The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  “You will promise to let us use you as a consultant, right?” Stein asked.

  “If you find what I want, you can pick my brains clean.”

  “Cool.”

  There was the sound of papers shuffled, riffled, the thump of theses tossed aside.

  After another half hour the three of them stood in the midst of a sea of discarded paper staring at the remaining corner of the room.

  “How old?” Harmon asked.

  “Well, there’s always the chance it was misfiled.”

  Grant stepped forward and grabbed the top of the nearest pile, and his two companions dug in beside him.

  Twenty minutes later Stein announced, “I’ve got it.”

  The two others stopped immediately and looked over the short man’s shoulders. He held in his hand a maroon colored binder with a typed sticker on the cover which read: THE TREATMENT OF THE DISABLED AND NONCONFORMIST IN AMERICA, A LEGAL HISTORY and under that “by Ann Simmons.”

  “This is important?” Stein laughed, and Grant tore the thesis out of his hand and pulled it open. He quickly thumbed to page 76 and moved his index finger down to the footnote number, which was at the end of a long sentence. His heart pounding, he tore his finger back to the beginning: “… and Gina, the Otherworldly Little Lady, who, her father claimed, had visited a land beyond the grave and then returned to the land of the living. Managed by her father, she appeared on talk shows before abruptly disappearing into the strange world of the carnival freak. Whether she is catatonic or delusional, her rights were obviously abused, and as of this writing she is a member of a team of carnival attractions owned by Carperon, Inc., a mid-west purveyor of traveling shows, the most recent of which, Halloweenland, owned and operated by a so-called Mr. Dickens, whose real name …”

  Grant read the name, dropped the thesis and turned toward the door.

  “Hey, detective, you okay?” Stein asked.

  Harmon voiced concern and curiosity. “Detective Grant? What does it mean?”

  “It means I go back to where I started.”

  Behind him, as he ran for the stairs and his car, he heard Stein utter, “Wow! We can use that line in the teleplay!”

  Part Five

  Halloweenland

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  For a lingering last moment, Grant stood by the door of his car in the Halloweenland parking lot and smoked a cigarette. There was a Halloween moon up, a thick lopsided smile hovering overhead, and it looked like part of the show. Orange and white Christmas lights were strung in sagging arcs between tall poles around the wide perimeter of the park, swaying slightly in the chill October breeze. More lights, orange only, outlined the ticket booth leading into the attractions. The huge lot was almost full, and families, some with license plates as far away as Ohio, were pouring out of SUVs and vans. There was a line of charter buses at the far end of the lot, two abreast and ten long. Halloweenland was doing a brisk business.

  Grant’s heart was still beating fast, but his cop’s mind was working. He watched the Ferris wheel, which had just started up with a new set of passengers, after coming to a jerking halt every thirty seconds to unload and reload. It was even taller than it had looked from his apartment, and its carnival lights were blinking tonight in patterns. Its movement was as smooth and silent as a jeweled watch.

  There was plenty of other noise, though: the calliope tinkled at full throttle, and Grant realized that the sound was piped into speakers mounted on the same poles that supported the lights. The tilt-a-whirl was in full canted flight, its passengers, just glimpsed at the height of the ride’s turn, doing the wave and screaming happily as gravity made the bottoms drop out of their stomachs.

  Grant dropped and crushed the cigarette, and lit a new one. “Like I said, Malone, one out of two ain’t bad.” Grant patted the reassuring curve of the flask filled with Scotch, as yet untouched, in his jacket pocket. “But the night is young.”

  He walked to the ticket booth and bought an entry ticket. The ticket seller was pale and moon-faced, and gave him a slow, eerie smile as he slid Grant’s ticket across to him with long, thin, long-nailed fingers.

  “Have a good time, sir,” the ticket-taker said in a stentorian voice.

  Grant felt the man’s eyes follow him in, and the hair on the nape of his neck prickled.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “Here we go, the biggest, weirdest shit of them all.”

