Shadows of Tockland

by Jeffrey Aaron Miller

  The rube before Karl lashed out with his fingernails and raked him across the cheek. Karl swung at him, missed and spun off balance, falling to one knee. The rube grabbed a fistful of his hair in one hand, and began slapping his face with the other. He had a broad, floppy hand and each time it struck, the sound was like a firecracker. Behind them all, very close to the flames, Hess held his torch aloft and laughed.

  Telly, who had been looking for an opening in Cakey’s fight, now noticed that Karl was in trouble. He took his billy club in both hands and dashed toward him. Karl threw a couple of half-hearted punches, but he was losing steam. His cheeks were bright red and swollen from repeated blows. Telly ran full speed into the rube. At the last second before impact, he drove the end of his club into the soft spot above the rube’s hip bone. The rube gasped, loosed his hold on Karl and fell. Telly went with him, all the way to the ground, and, as he did, he slammed the billy club against the rube’s face.

  David felt it welling up inside him again, the crazy. The trembling became a low roar in his ears, the terror melted into something hot and bitter, and a red mist seeped into his thoughts. The rube seized Telly in both hands and flung him away like a toy. David, seeing an opening, rushed at him. He heard his own voice coming from somewhere far away, screaming, an echo spilling over the treetops. The rube turned to him, and the sick glee in his eyes dimmed, the pained half-smile broke. He rose and turned to flee, but David caught him around the middle, wrapped his arms around his torso and dragged him to the dirt. They landed in a heap of arms and legs and tumbled head over heels. It felt to David as if the earth had broken loose and was spinning around him.

  When they finally came to a stop, the rube grunted once, softly, and moved no more. David hopped to his feet, still electric, grinding his teeth and tasting dirt on his tongue, only vaguely aware of the scratches and scrapes on his arms and face. He felt the warmth of fire on his cheek and turned toward the tent. Hess stood there, waving the torch over his head, gurgling nonsense into the sky. David took a step toward him.

  “David, wait,” someone yelled. A girl’s voice, rising up from somewhere deep beneath the ground. “He’s got a torch. Stay back.”

  But David charged anyway. Hess offered him a dull smile and lowered the torch at him, pointing it right at his heart. David saw the flaming end coming toward him and thought in his confusion that it had been thrown at him like a spear. Then he realized he was the one moving. He dodged to one side, missing the end of the torch by inches, landed on his right shoulder and somersaulted past Hess.

  He rolled once, twice, then found his feet, hopped up and spun around. The realization that he had almost both impaled and set himself on fire ate through some of the crazy. David had a terrible moment of clarity. He saw Cakey and Annabelle standing off to one side, Telly kneeling beside Karl, pressing something to his face. All of the other attackers had either fled or lay on the ground.

  “Get out of here, rube,” Cakey said, jabbing the bat in Hess’s direction.

  “Ye started this,” Hess said, speaking thickly through busted lips and broken teeth. “All of ye.”

  “How do you figure?” Telly said, not bothering to look at him. “We just wanted to put on a show, you dumb two-bit rube, like we do in every town.”

  “Ye got my people worked up with ye’re blood and depravity,” Hess replied. “Ye did this to us. Ye preyed on our sickness.”

  “Blood and depravity,” Telly said with a bitter laugh.

  “You’re standing on the edge of a cliff,” Cakey said, taking a step toward Hess and raising the bat. “Step off, rube. Step off, like all of the others. Step off into the bottomless ever-night that lies before you.”

  Hess looked at him, and either Cakey’s words or the look in his eyes finally stole the remnants of his smile. With his crooked lips and the large slash running across his mouth, it looked like someone had drawn a big red X on the lower half of his face. David felt the rest of his rage seep out, and all that remained was a great well of weariness and misery. When Cakey took a step toward Hess, David spoke, though he was mostly just thinking out loud.

  “Leave him alone,” he said. “Let him go.”

  Hess glanced at David, then back at Cakey.

  Cakey took a taunting swing with the bat.

  “Let him go,” David said again.

  And to his surprise, Cakey lowered the bat. “As you wish, Disturby,” he said. “Get thee gone, rube.”

