Amber

by Dan-Dwayne Spencer

  I tapped her on the shoulder, and asked, “Just wondering…I mean, at the carnival, I noticed the people there wore styles from a lot of different decades, and… you were there when Phoenix first called his curse down on it. I’m wondering…just how old are you?”

  Flower stared at me in her rearview mirror, her gaze heated and incredulous. “That is something you may never figure out. You know, it’s rude to ask a woman her age.”

  Everyone but Jimmy gave her an awe-inspired expression and simply nodded. Jimmy, on the other hand, thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard and cackled.

  “I will tell you this. A gifted person doesn’t age like others,” Flower explained, speaking loudly to be heard over Jimmy’s laughter. “We are here to fulfill a purpose, and it may take many decades or centuries to do what the Creator intends for us to do. Therefore, when we become adults, we age much slower than other people.” She pulled onto Highway 69 south, heading toward Baxter Springs. “Haven’t you ever wondered why some people in the Bible lived hundreds of years?”

  Her explanation cleared up a lot. It also added questions about myself. Would I age slowly too? I felt sure she didn’t have all the answers. As for her age, I had a good idea she had to be somewhere around a hundred to hundred-and-fifty-years-old, or so, but she obviously didn’t want it known. She didn’t look a day older than thirty, but if anyone had asked me yesterday what I thought of a thirty-year-old, I would have called thirty ancient. After meeting Phoenix, I had different feelings about it; ancient was definitely older than a hundred years. So, I kept my suspicions to myself and returned to looking at the awesome sunset. Staring into the beautiful pink and violet clouds, my eyelids felt so heavy. I couldn’t keep them open—I couldn’t stay awake.

  Watching a beautiful sunset didn’t make my butt more comfortable. Not only did my posterior ache, but riding in the van made me hurt all over. The seat had become uncomfortable; my new clothes were uncomfortable too. I swear, even my skin was uncomfortable.

  Trying to shift my weight to make myself feel better, I grabbed the edge of the seat and pulled hard. The seat-cover ripped, and beneath it, I found a dead body. I could only see part of it, but it appeared to be a dead man dressed in a shirt and tie.

  “Arland think. There is no reason a dead body should have been in your seat cushion. You’re dreaming again,” Mr. Dark growled the words.

  “No, I’m not,” I replied, then quickly covered my mouth because it came out louder than I expected. No-one turned my way or acted like I’d said anything. Ignoring the warning, I again peered into the seat cushion. His dull, dead eyes stared back at me with a glazed blankness; a gaze looking deep into nothingness.

  I jumped up. My sudden movement allowed the loose seat to fall sideways, and the entire body fell out onto the floorboard of the van. It didn’t exactly flop out like a fish would, but rather, it unfolded like a contortionist in a circus act. I marveled at how it could have fit in the little seat. Only one thought crossed my mind: what am I going to do with it? It was far too big to be stuffed back in the cushion.

  To my surprise, no one noticed the body sprawled across the floor of the van. They went on as before. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, he lay there in my way, so I grabbed the wall panel and pulled myself nearer to it. The panel broke off in my hand; water gushed from behind it, and another dead body slid out of the wall. He wore a swimsuit like mine, and the corpse was covered in some kind of thick mucus. The van made a sharp turn, and the body slithered across my legs, only to stop sliding when he lay beside the first dead man. I suddenly felt nauseous.

  Everyone else continued to talk and laugh as if nothing was wrong. They acted like bodies always fell out of seat cushions and walls. I spoke up, “Don’t you guys see something…anything wrong back here?”

  Roger turned to me and gasped, “You’re wearing real clothes instead of your swimsuit.” He tapped Jimmy and said, “The world is going to come to an end—Loveless is wearing clothes.” Laughing, he turned back to his conversation with Flower and Rose.

  I did my best to step over the dead men by holding onto the front passenger’s seat, which Rose occupied. I gripped the vinyl piping with my fingertips and pulled myself forward. A loud cracking sound and the back of the seat ripped off. A third dead man fell out into my arms. I instantly dropped him. This one had on the western shirt Jimmy loaned me from his gym bag.