  He walked toward the events tent, passing the expanded kiddie ride section on the way. Besides the Cups and Saucers, which were in full spin, there was now a Caterpillar, a kind of small, bumped roller on wheels — the attraction was that as the cars went round and round in their small circle, a canvas covering painted to look like a Caterpillar moved over the entire length of the contraption, leaving the squealing children in momentary darkness, until the cover retreated again. There was also something Grant hadn’t seen since his own childhood: a small, steam-powered railroad, with real passenger cars open at the top and only wide enough to fit a few children inside. An engineer sat cramped into the open tender car behind the engine. Only this one moved silently as Grant passed by, which meant that it wasn’t steam after all, but probably filled with electronics and an electric motor.

  “It actually runs on magnets — like the new high-speed trains in Europe,” a voice next to Grant said, as a moist hand fell on his and squeezed lightly. “Of course we keep this train at four m.p.h., for the kiddies. Don’t want to scare Mom and Dad, do we?”

  Grant turned and looked into the slightly grinning face of Mr. Dickens. But the eyes were anything but merry.

  “When I first met you, you never smiled,” Grant said.

  “Ah, so you’re still a good detective. Excellent. Walk with me.”

  Dickens took Grant’s arm and steered him away from the direction of the attractions tent.

  “I want to see Reggie Bright,” Grant said.

  “Of course. But first we’ll walk, and I’ll show off my diversion.”

  “Is that what Halloweenland is?”

  The grin was gone from Dickens’ face, but the grim, hooded eyes remained dark and unreadable.

  “Please, detective, walk with me.”

  And then, as he had so many years ago, Thomas Reynolds, Jr. gave a little bow, which looked much more fitting now than it had when Reynolds had been a boy of thirteen, dressed in stiff clothes and with the mannerisms of a manikin.

  “What happened to your mother?” Grant asked, and Reynolds was silent for a long moment.

  Then he said, “She ended up in an insane asylum in Michigan. And then the authorities discovered that she was an illegal alien. In these times, there is not so much tolerance for foreigners, and she was a burden to the state besides, so she was deported back to Romania.”

  “I thought she was Russian.”

  Reynolds shook his head. “She never spoke of it to anyone, and only answered direct questions. My family has a long history in this … business, on both sides. The strange was never alien to either my father or my mother. But my mother, in the end, could not abide it, and so gave up. I have not heard from her since. And being involved in what I have been, I have not been able to visit her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Reynolds looked up at him, and his eyes were small and hard. “So am I, detective.”

  They had come to the waist-high chain fence surrounding the carousel. Reynolds stopped and rested both hands lightly on the chain. A ride was just ending, and the merry-go-round seemed to stop for their pleasure. Grant noticed that there were many carved animals besides horses: a dragon, dark green scaled, with folded wings and a blurt of caught carved fire issuing from its fearsome mouth; a gryphon, mythical creature, painted in gray and gold; a pair of stately white unicorns standing abreast a benched seat in deep red. A new herd of children mounted the platform and swarmed to their chosen places, and soon the ride slowly came up to speed. Now Grant saw, in a blur, a few other animals: Cerberus, three-headed dog who guarded
hell; a winged angel, looking fearsome and resolute, though white; and something that looked a lot like Samhain — a deep black cape topped with a barely glimpsed ashen face and flared open at the bottom to reveal a black-seated bench beneath, which was empty.

  “A few of the pieces I had specially made in Germany,” Reynolds explained. His voice dropped in timber. “Even when I was in Europe there was no time to visit my mother.” His voice became suffused with bitterness. “Even though, once I came within a few miles of the institution where she is kept. There was always the work.”

  They left the carrousel, and Reynolds drew them slowly toward the midway. “Perhaps I should explain a bit, detective,” he said. “When we first met, I offered to let you see the second volume of my father’s Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, which covered the period from 1940 until 2000 or so. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. As you suggested, I started to read the first volume, which I borrowed from the library. That was when I had my first visit from Samhain.”

