Everybody Scream!

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “Sophi told him about us,” Leng said.

  “Whatever it is, it’s trouble once Mort makes it to the station.” Walpole turned to Leng. “Can you get in the holding cell?”

  “No. Too risky.”

  “Boys,” wheezed LaKarnafeaux. They all looked. He was putting his glasses on, positioning them delicately. “Mort’s a good friend, he’ll sweat it. Don’t talk like that.” He gave everybody a mellow Santa Claus smile. “Just get the vortex and the rest and Crosby can ride it out for us. Tonight’s the last night. So tonight we don’t make any more money. Tomorrow we move on for Diamondcrest.”

  “The Martians will be very upset if we don’t fulfill their business,” Walpole grimly advised.

  “Our last transaction. But everything else goes as quick as possible in case we get another surprise.”

  “What about those two boys?” said Sneezy Tightrope. “The ones who want to rob us?”

  “Don’t worry about them,” said Johnny Leng.

  LaKarnafeaux yawned, turned back toward the camper.

  Pearl hadn’t asked Del to come see her sing tonight, this last time for the season–it was he who had promised–but she had pretty much expected it of him. Especially after his promise to write for her and maybe soon produce for her; you would very reasonably assume to see him in attendance. But as she was introduced and began he still hadn’t appeared to watch her from the side, as had been his habit previously. Still, she wasn’t immediately distressed; maybe he was late. Also, sometimes she knew he had watched her from amidst the audience, and although her audience was very modest compared to what Del Kahn must have known, she could not be assured of finding his face in that profusion. So it was more a feeling than anything that told her he wasn’t out there.

  Her disappointment was an undercurrent which rose to a distracting tug when she approached the end of her performance with Del’s song Blue Blues. She introduced it. “This song is a personal favorite of mine, written by a good friend–Del Kahn. It’s called Blue Blues…”

  The applause was a bit more obligatory than born of enthusiastic recognition. Closing her eyes against her distraction, Pearl sang:

  “They say it’s black and white

  And red all over

  They say no news is good news

  but what if it’s all bruised?

  My heart is black and blue.”

  The synthesizer unfurled a mournful hum from the speakers, out over the audience’s heads like a rolling mist.

  “The artists have elected it

  The cheeriest spot on their pallet

  And the poets have embraced that hue

  Worship sea and sky of blue

  But in ocean depths swim sharks

  And planes crash from the sky

  Singers sing a different tune

  We know the dark side of the lovers’ moon.

  They say love is a glittering jewel

  You wear to match your smile

  But what should you wear to go with your fears?

  Those sapphires you once gave me to wear

  Are now my solidified tears.”

  Pearl had altered those last lines from Del’s “Those sapphires I once gave you to wear are now my solidified tears.” Faking, a bit, the emotion she liked to call up for the end, Pearl concluded:

  “There’s a yang to the yin of things

  A black band of shadow under our wedding rings

  For every inch a tree grows

  Another inch a glacier flows

  And though each thing is really two

  It’s still not simple black and white

  Both yin and yang are blue.”

  The response from the crowd was impressive but Pearl’s smile was strained. She felt hurt, and angry. She tried to tell herself that Del was out there somewhere–but another voice insisted mockingly that he wasn’t. It made her doubt his promises, his enthusiasm; she remembered the way his gaze dropped into his coffee when she asked him if he’d produce her, and was disheartened as if she hadn’t seen the significance the first time. He was only helping her because her friend Sophi wanted him to, she told herself. Maybe he didn’t even care for her singing.

  She avoided looking at Sophi, who had appeared during the second song, on the side just behind the curtain. Alone, as if in confirmation of Del’s absence. The audience couldn’t detect Pearl’s pain but Sophi might, and she squirmed inside under her gaze.

  Pearl might have been less shaken, less resentful, however, if Mitch had been there on the side with Sophi. But he wasn’t. Her last show and he wasn’t. One or the other she might uncomfortably swallow, but not the absence of both men. Pearl felt stupid singing the next song. As if her singing were not respected, not of value. This herd had gathered only out of a blind instinct to find out what the noise was. They would have congregated for nearly anything, and their applause was the salivating of programmed dogs.