  For a moment, Hess stood there, a blank expression on his face, dead eyes, blood dripping from his chin onto his overalls. Then he dropped the torch at his feet and walked away. They watched him stride off toward the trees. Telly snapped his fingers at Annabelle and gestured to Karl.

  “He’s hurt,” Telly said. “Can you get him back to the trailer? His face is swelling up bad.”

  Annabelle nodded and put her arm around Karl’s torso, helping him to his feet. “Come on,” she said. He muttered something unintelligible as she led him back toward the trailer.

  Fire had engulfed the entire tent by now, eating up the stage and making the light bulbs pop. The heat of it was unbearable.

  “Salvage what you can,” Telly said, pointing at David with one hand, Cakey with the other.

  “Salvage?” Cakey replied with a laugh. “It’s all burning. What do you want to salvage?”

  “The tent poles won’t burn,” Telly said.

  “Boss, you tiny little madman,” Cakey said. “Those tent poles will be white hot. You want us to traipse into the flames and pull them out of the ground?”

  Telly sighed. “The sign, then. We can salvage the sign.”

  He led them around the tent. David looked around at the campground. A few rubes remained, scattered here and there, some sitting up, some sprawled out, but most had left. He saw Gooty in the cab of the truck, his face illuminated by the dim light of the dashboard, and heard the engine roar to life.

  The sign was lying on its side a few feet from the flames. It was dented here and there but otherwise intact. Telly directed Cakey and David to lift it. Cakey passed his baseball bat to Telly and stooped down to grab the edge of the sign with his one good hand. David grabbed the other side, waited for a nod from Cakey, then lifted. The metal was hot, if not quite hot enough to burn. In the glow of the fire, the crimson letters spelling out The One and Only looked like blood. They carried it back to the second trailer.

  “Cakey, get this thing unbolted and put away,” Telly said, unlatching the gate. “David, get back to the performers’ trailer. Make sure Belle and Karl are okay.”

  David nodded and headed back. A rube was sitting in a shadowy space near the wheel well, a woman with long, gray hair. Her head was bowed, her hands in her lap. As David approached, she looked up at him, blood trickling from her nostrils.

  “Why did you do it?” she said. “Why did you attack us?”

  “We…we didn’t attack,” David said. “You did.”

  “That is a lie,” she replied, closing her eyes. “We are good people. We didn’t want none of this.”

  David decided not to press the point. “Lady, you’ll want to move away from there, or you might get run over. Head back to town with your people.”

  She nodded, started to rise, then flopped forward onto the grass. David stepped over her and kept going. He found another rube leaning against the porch railing. He’d had enough of these people. He grabbed the rube by the upper arm and forcibly removed him.

  “Go away,” he said, giving him a generous push to help him get moving.

  The rube muttered something and wandered off. David ascended the steps and went inside the trailer. Karl was lying on the couch, and, for a second, David had the terrible thought that he was dead. Stiff, eyes closed, his hands clasped upon his chest. His swollen eye looked worse, purple and black, and his cheeks were puffy and crisscrossed with scratches. His moustache was all disheveled, and there were spots of blood on his exposed teeth. Annabelle rooted around in the first aid kit for a moment, fo
und a small metal tube of some kind of ointment and brought it over to the couch.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said, sparing David the briefest of glances as she dragged a chair over by the couch. “Tell them to leave the stupid tent and come on.”

  “We left it,” he replied. “It’s gone.”

  David stumbled across the room, his shoes crunching on glass, and took a seat at the table. He didn’t know if he wanted to cry or pass out. Maybe both. He swept the last bits of glass off the table and rested his cheek on the cool, polished wood. Annabelle was applying some kind of clear ointment to Karl’s cheeks, and he watched her with heavy lids. She had a lovely face, made all the more lovely by the flush in her cheeks and forehead. Her dark hair was tangled with sweat and plastered to her temples.

  And now he did cry, though he wasn’t really sure why. Tears spilled down his face and dripped onto the tabletop. He wiped them away and quickly hid his eyes behind his hands.

