into his eyes. “Does it hurt?”

  “Kind of,” he downplayed.

  “Let me kiss it and make it better,” she promised.

  The lights in their tent were soon out, sight replaced by sighs.

  Over the next few days, the ache in Talman’s chest stilled, as the new tattoo healed. The circus packed up and left Parkville, spending three hours on the road to get through an endless stand of knee-high-by-the-fourth-of-July cornstalks.

  At last they arrived at the site of their new beds—for the next few days anyway. Ivanhoe, Indiana.

  “Aye, aye,” the circus roadies joked, as they pounded in the stakes and hoisted the tents. “Aye, aye I., I.”

  Talman had been strangely silent as they traveled away from Parkville. He heard strange sounds in his heart, and begged it to be still. When Skyy touched him, he felt edgy, but alive. But when he hugged and shook hands with his fellow circus workers, he felt bizarre mixes of hatred and love, often in oscillating measures. The world shook. He was constantly uneasy.

  That first night in Ivanhoe passed slowly. He tossed and turned in their bed that felt both strange and familiar in its new home. Skyy slipped into slumber quickly, worn out from the day of moving and paperwork. She’d gone into town without him to make sure all the permits were in order before the first stake was struck, and then made sure the tickets and receipts and all the other hidden business that runs a traveling town were in order before they opened the next day.

  As she snored beside him, Talman felt a familiar empty ache begin anew in his chest. This feeling, he knew, had nothing to do with the tattoo. This was the start of another sleepless night. “God, just let me sleep,” he whispered, and then leaned in to smell the warm musk of Skyy’s hair, for comfort. His ache was instantly replaced with fire.

  Skyy sat in her nightgown on the edge of their bed. There was a bundle in her arms, and as she turned, he saw that she nursed a tiny infant, rocking it slowly back and forth. Her hair was knotted and tangled, her face pale. But her smile was radiant.

  “Whose is that?” Talman stammered in the dream, and reached out to touch the black down of its soft red-blotched head.

  “He’s a little me,” she said. “And a little you.”

  Talman’s heart jumped. He rolled away from Skyy and the vision was gone. His eyes shot open and he only saw the blackness of their trailer at midnight, and heard the soft breathing of Skyy, deep in sleep.

  What was happening to him? For a second, as he had touched her hair, the whole world had changed. It was as if he really was there, with her, in some future place while she held their child. Was it really the future? A wish? A delusion?

  He remembered the vision of the old woman, plugging her needles into the old man’s head. And of the boy running into the aisle of a hobby shop that Talman had never before seen. And of Jimmy Jenkins, Crack, Crack, Slap who cringed in the dark as his father’s hand came down. Ever since he’d gotten the tattoo, he’d been seeing things. He ran a finger over the bare, damp skin of his newest tattoo. “What are you doing to me?”

  “I don’t just draw on your skin,” the old man had said. “I draw on your soul.”

  “But what did you draw?” he wondered.

  Sleep, strangely, then came easy.

  Talman woke to the coughing, painful sound of retching. He reached for Skyy, but she wasn’t in bed. He lay there, listening for a moment to the hollow deep gasps, followed by thick chokes, and the splash of something liquid. It was coming from just behind their trailer; he could hear it through the thin aluminum wall as if it were in the room with him. His stomach turned at the sound, and then it finally clicked through his bleary mind. It was Skyy.

  Rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of shorts, he stepped out into the dim glow of dawn and found her kneeling in the mud. He put an arm around her shoulder, just as the last wracking chokes slowed.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “Something I ate?” She looked up at him, red-eyed and face damp. “I just woke up and … ew. I didn’t want to wake you. I had to run so I didn’t get it on you.”

  He grimaced at the thought. “Glad you did! C’mon, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

  Talman helped her back to the trailer and laid her down in bed. He sat beside her, mopping her forehead with a damp cloth.

  “Better?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said, her face beaming at him.

  “Want some 7-Up to settle your tummy?”

  She shook her head. A look of hesitation crossed her brow.

  “I was going to wait until I was sure to tell you,” she began. “But… I think I’m pregnant.”

  Talman bent to kiss her. As their lips touched, his heart caught fire once more, and the vision of the night before blurred his eyes again.

  Skyy roc
ked the child gently, hugging it close to her breast. “Do you want to hold him?” she asked.