  Reynolds’ eyes brightened. “Really? Did he destroy the volume?”

  “As a matter of fact he did.”

  “Curious, since he must have known there were other copies. I’m sure he was just trying to impress you.”

  “He impressed me.”

  Reynolds smiled briefly. “If you also remember, during our first conversation I told you that Samhain, for all his fearsomeness and power and supposed dominion over the dead, is merely a servant.”

  “Yes, I remember that, too. Samhain calls him the Dark One.”

  Reynolds nodded. They were on the midway, now, which was illuminated with more orange bulbs which outlined each canvas booth: shooting galleries with rows of ducks and red and white targets, guess-the-number wheels which clicked as they were spun; softball tosses into angled bushel baskets. There were milling crowds and noise and the yell of barkers urging customers to try their luck, and the tart buttery smell of popcorn in the air.

  Reynolds said, “We of course have known him as Satan, or the Devil, or the Evil One, or Uncreator, or one of countless other names. He is basically a destroyer, who wants to negate all life and unmake everything that has been made.

  “We know that on the rare occasion throughout history, forces have aligned giving the Dark One the opportunity to enter our world. If he is able to do so, he then will have the ability to destroy all creation. The Earth, the Moon, the stars, all life, everything.

  “Reggie Bright was involved in such an attempt, of course.” Reynolds paused and gave a slight smile. “You yourself played a part in it, though I doubt you understood the full import of what was happening. This is covered in the third volume of my father’s work, which I have continued. “Occult Practices in Orangefield and Chicawa County, New York, 2000-Present. Yes, detective, I once told you I would write that book, when I was a very formal and very scared thirteen year old. Now I’m not quite as formal but still very much scared.

  “Which brings us to the future.”

  They had exited the back end of the midway, had passed through the back end of a lot where unused equipment lay under almost total darkness. Only the sideways moon smiling down upon them

  They stopped before the back entrance to the main event tent. Reynolds held out his fishy moist hand and laid it gently on Grant’s forearm. Grant saw now that it was deformed, had been burned or mangled, and was grown over with calluses and what looked to be new grafted skin.

  “What happened to you, Thomas? You don’t look like a twenty year old. You look a hundred years old.”

  Reynolds smiled, but his eyes were filled with anything but merriment. “Older than you, yes, detective? We have both been through a lot in the last seven years.”

  “But what—”

  “A tale for another time. I’ve been many places, let’s say, and seen many things. Not all of them were pleasant. All of my travels, and all of my … actions, were in preparation for this day. Or night, rather.” His smile deepened momentarily. “Soon we shall see. Remember, I once asked you to call me Thomas, Jr.? That’s how formal I was.”

  Grant nodded.

  “And now,” Reynolds said sweeping a flap open in the tent wall which Grant had not even seen, exposing the gray darkness within, “shall we begin?”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  As the flap fell closed behind them, Grant saw that the light in the tent was not so much gray as a kind of sickly pale green. They were in a walled-off section of boxes and more unused equipment. Reynolds led the way through a maze of paraphernalia, cautioning Grant to stay near.

  “I thought it best we enter from the back,” he explained. “She is stationed toward the far end.”

  They came to a wall, made of tent canvas, which stretched clear across the width of the main tent. From behind it came muffled sounds. Without hesitation Reynolds found and pulled aside another flap. Grant was immediately blinded with a richer light, a deep suffused gold that would seem mysterious if one were to enter from the business end of the tent.

  There was another midway, this one stretching into the near distance and roped off in the center to force entering patrons to view one side and then make a u-turn past where Grant and Reynolds stood before viewing the other side, then exiting where they had come in. A few customers passed Reynolds, wide-eyed, and he smiled and made a slight bow.

  “Enjoying yourselves, I trust, folks?”

  The oldest of the bunch, a man of grandfatherly age, goggled and said, “Where in heck did you get all this?”

  The impresario shrugged nonchalantly. “Here and there.”

