Applewood (Book 2): Fledge

by Myers, Brendan P.

  “Never seen anything like it in forty years of playing poker, son. Never seen anything like it.” He looked at Dugan and smiled. “And don’t you worry none about ol’ Buck. It’s his daddy that knows where his butter comes from, and from what I hear, you are one hundred percent butter.” He winked once and went back to counting.

  Dugan left that evening with more than twice the money he had entered with. Better yet, he had cleaned out Buck. Outside the tent, he looked to the sky and realized with a start it was later than he thought. He began to feel the lethargy of the approaching dawn.

  He stood outside his own trailer for a moment where inside, Lois slept alone. Wandering down a couple of rows, he quietly slipped into the trailer that Mary and Emma shared with two other women. It was identical to Dugan’s own. He gently shook Mary and asked if he could sleep in her trailer during the coming day. She gave him a groggy smile, figuring he just didn’t want to sleep in Alice’s trailer this evening. He let her go on thinking that, thanking her again before climbing beneath the bench seat as the dawn broke.

  6

  The most frightening time of day for Dugan were the few minutes or so just after the sun had set, but before his daily resurrection was complete. Alice had called it “in between” time and Dugan knew that was just about right. Because every evening — for just those few unsettling moments after the sun went down — he was awake, but paralyzed, trapped somewhere on the continuum between death and life. He knew nothing at all about whatever internal chemical or biological or parasitical processes were at work to reanimate his lifeless body. But he had known instinctively since the time of his change that this was when he was at his most vulnerable.

  So when he awoke the next evening and sensed something was wrong, he was powerless to avert whatever it might be. Caught in those moments between the darkness and the light, he made himself as alert as he was able before realizing sheepishly just what it was. He was not in his usual resting place. That was all. Through the darkness, he began to sense subtle differences in smell and texture between his own trailer and Mary’s. Satisfied with the explanation, he waited patiently for his nightly languor to pass while recalling the events of last evening. With sadness, he remembered his final goodbye to Alice. With a mixture of pride and shame, he recalled his purposeful emasculation of Buck. When he was finally ready, he pushed at the top of his sleep chamber and shoved it aside.

  Stepping out, he saw the trailer was empty. Mary and her roommates would already be at work. Emma would be out and about somewhere, getting underfoot or maybe just wandering the carnival. He lifted the seat back into place before walking out of the trailer and into the cool night air and shivered. Colorado was much cooler than either Arizona or New Mexico had been, though perhaps the impending change of season had something to do with that. He made a mental note that it was time to find another thick wool jacket, but being cold much of the time was just another of the unwanted burdens he now carried. He also knew that a diet consisting of the watery blood of rats and the occasional feral cat was never going to warm him up. And though he’d had it only once, he remembered now that the blood of the pig was one surefire way to make him feel better. He was wondering if there might be any pig farms in the area as he approached his own trailer. Walking up the short porch, he opened the door and stepped into madness. It took some time to take it all in.

  The trailer and all its contents were ruined, that much was obvious. But to his heightened senses, the noxious smell was almost too much to bear. Shattered makeup bottles and broken perfume containers carpeted the floor. Fancy lace dresses and fine silk garments had been ripped and shredded and strewn throughout the small space. They had belonged to Lois and Alice both.

  Glancing to his right, he saw his own resting place had been singled out for special attention. Someone had taken a knife to the bench seat and pulled out all the stuffing. Worse yet, the wooden frame was busted up in such a way that it would never again sit flush upon the storage compartment, ensuring it could never again be used for sleeping. Dugan’s brand of sleeping anyway.

  Beneath the all encompassing aroma of perfume and musk was a darker smell. He walked to his sleep chamber where inside he saw a dark pool of urine deposited as a calling card. A closer glance revealed urine was not the only bodily fluid Buck had left behind. The rank sweat that still lingered left no doubt it was him. Looking closer, he saw the two remaining envelopes stuffed with money were gone. He had a brief moment of panic before reaching down to confirm the small cubbyhole holding his most personal possessions had been undisturbed. Reaching in, he pulled out the photo of his uncle. Though he looked at it every now and then, the more time passed, the more this man was a stranger to him. After looking at his face, he folded it up and noticed writing on the back — a woman’s name and an address in San Diego — but he had forgotten its meaning.