  “It’s a boy,” he said, and put his arms around her. They hugged for a long time.

  That day during his performances, Talman thought of Skyy holding their son, and his soul leapt. But as he stared out at his audiences, his eyes kept lighting on small children. Every kid seemed, for a moment, to have red hair and eyes filled with emotion that ran deeper than a mineshaft.

  Jimmy Jenkins was every boy.

  Talman was haunted by that wounded gaze. His brief vision from days before in Parkville kept returning, and he could hear the slaps of rage landing on Jimmy’s face and back. Crack, Crack, Slap.

  “I have to go back,” he told Skyy that night in their trailer.

  “Go back where?”

  “To Parkville. There’s something I need to do there.”

  “What’s going on?” Alarm crossed her face. Talman kissed her, and scooted closer on the bed. “It’s about the tattoo…”

  ««—»»

  The road passed quickly in a blur of dotted yellow lines. Talman drove one of the circus pickup trucks, and pedaled the gas with the goal of cutting the three-hour drive to two.

  He’d gotten up early, so that if things went well, he might be back at the circus for his nighttime performances. He arrived in Parkville long before lunchtime, and headed straight for the tattoo shop.

  The place wasn’t open yet, but Talman put his palm to the glass and peered inside. The shop was dark, but he could see the dim images of the artist’s work on the walls. He stepped back from the door and looked up, noting the 2nd floor curtains. The old man probably lived here, above the shop, he thought. He looked for a doorbell. Finding none, he began to pound on the glass of the door.

  A car passed him on the street and Talman looked around in sudden fear. What if the police slowed down and asked for him to leave?

  But it was just a car, not a cop, and it passed by. The street was quiet again. And again Talman rapped on the door. Something stirred within, and he saw the flash of something at the back of the store.

  And then the lock on the door clicked and the face of the old man greeted him, white hair wild and tousled.

  “You’ve found your heart,” the man stated. Talman stepped inside.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “I gave you a tattoo,” the old man said and turned to walk back into the murky shadows of the store.

  “I’m seeing things,” Talman said, following. “Strange things.”

  “And you’ve come back to me because…”

  “I want to know what they are!” Talman shouted.

  The old man turned. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Sure. But first, I want to know what you gave me.”

  “I gave you nothing you didn’t already have,” the artist said, and disappeared into a doorway. Talman followed and found himself in a black and white tiled kitchen. He heard the choking cough of a coffeemaker and tasted the scent of fresh brew on the air.

  “Is it the future I’m seeing? Or possibilities? Or…what?”

  The tattoo artist didn’t answer at first. He pulled a white mug from a hook on the wall above the sink and set it next to the coffeemaker, and then a mauve mug. Talman recognized a “Far Side” cartoon of scheming cows on one. He had to grin in spite of himself at their plot against the farmer.

  “Cream or sugar?”

  “Black.”

  The artist handed him the mauve mug, steaming with pure caffeine, and gestured to a small table with two chairs. “Sit,” he said.

  Talman took a seat, never taking his eyes off the old man.

  “You gave me a gift,” he began. “And I just want to know what it means.”

  “I gave you nothing you didn’t already have,” the artist said, knotting two bushy white eyebrows above the “Far Side” cows.

  “I never saw visions of old men getting murdered before I came to you,” Talman countered.

  “Perhaps you weren’t open to seeing them?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Your heart was strong before you came to me,” the old man said. His eyes seemed to twinkle with starlight in the morning air. “But it was wounded. Hiding. Your new heart…allowed you to see those things you had, perhaps, ignored before.”

  “Is it the future?” Talman whispered.

  “Only you can say,” the old man said. With a loud slurp, he downed the last of his mug.

  “Follow your heart,” he pronounced. “Trust your vision. I think you will find it true.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a moment, each silent.

  “Can I borrow your phone book?” Talman asked.

  There had been two Jenkins’ in the phone book, but only one of them was “James Jenkins” and Talman had no doubt about which address to pick. “Where is this?” he asked, showing the old man the address. In moments, he was on the road to the outskirts of the small town.

  He pulled into a gravel driveway outside a small, isolated house, and put the truck in park. The day seemed extraordinarily still, as the car door echoed its closure and he walked down the crunching path to knock at the front door of the small, blue-framed ranch.

  There was no answer at first.