  But this was only the nauseous drifting on the black sea of a troubled dream. In a few moments a storm lashed out, waves rose, the dream became a whirlpool of nightmare. Later, Pearl would reflect that perhaps it was her own agitation and insecurity that generated the nightmare, and not, as it seemed at first, the appearance of the strange moon.

  Actually it wasn’t a moon but an asteroid set into orbit, the carven sculpture by the artist Cyrex Rendiploom called The Head, two-faced like a stamped coin, depicting on one side a human man’s wild-eyed, wide-mouthed face and on the other an empty-eyed, yawning skull. There had been some Choom opposition to the depiction of a human rather than a Choom double visage but just the expected grousing, nothing to thwart the project. Tonight the skull face was turned to the planet Oasis, and it was also full, a bright mirror. Bright except for a huge bullet hole in the mirror, cracks spreading out from it. A bullet hole in the skull. It couldn’t have been fear that made Pearl react as she did because she hadn’t read or heard the news and didn’t realize that this dark marring of the moon’s face was a vast spider-like creature, and that all contact with The Head’s two-man security team had been lost. But her eyes did happen to be on the moon as it poked its great glowing skull over the tops of distant trees and houses and the mountain range of city beyond that, some of its towers and pyramids a mile or more high, the skull not yet above these but peering between.

  Pearl was near the end of this, her final song of the night, of the season–pain still knotted within her, bitterness and sadness churning, insecurity gripping her insides–when the moon caught her eye, a ghost leering out from the graveyard of silhouetted skyscrapers, and Betty kicked.

  Her sister had kicked before, but on those occasions it had been a quick, mindless spasm. This time she kicked. You might even say she thrashed inside Pearl’s loose-fitting maternity dress, fighting against her restraining harness as if to break free and rip herself from Pearl’s body and scamper madly away.

  Pearl gasped out involuntarily, stepped back a few steps from her microphone, almost losing her balance. The synthesizer music stumbled on a few moments more in the opposite direction. The audience gasped out involuntarily also. That is, some of it did. Too many people, mostly young but not necessarily, burst out laughing or yelled.

  “What happened?” Bern Glandston asked the tittering teenage girl beside him. He’d been looking at her naked breasts and hadn’t seen the wild convulsions inside the singer’s dress, now already over.

  “The singer’s pregnant and her baby just went crazy for a second,” she snickered. “Pretty disgusting. I don’t know why the pig is up there singing and making everybody sick. Freak show.”

  Gripping her bulging middle in her hands, Pearl ran offstage, sobbing. Sophi caught her, struggled to hold her, Pearl fought a moment but gave in. Sophi embraced her, feeling the strange third body pressed between theirs. She expected it to try to kick her away, and felt creepy with it against her, but she wouldn’t let Pearl go. Pearl herself was convulsing, now, sobbing almost hysterically. Sophi felt angry–but at what? The creature? If suc
h it was? It didn’t matter if it was or wasn’t, where Pearl left off and her sister, if it could be called that, began. It was no different than if Pearl herself had had an epileptic seizure. It was Fate’s fault, and it was at Fate with its sadistic perfect timing that Sophi was furious. But as with Betty, was Fate a thinking, willful force or just a mindless nonentity, mindlessly destructive?

  “I want to rip it out!” Pearl sobbed, desperate but defeated. “I want it out of me I want it out of meeee!” But she knew she couldn’t do that and it was no use saying it so she went back to just sobbing and hitching and Sophi held her through it.

  Go away, Sophi told the crowd in her mind, hearing them behind the curtain still. The show’s over, can’t you see that? Go the fuck away. But she knew what they wanted. To see and know more. Sophi knew bitterly what Pearl knew. That now they were intrigued more by Pearl’s sister and her performance than they had been by Pearl and hers.