  He shoved it into his pocket before reaching down to pick up what remained of his costume. The knife that destroyed the bench seat had been expertly used on his costume as well. It was nothing but rags now. Throwing what remained of the pants onto the floor, he felt something in the pocket. He reached in to see it was the business card the stone-faced man had given him. It too had an address upon it. He suddenly remembered the man’s words: For when you get tired of eating rats. He put that into his pocket as well before leaving the trailer to go in search of Buck. He could make this right somehow. He had to make it right. The carnival was his only home, the dying freaks his only friends. He would hand over all the money he had won last night, apologize for what he had done, and that would be the end of it.

  Wandering the carnival grounds, he found it cooler than it had been even a few minutes ago. The crowds were light this evening, and what there were of them were bundled up against the chill. Glancing down the far end of the midway, he saw the Ferris wheel had stopped to allow the riders a thrill. He suspected the folks at the top now suspended a hundred feet in the air were getting the brunt of a very cold breeze. When he walked past Buck’s usual ring toss gig, he saw the trailer unattended and the grate drawn. That was unusual, but then again, Big Ben made allowances for his only son.

  He made his way toward the kitchen, where his actions last evening had spun the current whirlwind of events into motion. He saw no sign of Buck, but Mary was behind the buffet counter keeping the food stirred and the water beneath it warm. She smiled to see him. He pasted on a smile of his own as he approached.

  “Thanks again for last night, Mary,” he began. “For letting me use your trailer. I really appreciate it.”

  “Any time at all,” she answered. “You know that. And if you need to do it again tonight, you just stop on in. Understand?”

  He nodded and turned away, but stopped halfway to the door and turned around. “You seen Buck?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. He was in here only a few minutes ago. He took Emma. Said he had something special to show her.”

  Dugan smiled before walking out of the kitchen, but a shiver ran down his spine. Once out of sight, he walked quickly back to Buck’s ring toss trailer and this time, went inside. It was empty. Leaving there, he hurried to some of Buck’s other well known haunts but found no sign of him. He recalled the violence done to his trailer and wondered if Buck’s anger had been fully discharged. Even if it had, Buck was in no frame of mind to be anywhere near a ten-year-old girl. He decided to head toward trailer alley to visit Buck’s living quarters.

  Dugan seldom went to this encampment of trailers. There were a few bunkhouses — trailers shared by sometimes a dozen men — but the larger and more spacious single trailers were here as well. Only a fortunate few could afford the luxury of a single, but Buck was one of them. He slowed as he approached Buck’s trailer, sensing something in the air. He told himself it was just his imagination, because the best way to describe what he sensed was a blend of childish fear mixed with a now all too familiar scent of rank sweat. He began moving faster. When he reached for the doorhandle, he found it locked, but
the touch alone sent a surge through his body that alerted him to the presence of evil. Using the shoulder he had honed all summer hefting fifty-pound blocks, he broke down the door and went inside.

  The evil he had sensed in the outside air was stronger here, almost a palpable presence. He began to lose himself, surrendering to instincts honed by millennia of experience that until this moment he had been unaware was one of the few gifts of his new life. His vision went red in the darkness. To the left, he saw invisible tendrils of smoky heat escaping through the narrow cracks of a closed door. Perking his ears, he heard grunts and whimpers come from the room beyond. With no conscious prompting, his upper and lower palates departed their resting place to press against his lips. As he approached the closed door, they escaped his mouth of their own volition. By the time he reached the door and kicked it open, they were fully extended and ready for anything.

  The door collapsed inward with a loud BANG, tearing away from its hinges and crashing into the room beyond. From the time Dugan broke down the front door and kicked in this one, Buck had just enough time to pull up his pants halfway. But he still lay atop Emma. They were on the bed. Her hands were tied. Her mouth was stuffed with a dirty rag. Her face was black and blue. When she opened her one good eye to glance toward Dugan, he pounced.