  “Karl.” Annabelle spoke softly. “Karl, you’re gonna be alright.”

  Karl took a deep, shuddery breath and let it out in a pained moan.

  “Get that rube?” he said thickly. “Someone get that rube for me?”

  “David got him,” Annabelle said, and David, despite himself, felt a swell of pride at this. He had gotten him, hadn’t he? “Rest. We’re getting out of here real soon.”

  Karl grunted.

  When the door opened, David sat up. The tears had subsided, but he gave both eyes a good scrubbing with the backs of his hands just to be sure. Telly stood in the door, looking world-weary as he examined the extent of the damage inside the trailer. Glass on the carpet, pieces of the broken ceramic bowl here and there, spatters of blood on the walls. He shook his head and took a seat at the makeup table, righting jars and putting pencils back in their trays.

  “All gone,” he said. “The tent, the benches, the stage, the curtains, the lights, the wiring. All burned up.”

  “We can replace them,” Annabelle said. She rose, walked back over to the table and sat down very close to David, screwing the cap on the tube of ointment. “Nobody got killed. That’s what matters.”

  “Won’t be easy to replace it all,” Telly replied. He took his top hat off, dusted it with his fingers and tossed it onto the makeup table.

  “Nobody got killed,” Annabelle said again.

  Cakey appeared last of all, dumping the baseball bat in a corner, pulling off his gloves and tucking them into a pocket. He had blood and grime on his face, and his orange hair was wilted. He looked like a monster. He kicked the door shut behind him and strode across the room without comment.

  “You okay?” Annabelle asked.

  He disappeared down the hallway and into his bedroom, slamming the door.

  “He ripped his stitches open,” Telly said. “You’ll have to put in new ones when he gets back out here.”

  Telly opened a drawer on the makeup table, rooted around inside and brought out a small two-way radio. He turned it on, pressed a button and held it close to his mouth. “Goot, let’s go,” he said.

  After a moment, there came a squelch and hiss and Gooty’s distorted voice. “Okay, boss.”

  The whole trailer shuddered and began to move. Through the broken window, David heard the roar of the truck’s engine, but beneath it, ever taunting, was the crackle and hiss of fire. As the truck circled the campground, the burning tent passed by the window. It had collapsed, the bare tent poles thrust up from the flaming wreckage like charred bones. David was the only one who bothered to look.

  Ghost people passed by, rubes cast in flickering light, trudging across the field. And then a veil of trees hid them from view. The trailer bounced, and the axles creaked, as they moved from dirt to asphalt. Like a final insult, a bottle of beer, heretofore balanced on the edge of the shelf beside the cooler, rolled off onto the floor. Telly walked over to it, picked it up and worked off the cap. It fizzed and overflowed onto his shoes, but he didn’t seem to mind. He took a long drink, sighed and took another.

  “Well, that show didn’t go so well,” he said.

  Chapter Ten

  There’s Stories and Then There’s Stories

  Cakey rather unceremoniously dumped a platter of crackers and cheese onto the table.

  “All we got left of the food,” he said. “Next step is to go out in the woods and hunt up some tasty critter.”

  “Not necessary,” Telly said, easing into a chair at the table. “This’ll do until Fayette.” He reached for a cracker.

  Karl was still sound asleep on the couch, buried beneath three layers of blankets. He snored like a man with broken bones in his mouth. They’d made a pallet for David in the corner, but he’d only tossed and turned. Gooty drove all night and only pulled over when the first hints of sunlight clawed over the hills to the east. He was at the table now, bleary eyed, resting the full weight of his sleep-deprived head on his arm.

  “How far did we get?” Telly asked.

  “Had to go real slow in the dark,” he replied. “Creeping along. More debris. Burned bodies. I think those West Fork people bring their dead out here and burn them on the road. Trying to kill the infection.”

  “Right, right,” Telly said, dismissively. “How far did we get?”

  “I saw ruins out there,” Gooty replied. “Old parts of Fayette maybe. Not sure how much farther we have to go to get to actual people. Saw deer, a pack of wild dogs.”

  “How we doing on gas?”