  Again, no one noticed. I yelled, “Stop the van.” Flower threw on the brakes, bringing it to a screeching halt.

  “What’s wrong?” she cried.

  “Look around and see for yourself.” I threw the door open and stepped out. The gravel lining the road crunched beneath my feet. Leaning forward, hands on knees, I felt nausea rush over me. Don’t puke, don’t puke, was all I could think. The taste of stomach acid rushed into my mouth and I gagged—nothing came out. I walked in a circle, trying to pull myself together. Every time I looked back into the van, I saw the same three dead people laying under the seats.

  I stepped toward the setting sun and stood at the edge of the gravel lining the road. Standing there, I looked down. In the drainage gully, another dead body lay peacefully recumbent. A woman wearing a nightgown and I just knew she too was dead. She raised her lifeless, blue-tinted hand toward the sky and a star floated down. It landed on her palm. Upon touching it, her body crystallized and shattered into a million snowflakes. Weightlessly, the tiny white doilies floated, blowing in the wind—spiraling up to the heavens.

  The star hovered before me, and I reached out and took it. It thrilled me; I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. As the thing glowed in the palm of my hand, I felt strange. I felt powerful. I felt hope. Returning to the van, I touched the three bodies with the star. They too crystalized into snowflakes which floated out of the van and up to the clouds. Before my eyes, dead flesh became a thing of beauty before eroding layer by layer, snowflake by snowflake—leaving no trace of their presence.

  Jimmy shook me awake. “Stop muttering in your sleep. You’re talking about finding dead people. You okay?”

  I sat straight up. Outside the van, dusk had passed, and darkness covered the world. I checked the seat, no rip. I looked under the seats, no bodies.

  Flower glanced up at me in her mirror. “We’re almost back to the commune.” I’m sure she saw my frightened expression. “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, and I rubbed the sleep drool from my face. “Just fine. As fine as I’m going to be for the rest of my life.”

  I could see her eyes in the rearview mirror. She had pulled her brows together in scrutiny. “Do you need to tell us something?”

  “I don’t know, maybe?” I fidgeted, feeling uneasy. “This is all new to me. I’m pretty sure I can’t tell the difference between a freaky vision dream and a plain old nightmare caused by something I ate.” Another thought crossed my mind, maybe it was brought on by my guilt about Kelly Carter. If I’d kept my mouth shut, he would still be alive.

  Jimmy turned to me and demanded, “At this point, Arland, you can’t keep things to yourself. We need to know every dream or daydream you have—just in case.”

  Flower pulled up beside Jimmy’s Mustang and we all unfolded from the interior of the van, stretching and shaking our limbs. I gave them the best rendition of the dream I could. I didn’t leave out anything, even down to the smallest detail I could remember. No one said a word. They all sat and stared at me; I felt like a genuine carnival freak. I might as well have been born a four-armed boy.

  “Did you recognize any of the dead people in the dream?” Flower asked.

  “No. They were pretty generic, no outstanding marks or scars I can remember. One looked like a morbid business executive, and the next one had on my swimsuit; the third wore jeans and one of Jimmy’s western shirts, but the last one was a girl wearing a nightgown.”

  Jimmy asked, “Did it have sexy lace? Was it black? I bet it was low cut, too.”

  I shot him a disgusted look.
>
  In a defensive tone, Jimmy replied, “I want to know if it’s black. That’s all.” He seemed genuinely offended by my scolding.

  I pretended he said nothing. I’ve talked guy talk about girls and what they wore lots of times—when it was just us guys—but sexually inquisitive guy talk didn’t feel right for this conversation. After all, we were talking about a dead person. Where had Jimmy’s mind wandered off to?

  “Let me see if I have this.” Roger was working overtime trying to make the dream mean something. “One dead body came from a cushion under you. The next came from beside you, by your elbow, and the third came from in front of you.”

  “Right, but to find the fourth one I had to go outside the van. I found it in a gully.”