  Buck had only time enough to widen his eyes and lift his hands, because in his next heartbeat, Dugan had lifted him off the girl and thrown him across the room hard enough to dent the side of the trailer. By his next heartbeat, Dugan was on top of him with bloodlust his only motivation. Twisting Buck’s head, Dugan exposed the grimy neck and then leaped toward his throat, tearing and biting his way through skin and tendon and muscle just for the fun of it before finding his mark.

  The interior of the neck now fully exposed, with the skill of a surgeon and to the music of Buck’s whimpers, Dugan used his leftmost fang to gently prod the still intact and throbbing vein, toying with it for a moment before sinking it directly into the jugular. Blood spurted into his mouth, gushed across his lips and teeth before finding its way down his throat in a geyser that portended Buck’s imminent death. Dugan slurped deeply and greedily from the red fountain.

  Sucking sounds of fear and pain were all Buck’s now useless throat could muster. They were lost in Dugan’s own wet sucking sounds that even now worked to create the vacuum necessary to ensure the blood continued to flow even after the heart had stopped beating. As he drank, he remembered William. Poor William. Closing his fangs against Buck’s throat, he ripped away a chunk of flesh and spat it aside. That was for William, he thought. Then, remembering the vision he’d had of Buck in the trailer with the young girl, he realized that it wasn’t William who had ravished and beaten the mayor’s daughter. It was Buck. The scene that had come to him in that vision was the same scene that confronted him here tonight. For whatever it was worth, he now knew that Buck had killed William to cover up his own crime.

  Only when Dugan felt the last heartbeat did he begin coming back to himself. Even then, it was another moment before he was sated enough to remember the terrorized girl on the bed and why he had come here in the first place. His senses returned entirely when a whiff of rank sweat invaded his nostrils to make sour his enjoyment of the smooth coppery taste of blood. Only then was he finally able to wrench himself away from the now drained man to look down and take in what he had done. When he saw the man’s eyes still open and staring, for a brief moment he felt an almost human need to vomit. But he knew somehow that instinct would never allow it. He waited for his insides to settle while continuing to enjoy the blessed warmth that was now spreading throughout his body.

  Moments later, he retracted his fangs and turned to tend to the girl. He gently removed her gag before bracing himself and looking down. He saw with relief she had not yet been violated. Not in that manner, anyway. He had arrived just in time. Sighing deeply, he brought Emma to him in a close embrace, ensuring all the while that her eyes and head were turned away from the grisly scene on the floor. Her pulse was weak. He realized she was in shock. Pulling the blanket off the bed, he wrapped it around her before lifting her to take her away from this place of death.

  When he left the trailer, he walked into a brand new world, one that exploded with sights and sounds. The smells of the carnival rushed into his nostrils. He was able to discern its individual particles on the wind: fried dough and cotton candy and candy apples. Pizza and burgers and fries. Colors pulsed and exploded before his eyes. His senses had never been sharper. His body had never felt stronger. He realized then that he’d never felt better in his life.

  But as he carried Emma closer to the house of the freaks, he slowed. His euphoria began to dissipate. The warmth and strength that had permeated his insides only moments ago turned cold. His body started to quake in fear at the consequences of his actions. He understood then that once again, he was to be one of the hunted. Big Ben’s question came back to haunt him: Can you control yourself, boy?

  He knew that no explanation would ever suffice. No justification would be allowed. Fear stabbed at his heart when he realized with certainty that Big Ben would see to it he was put down like William . . . or worse. He would probably do it himself. Dugan had taken his only son. When he arrived at the trailer, he carried Emma’s limp body up the steps and inside, past Alice’s empty cage and his own. Walking into the lounge, he was greeted by gasps from his friends when they saw the bundle he carried.