  “Plenty,” Gooty said. “Thanks to the generous people of West Fork.”

  Telly laughed, but it was joyless.

  They all ate in silence for a while. Annabelle held a cracker between her lips for a long time as she changed the bandage on her hand. The scab beneath looked ugly, the skin around it inflamed.

  “Are we all going to get sick now?” David asked. He had been reaching for another bit of cheese, but he stopped and gripped the edge of the table.

  “Of course not,” Telly said. “Why would you even ask that?”

  “They bit and scratched us,” David said. “We got their blood and saliva on us.”

  Annabelle paused, still clutching the fresh bandage between her fingers, and glanced at Telly with wide eyes. Telly considered the situation, bobbing his head from left to right. Then he waved it off.

  “I don’t think you catch the sickness that way,” he said. “Otherwise, we’d all be dead by now.”

  Gooty had also been reaching for more food and stopped himself. “How do you catch it then, Telly? Enlighten us, jefe. Please.” The sarcasm was so thick David expected a heated response, but Telly merely shrugged.

  “I think you get it out of the ground water,” he said. “That’s why I don’t let you guys drink the local water when there’s sick around.”

  “What, you read that in a book?” Gooty asked. “Some scientist told you that?”

  “It’s what I think,” Telly said and resumed eating.

  “It’s what you think,” Gooty muttered. He shook his head and rose from the table. “I’m gonna warm up the engine, so we can get moving. You clowns keep right on talking about what you think.” He pushed his chair back hard enough to tip it over and stalked across the room.

  “What did I say?” Telly asked, looking from Annabelle to Cakey. “I didn’t say anything about her, did I? How did he get offended?”

  Gooty left the trailer, slamming the door behind him.

  “He doesn’t like you,” David said. “He told me so. He doesn’t like any of you.” He gestured toward Annabelle. “Well, I think maybe he doesn’t hate you, but you’re the only one.”

  Cakey made a face that was hard to read under all the clown colors. “Well, he must love you, kid, since he’s divulging all his secrets to you.”

  David shrugged.

  “To answer your question, David,” Telly said. “If there is a chance of catching the sickness from exposure to blood and saliva, then it must be pretty slim. It’s a parasite, you know that, right?�
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  “Yeah, I guess I’ve heard that,” David said. “In Mountainburg people just called it the wandering sickness. Nobody talked about it much.”

  “It’s a parasitic brain worm,” Telly said, tapping the middle of his forehead. “Eats its way right into the gray matter. That’s why their behavior gets increasingly erratic.”

  Cakey picked up a cracker, tossed it into the air and caught it in his open mouth. “You don’t know for sure that worms cause the sickness,” he said, as he chewed.

  “I’ve seen them,” Telly replied. “Little purple roundworms crawling in the decay of dead bodies. Seen them with my own eyes.”

  “But the worms might be a by-product of the sickness and not the cause,” Cakey replied. “Or their presence might be coincidental.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Telly said with a sigh.

  “Lots of things that are true don’t make sense.”

  Telly waved him off. “Only to you, Cakey. Only to you.”

  “Can we please, for God’s sake, stop talking about this?” Annabelle said, pressing the fresh bandage to her hand. “If we get sick, we get sick, but we don’t have to sit around talking about it while people are trying to eat.”

  Cakey laughed at this, and she playfully punched his arm with her uninjured hand. Unfortunately, she hit close to Cakey’s stabbed shoulder, and he gave a little gasp of pain.

  “Careful,” he said. “Or you’ll be stitching me up a third time.”

  Karl let out a terrific snort and shifted beneath his blankets. Everyone at the table turned to look at him. He had not awakened, but his head was now poking up out of the pile of blankets. The swelling on his face had subsided, leaving ugly bruises that covered most of both cheeks and one terrific shiner on his right eye. What bothered David most was that his moustache was still disheveled, sticking out in all directions as if a tiny bomb had gone off right under his nostrils. He wanted so badly to go over there and smooth the damned thing down. Only his concern about what the others would think kept him from doing so. He averted his gaze, so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore and forced himself to resume eating.