  When Bern looked back for the shirtless girl she was gone, swallowed up in the moving, confused crowd which was reluctantly preparing to break up. He did see something else of interest, however. And it saw him. It was like a turquoise cattle skull without horns but with huge human eyes, now baleful, floating atop the sea of bobbing heads.

  “Dung!” cried Bern, and he flung himself at the wall of people blocking his escape. A teenage girl toppled, swearing. Her boyfriend, larger, did not. He shoved back.

  “Hey, you rancid little mushroom!”

  Bern glanced over his shoulder. The Torgessi was having much less trouble in parting its wall. The eyes blasted steam onto him. Bern dove into the crowd at a new point and squeezed through the crack he made. The Torgessi reached but missed, and it became tangled a moment in the living slats of the rickety, splitting fence. Bern, meanwhile, was running.

  He wove, he dodged, he ducked down alleys and into new avenues. He finally leaped behind one of a row of turquoise plastic capsules which were portable lavatory units of the kind used on construction sites. They looked like drums of toxic waste, and he knew they smelled like that inside. You had to cup a hand over your mouth. Inside they were pitch black, also–you had to aim by luck. Bern resisted the urge to lock himself inside one. It might prove his coffin.

  Gingerly, he peeked around the capsule, expecting to have a giant hand seize him by the throat. No sign of the Torgessi, however. In relief he subdued his gasping, and also to stop gulping down the poisoned air. His side ached, a dagger blade of pain driven up under his lower ribs.

  Behind him was a chain link fence, and beyond that the outside world, calling him to escape. The fence must have been charged, but Bern imagined himself climbing atop the lavatory capsule and leaping over the fence to the ground beyond.

  No. He couldn’t. He also thought about paging Pox over the intercom, but of course he couldn’t do that. Unless he phrased it like, “Would Bern Glandston’s friend please meet him immediately at the Double Helix?” That might not be so bad. Or he could seek out the security guard who had helped him before, or any guard for that matter, to have the creature tossed out. Tossed out? Escorted out, rather.

  It hadn’t given up, though, that was certain. So he couldn’t expect that it would on its own. Bern didn’t know who he resented more…Pox or the Torgessi.

  His gun was in the car…so near. And there were guns nearer still, all around him, even openly displayed. He must try again to buy one from somebody.

  If only Bern had known that all he need do was have his hand stamped and he could go out to the parking lot, then return. But then, even the idea of going to his car and buying a new ticket of admission barely occurred to him. He had to be here to meet Pox. And he didn’t really want to have to shoot the Torgessi and thus call attention to himself; no, not at all. That would ruin everything just as surely as leaving the carnival would. Couldn’t he just stick it out a little longer?

  He would try to page Pox. He had to do something, and as long as he didn’t mention Pox by name that didn’t seem so terrible an idea.

  All he had to do was get to the administration building, whatever and wherever that was. And if he encountered a security guard on the way that would be fine, too.

  But he was reluctant to emerge from his shelter. All those people out there, all that noise and activity, but he still didn’t feel safe. He was as alone as if the Torgessi waited out there for him somewhere in the rocky maze of a desert wasteland.

  Still, after a few more deep breaths of air heavy with foulness, Bern ventured out.

  Sophi called Mitch so that she might meet with him in the security trailer, but it turned out he was already there. Just a minute later, in the flesh, she asked him, “Did you hear about Pearl’s show?”

  Mitch looked a little breathless, a little pumped up, a little cheery in a hard, mean kind of way. Now he looked wary. “No–what?”

  “Don’t worry, she’s okay now, but her parasite had a strange convulsion during her last song. She doesn’t seem to know why. She’s in the med trailer now for some scans.”

  “God…”

  “Has this ever happened before, do you know?”

  “No–never. Are you sure she’s alright?”

  “She seems to be. Except that she’s very upset. They’ve sedated her. It was very embarrassing for her.”

  “Goddamn it–of all times for it to happen…during a song.”

  “Her last one, too. Have you seen my husband tonight?”

  “Earlier. Not for awhile. I’d best go to her. I’ve just got to finish this report.”