  The man shook his head and hobbled on to catch up with the rest of his family, who were already making noises of amazement at what they were seeing next.

  Reynolds consulted a huge white-faced pocket watch. “Would you like to see some of my amazements, detective? We have a little time.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  As they made their way against the crowd down the left side Reynolds regained some of his swagger. About half-way down he stopped and drew Grant through the filing customers until the two of them stood directly in front of a cage about four feet tall and three wide. Inside was what looked to be a man, less than half height, with the sleek red and white head of a fox. As the crowd lingered Reynolds pointed to the sign above the cage which read MARLO, THE FOX MAN OF KASHMIR and said, “Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I found him in the Kashmir region, which, as you know, has been a disputed land between India and Pakistan for generations. I lost two men in his capture, and another who, we might say, died of curiosity, on the ship which brought him back. Notice!”

  Reynolds stepped away from the cage and uttered a few words which were nothing but gibberish to Grant: “Peshti, Mahtu, Ree!”

  The tiny animal-man immediately sprang forth, gripping the cage bars with his tiny hands and feet, and opened his mouth in a mournful screech like a wolf baying at the moon. His teeth were impossibly long, as were, Grant now noticed, his delicate fingers and toes, which ended in curling sharp pointed claws.

  The crowed stepped back, gasping, and then Reynolds said, “Enough! Mahtu, Ree, Fashta!”

  The fox-man immediately let go of the bars and shut his mouth, falling to all fours before curling into a ball and closing his eyes.

  “You are lucky, ladies and gentlemen. He will sleep for hours now, poor fellow. I just reminded him of his lost homeland. We can only hope that he will dream of it.”

  “Is that true?” Grant asked, as they moved on to the next attraction, leaving the crowd behind them still bunched around the cage.

  Reynolds shook his head. “No. His reality is much more terrible. I saved him from something much too horrible to think about.” He moved his arm in a sweeping, inclusive gesture. “Everyone in this tent — every thing — is beholden to me. All would have been destroyed — or much worse — by the Dark One, if I hadn’t intervened.

  “And believe me, detective,” he added ominously, “they are all beholden
to me.”

  They now stopped before an ornately carved huntsman’s table protected by a plate of Plexiglas to keep the curious at bay. The carvings were tiny open-mouthed heads. They looked to be screaming. On the table, Grant observed as he and Reynolds stepped behind the Plexiglas, were a row of jars, each larger than the next, the largest some two feet tall. They were made of dark colored glass, blue, red, brown, green. Above them was mounted a sign which read THE HEADS OF HOOLOO.

  Reynolds ignored the crowd this time, but spoke only to Grant. “An area in western China, which is still untouched by Communism. We had a devil” — he grinned in the gold-dark at his own pun — “of a time getting these out.” He peered up at Grant. “All in Volume Three of course.”

  Without a beat passing, Reynolds tapped on the blue jar.

  Instantly the color melted away, leaving an empty crystal clear space with a head suspended in it. It was the color of dark tanned leather. It floated, insensate, for a moment, and then seemed to awaken suddenly.

  Then it opened its eyes — ice-blue and piercing — and opened a mouth filled with two rows of perfect white teeth and began to yell, a sound that echoed from the jar as a hissing screech.

  In quick succession Reynolds tapped the other jars — one, two, three — and they in turn produced screaming heads, each larger than the one before. The bottle-green jar yielded a head nearly half again as big as Grant’s own. Between the four of them they filled the area with a bone-rattling moan, like an organ’s deep chord of regret and horror.

  Grant turned to peer through the Plexiglas — the crowd had once again stepped back, their eyes wide with wonder and fright.

  Again in quick succession, Reynolds tapped each jar and one-two-three-four, and they instantly went dark and silent.

  As they moved on Reynolds said, “It is good for them to remember, but only for a few moments. Otherwise they would die of fright. And before you ask,” he added, turning to Grant, “yes, they did have corporeal bodies at one time.”