  “Right,” Jimmy muttered. “What if they are me, you, Roger, and Rose? You said one dead guy wore one of my shirts and another wore your swimsuit.”

  “But I don’t wear business clothes and you’ll never catch me in a tie—ever,” Roger flatly said.

  Rose spoke up, “Well, there are those four horsemen the angel mentioned.”

  “Arland didn’t say anything about no horses,” Jimmy blurted.

  “No. Rose is right,” Flower interjected. “Phoenix mentioned pestilence, death, famine, and war in his prophecy. Those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

  “Apoc…Apocalypse, like the end of the world kind of thing?” Roger asked.

  Flower quietly replied, “Yeah. That kind of thing.”

  Jimmy laughed and said, “There could be something different going on. You don’t know.”

  I added, “You’re right, we don’t know.” I paused and thought about the dream. “When it began, I dreamed I was sitting here in the van watching the sunset off to my right. The first one came up from underneath, but the second one came from inside the wall and the third…I just don’t know what it means.”

  Roger’s expression seemed strained. “Yeah, I don’t see how it helps.”

  “I don’t know.” I kicked the driver’s seat with my new sandals and shook my head. “I’m grasping at straws now.”

  My kick startled Flower because she jumped and gave me a harsh look in her mirror.

  “Me too,” Rose said. “I think the most perplexing thing about the vision was the star. Nothing, and I mean nothing, explains the star.”

  “Does the sexy nighty being black have a meaning?” Jimmy Dugan asked. “What kind of nighty was it? Did it have matching panties?”

  We all shook our heads at Jimmy as we piled out of the van and headed toward the Roundhouse. He couldn’t get past the image of the dead girl in the nighty. We tried to ignore him as he went on and on.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Calypso’s Puppet

  In a joint decision, everyone headed to the Roundhouse and subsequently to the kitchen—everyone but me. It had been almost four hours since we had the Sonic burgers and they wanted to see if they could get something else to eat, even though it was late and the cook wasn’t coming back. I said I wanted to go somewhere to think. So, I broke away from my friends and set off toward the deck and the beautiful river.

  Behind me, Jimmy yelled, “Loveless, wait up.”

  I slowed down to wait on him, I said, “There’s not much to see except the deck after dark unless you want to swim.”

  “What were you planning on doing? It was your idea to go there.”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to sit on the deck and think awhile.” I sighed. The images of the dead bodies were still so real. And too, I felt responsible for Mr. Carter’s entrapment. I needed a little time alone; it would help me sort through my thoughts and feeling. The problem was how to tell Jimmy not to come with me? As it turned out, I couldn’t. He was determined to tag along. “Maybe if I just hang out down there in the quiet, I can put order to the chaos in my visions.”

  “Great, then that’s what I’ll do too.”

  “So, you’re going to the river to sit, just because—”

  Jimmy slapped me on the back of the head, and said, “Yep, exactly.” He smiled and gave me an odd cock-eyed grin. “What are best friends for, anyway?”

  I nodded, and we walked in silence. Since when did Dugan ever slap at anyone. He might haul off and slug the crap out of somebody, but slapping wasn’t his way; also, exactly where and when did we become best friends? Only last night he was saying I couldn’t be his friend at all, and if I didn’t abandon the spooky stuff, he would leave me at the commune.

  Since visiting the carnival, nothing supernatural bothered him anymore. He talked sexy guy talk about dead bodies and in front of girls—no less. Hell, he even wanted to know what color the dead girl’s panties were. Which totally creeped me out. But I admired his effort to reconcile because for the one day we had it felt good to count him as my friend, so I thought I should be courteous.

  When we got to the river, the aroma of lilacs blew across the deck. I looked for the bushes, but I didn’t see any. They must have been near the shore, where the darkness bustled with glittery movement. Hordes of diminutive twinkling lights illuminated the shoreline. Lightning bugs dodged between every reed and grass. I wondered how I could have not seen those beautiful little fluorescents last night. Then I realized I didn’t see them because they weren’t there. The last time I saw them was in the field when the Sheriff’s men were destroying the collectors. Right before I saw Jimmy wearing armor—well, I glimpsed it.