  Sophi nodded grimly. Her eyes drifted to a computer screen at the table over which Mitch had been leaning, typing at a keyboard, when she came in. She said, “I hope it’s not physical.”

  Mitch resumed typing. “Maybe it’s nerves. She’s been a little funny lately about the fair closing up, and the nightclub shows...”

  “Hey.” Sophi took Mitch by the arm to move him away from the screen.

  Uh-oh, thought Garnet.

  The name at the head of the arrest report read: FICKLEBOTTOM, MORTIMER.

  “What is this?”

  Mitch touched a finger to the screen, calling her attention to more keyed words: PURPLE VORTEX. “I saw him selling weed to a kid, I cuffed him and he had vortex on him. A girl died of vortex just last night.”

  “You cuffed him for selling weed?”

  “Seaweed’s illegal. He did it right in the open. I saw him. I cuffed him. What am I supposed to do, be a lookout for him?”

  Sophi wasn’t used to Garnet talking back to her this strongly. It seemed to her, correctly, that he was being extra defensive. “I seem to remember this morning you asked me to let you run LaKarnafeaux and the others out of the fair. This strikes me as being a wee bit coincidental.”

  “I saw a crime committed.”

  “How many others have you cuffed tonight for selling weed, Mr. Garnet? How many kids for smoking it?”

  “I knew he would have vortex on him, too, that he was selling that...the weed wasn’t the main point. I know iodine is small by comparison.”

  “Do you have a personal vendetta against those people, Mr. Garnet? Are you trying to instigate something, some kind of confrontation? Because I’m not happy about it. I don’t need trouble! Make ugly confrontations on your time on your property.”

  “I was doing my job! Do I have to ask your permission every time I see a crime take place?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Mitch? Because that’s what makes me madder than you exploiting your position for personal reasons. You think I’m stupid enough to believe your fucking lies.”

  Garnet stared hard at her but inside felt a slight tremor of shame at the truth in her words. Yet he didn’t want to bring Del’s name into it despite Del’s assurance that he could if need be. He didn’t deny Sophi’s accusation, but maintained his defense. “Doing my job isn’t making trouble. My personal feelings didn’t put vortex in that asshole’s pocket.”

  “It’s the last night! We don’t need this!
”

  “Why are you getting so upset over this, Mrs. Kahn?”

  “You work for me, do you understand? For me!”

  “I know that,” Mitch said, almost too soothingly. “Why are you so upset over this? It’s...”

  Sophi whirled and slammed out of the trailer.

  She had to find Del. This rabid asshole seemed to listen to Del more than he did to her...

  No! That was precisely why she shouldn’t go to Del. This was her carnival; rightfully Del had nothing to do with it.

  Sophi was lost for a moment as to where to go. She wouldn’t go back to Pearl; she didn’t want to be there when Mitch came in. It was Johnny Leng who decided where she would go. She turned and he was standing there in front of her. Disoriented as she was, she gasped. She expected him to smirk at that but he didn’t.

  “Can we speak in your office?”

  “No–why?”

  “You don’t know why?”

  “I know. We’ve got nothing to discuss.”

  “Oh? I think we do. And I’m sure you’d rather not discuss it out here for anyone to see.”

  Sophi glanced around them. Where might Del be out there? “Hurry up,” she snapped, taking the lead. Mitch might come out at any moment. She danced up the steps to her office trailer’s door. What if Del were in here?

  He wasn’t. No one was. Sophi closed herself inside with her guest.

  “What is it?” she growled, not looking at his slanted eyes, in which she might catch a mirror glimpse of her shame, Dorian Gray-like.

  “What happened–did your husband find out?”

  “Find out?” Sophi looked. “Why?”

  “Your husband sent Garnet to cuff Mort. What do you know about that?”

  “My husband?”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. How do you know he did?”

  “Sneezy.”

  “Why would he? Del doesn’t want trouble any more than I do…it’s Garnet who’s the ex-forcer.”

  “He must have found out about us.”

  “Then why cuff Mort and not you? I don’t believe it.”