  And then, from somewhere deep within the shadows of the morning, a voice announced, “We don’t want none. Kiss off.”

  “I ain’t selling none,” Talman said, and tried the doorknob. It moved, but not enough. The door was locked.

  “Not gonna tell ya again,” the voice said, closer this time. The wooden door opened and a familiar face owned the space. The man from the carnival. The man who’d been arguing heatedly with the woman.

  “Can I talk a minute with your son?” Talman asked.

  “Piss off,” the man answered, and began to shut the door. But from somewhere within, Talman found a strength and a stubbornness he didn’t know he had. He pulled open the screen and shoved his foot in the gap of the wooden door, and stopped the other man from shutting him out.

  “I’d like to talk to Jimmy, if I could,” he said.

  “He’s busy,” the man said and tried harder to shut the door. Talman threw his shoulder against the wood and forced it open.

  “Now,” he insisted.

  Talman forced his way past the man, who looked shocked at the intrusion.

  “I’ll call the police,” he threatened. But the threat sounded hollow.

  Talman turned and looked at the flustered man. “Where is he?”

  “You have to leave now,” the man said, and grabbed Talman’s shoulder.

  Later, he couldn’t have said why he did it. But he knew something was wrong. It was in the air. Talman didn’t question his heart; instead, he threw a hard left to the jaw of the older man, who fell back in shock and surprise.

  Talman didn’t waste a second. He ran through the murk into the house, turning left at a hallway outside the living room.

  “Jimmy?” he called. There was no answer, but he thought he heard something thump from deeper in the house.

  He poked his head into the first room on the right, and flipped the light switch on. It was a small bathroom, lime green porcelain tub and toilet accented by a mauve shower curtain. There were dark spots dotting the edges of the snot-green sink. Talman thought they might be blood.

  “Jimmy?” he called again, and pushed open the door of the next room, this time on the left of the hall. Again he flipped on a light, and saw posters of Batman on the walls, and a small desk littered with comic books and a catcher’s mitt next to the unmade bed. A child’s room, but no child.

  He moved to the last room, on the right. This time he didn’t need to turn on the light, or call for the boy.

  Jimmy was there. He knelt on the floor in the middle of the room. He was crying, holding his hands to his eyes. Talman could see the boy’s arms were slick with blood.

  His mother’s.

  She lay on the floor in front of Jimmy. Talman
guessed that she had been dead for a while already. There were bloody footsteps fading across the carpet that led towards the hall, and the murder weapon was missing. But Talman had no doubt of what it had been. Jimmy’s mother looked as if she had been torn open by a hacksaw. Her t-shirt, which once might have been white, was slitted and slashed with a dozen tears, and blood had streamed out of each to pool on her belly, darkening the brown shag carpet beneath her.

  Mrs. Jenkins had been stabbed. Over and over again.

  “Dad, no,” Jimmy cried.

  Talman turned just in time to catch a glimpse of silver in the air. He started to dodge, but the blade caught him on the arm, and he screamed as he rolled to the floor.

  “Shoulda minded your own business,” James Jenkins said. “Now I’ll have to do you, too. Can’t letcha just walk outta here, can I?”

  “Whoa,” Talman said, crabwalking backwards, hands and feet treading through the blood of Jimmy’s mom, until he was trapped against the bedroom wall. The older man followed, calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.

  Jimmy still sat next to his mother’s body. “Dad please,” he cried. “No more. I’ll be good, I promise.”

  Talman could see the blue of a fresh bruise covering the boy’s right cheek.

  “Shut up, boy, or you’ll get more of the same,” the man spat, then moved in on Talman. One corner of his lip raised in a sneer. “Stay still and I’ll make this quick for ya. I got enough mess to clean up as it is.”

  He leaned closer and aimed the butcher knife at Talman’s throat.

  “I remember you,” he grinned. “Shoulda stayed at the circus, freak.”

  Then he struck.

  Talman struck at the same moment, bringing an arm up to shield his face while kicking out at the man’s stomach with his feet. Something hot sheared his forearm, but the other man fell back, and Talman leapt up from the floor. Before he could take a step, Jimmy’s father was on him again, knocking him back to the ground with a tackle. Talman’s face slammed into the carpet, and he felt something sticky on his forehead. He lifted his face off the ground and found himself at eye level with the glazed eyes of the dead woman.