  Pointing to where I sat and splashed my feet the night before, I said, “This is the spot I came to sit at.”

  We dangling our legs over the edge of the deck and splashed our feet in the water.

  He pulled his shirt over his head, stood, and unzipped his pants.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going swimming. The water is perfect.”

  Swishing my feet in the water again, I thought it felt a bit cold, but after all, it had been a very warm day and Jimmy deserved to cool off. I glanced over at him. Usually, Jimmy did things his way and if anyone didn’t like it, he was very willing to knock their block off. But I had started to see him for the Jimmy I knew on this trip, full of compassion and false bravado. Not until I learned more about him, did I peg Jimmy as being a bit shy, but he was.

  To my astonishment, Jimmy stood there in the wide-open spaces—naked, and began gyrating around on the deck like a groovy go-go dancer. I would have expected him to have left on his boxer briefs to dance, but no. He was doing the Twist and the Pony then did a strange version of the Bop and the Watusi before jumping in the water. I mean, he didn’t exactly do anything wrong; it was just us and it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him naked in the gym shower before, but this was different, it was something I never want to see again.

  Thinking about it…it wasn’t just the naked dancing troubling me, it started with how things I expected to bother him didn’t. Jimmy didn’t freak out when he learned the carnival was cursed or when we told him the Sheriff’s dead body was being possessed. Dugan didn’t even freak out at the fact the Hoochie Coochie Dancers were carnal spirits called Nymphs, or at the news of Venus being real—and an angel. He went beyond calm. Except when he mentioned the color of the dead girl’s nighty, then he seemed to be excited. He had really changed.

  Rose’s voice from behind startled me. “Hey there, can I sit with you?”

  I involuntarily jerked and almost fell into the water, clothes and all. “Sure, I guess,” I answered.

  “I was looking for Jimmy,” she said.

  I nodded toward the river. “He gulped a lung full of air and went under the water. He’ll pop up any time now.” He didn’t pop back up as I expected. We waited. I began to worry. Even my swimming instructor couldn’t go that long without a breath. He’d been under a long time and my nerves hit DEFCON three. Finally, I stood and considered diving in to find him when he surfaced. I never saw anyone hold their breath so long, but I guess Jimmy must have been a natural. My nerves calmed down, and I cautiously took my seat again.

  “Hi Rose
,” Jimmy said as his head splashed up from the water.

  “Oh, Jimmy,” Rose yelled, “you scared me.”

  “You want to join me. The water’s great.”

  That was when Jimmy casually stood up. Being a lot taller than me, more of him came out of the water, and suddenly my face flushed, my ears burned hot, and I was completely embarrassed. Thank goodness for the darkness. It would allow me some deniability so I could keep my manly, cool card intact.

  “No,” she replied, acting as if seeing Jimmy in his birthday suit was normal. “I just wanted to come down to sit and talk with you a while. You know, just us,” she said, as she sat dangling her legs over the edge of the deck.

  That was my cue. “I’ll see you guys when you get to the Roundhouse,” I quickly headed up the path as Jimmy swam toward the dock’s steps leading out of the water. Not looking back, I hurried up the incline to the top of the hill and down to the meadow. I never knew Jimmy to be so brazen. It was like he had no self-respect, or maybe he had given totally over to the bohemian hippie lifestyle.

  I guess it was my night to notice things because even under the pole lamps things looked different. Not until then had I noticed how beautiful and aromatic the wildflowers in the meadow were. Cheating death at the carnival made everything brighter, fresher, and more fragrant. Stopping to take a moment, I inhaled the crisp air. With every breath, my nostrils filled with the scent of lavender. I paused and looked at the flowers in the field. There were daisies, snapdragons, and marigolds—but no lavender. Something like a cloud passed over the meadow, darkening the moonlight, but as I looked across the field, the darkness was only around me. Without warning, a brilliant light flashed beside me. I expected some kind of concussion to follow what I thought was an explosion, but nothing did. Not even a stirring of the wind blew to mess up my shoulder-length, pool bleached hair.