  He gently lay Emma on the couch, then helped Rudy to his feet so he could get medicine and bandages. Harold carried Lois over to Emma before he left to get warm water to clean up the girl. Dugan turned and saw Gunther looking straight at him, and in his pained eyes Dugan saw that somehow, Gunther already knew. When he turned to look at the others, he saw they were all staring at him too. Even Rudy had stopped in the doorway to look at him. They all sensed it. He looked down at the floor before he spoke.

  “It’s Buck,” he said. “He’s dead. Back in his trailer. I came upon them and . . . I saw what he was doing and . . . he’s dead. That’s it.”

  That wasn’t it. They all knew it. He couldn’t even look at them. He was still looking at the floor when sounds began returning to the room. Rudy leaving to get his bag. Lois beginning to stroke the girl and say calming things. Harold ducking his head beneath the door to bring a pot of warm water and a washcloth. The tinkle of ice in a bucket. Dugan looked up finally and saw Enrique hovering over Lois’s shoulder and waiting to be given a task of his own. Turning, he saw that Gunther had begun tapping his huge head against the wall and playing with his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Gunther,” he whispered.

  Gunther didn’t hear him or didn’t want to. Dugan realized then that for Gunther, it was happening all over again. Rudy shuffled in a few moments later, the list to his left from the weight of the tumor more pronounced than Dugan had ever seen it.

  Lois moved aside while Rudy went to work sterilizing and bandaging the girl’s cuts and bruises. Enrique made an icepack. When Rudy was finished, he showed Lois how to hold the ice against the worst of the bruises before turning to motion Dugan follow him out of the room. Dugan followed, but before leaving, he turned to glance one last time at all the people he cared about in the world. It didn’t surprise him that the last thing he would see them doing was caring for someone who couldn’t care for themselves. It was what they did for him. His face broke out in a grimace of pain and anguish before he turned again to follow Rudy down the hallway. He didn’t bother taking one last look into his cage. He wasn’t proud of that. It was just the price he had paid for being allowed to stay in the community. But he also knew somehow that it wasn’t him. It was never him.

  Stepping out once again into the cool night air, he saw that Rudy had walked a few paces away from the trailer and turned his deformed body toward the sky. Walking closer, he saw that Rudy was unsuccessfully attempting to light a cigarette. His eyes welled up. Reaching out, Dugan took the cigarettes and matches and lit one for him, placing it
into the fold that he now knew was the man’s mouth. He lit another for himself. They were half smoked by the time Rudy spoke.

  “Dis un bat ba.”

  Dugan choked back his tears and took another drag.

  “Yoo ga fa fa awa dis plac, yoo hee me ba? Yoo no cum bek. Nev nev nev.” Dugan nodded. Tears fell to the ground. “Na, ba!” Rudy commanded. Dugan turned away.

  He stood there another moment before reaching into his pocket to retrieve his gambling winnings from last night, that stupid, selfish act that had set this whole chain of events in motion. Turning around, he tucked the thick envelope into Rudy’s jacket.

  “Will you see that Lois gets some of that for the trailer and for her stuff?” he asked through his tears. “And use the rest for whatever you need. Medicine, warm clothes, anything at all you guys need, okay?” His choking sobs made his words come out sounding almost as baffling as Rudy’s.

  “Wa bat yoo, ba? Yoo nee mon too.”

  Dugan shook his head. “I’ll get by. Don’t worry about me, okay?” Rudy looked straight at him with his one eye and nodded.

  Dugan reached out to embrace for the first and last time the man who had set his broken leg. The man who saw to it he had clothes on his back and a place to sleep. It was during the embrace that he fully understood the extent of the man’s pain. Dugan realized then that Rudy would be the next one to see Alice.

  “Yoo tek ceer, ba,” Rudy said when Dugan let him go.

  “You too, Rudy, and . . . thanks. Thanks for everything.” After walking only a few steps, he turned to add, “Tell everyone I said that, willya? Just tell them all I said thanks . . . for everything.”

  Although it was hard to tell, Dugan thought he might have seen the man smile, before he turned to walk away into the night, away from the carnival that was his only home, and into the unknown.