Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  “But you— Why, kid, the greatest names in the business started right where you are now. You’re the luckiest kid in the world. You got a good front—you’re a damn good-looking kid and I wouldn’t crap you up. You can talk. You can do sleights. You got everything. Great magician someday. Only don’t let the carny …” His eyes were glazing over. He stopped speaking and sat rigid.

  “Why don’t you turn out the light and take it easy until Zeena gets back?” Stan suggested.

  A grunt was his only answer. Then the man stood up and threw back his shoulders. “Kid, you should have seen us when we played the Keith time!”

  Good God, is this idiot never going to pass out, Stan thought. Beyond the wooden walls of the understage compartment and the canvas of the tent was the sound of a car’s engine starting, the whirr of the starter rising through the night as the nameless driver pressed it. The motor caught and Stan heard the gears.

  “You know, kid—” Pete drew himself up until his head nearly touched the boards of the ceiling. The alcohol seemed to stiffen his back. His chin came up commandingly. “Stan, lad like you could be a great mentalist. Study human nature!” He took a long, last pull at the bottle and finished it. Barely swaying, he opened his eyes wide and swallowed.

  “Here—chord from the orchestra, amber spot—and I’m on. Make my spiel, give ’em one laugh, plenty mystery. Then I jump right into the reading. Here’s m’crystal.” He focused his eyes on the empty whisky bottle and Stan watched him with an uneasy twinge. Pete seemed to be coming alive. His eyes became hot and intent.

  Then his voice altered and took on depth and power. He passed his left hand slowly over the bottle’s surface. “Since the dawn of history,” he began, his words booming in the wooden box-room, “mankind has sought to see behind the veil which hides him from tomorrow. And through the ages certain men have gazed into the polished crystal and seen. Is it some property of the crystal itself? Or does the gazer use it merely to turn his eyes inward? Who can tell? But visions come. Slowly, shifting their form, visions come …”

  Stan found himself watching the empty bottle in which a single pale drop slanted across the bottom. He could not take his eyes away, so contagious was the other’s absorption.

  “Wait! The shifting shapes begin to clear. I see fields of grass and rolling hills. And a boy—a boy is running on bare feet through the fields. A dog is with him.”

  Too swiftly for his wary mind to check him, Stan whispered the words, “Yes. Gyp.”

  Pete’s eyes burned down into the glass. “Happiness then … but for a little while. Now dark mists … sorrow. I see people moving … one man stands out … evil … the boy hates him. Death and the wish of death …”

  Stan moved like an explosion. He snatched for the bottle; it slipped and fell to the ground. He kicked it into a corner, his breath coming quick and rapid.

  Pete stood for a moment, gazing at his empty hand, then dropped his arm. His shoulders sagged. He crumpled into the folding chair, resting his elbows on the card table. When he raised his face to Stan the eyes were glazed, the mouth slack. “I didn’t mean nothing, boy. You ain’t mad at me, are ya? Just fooling around. Stock reading—fits everybody. Only you got to dress it up.” His tongue had thickened and he paused, his head drooping, then snapping up again. “Everybody had some trouble. Somebody they wanted to kill. Usually for a boy it’s the old man. What’s childhood? Happy one minute, heartbroke the next. Every boy had a dog. Or neighbor’s dog—”

  His head fell forward on his forearms. “Just old drunk. Just lush. Lord … Zeena be mad. Don’t you let on, son, you gimme that little drink. She be mad at you, too.” He began to cry softly.

  Stan felt his stomach heave with disgust. He turned without a word and left the steaming compartment. In comparison, the air of the Ten-in-One tent, darkened now and still, felt cool.

  It seemed as if half the night had worn away before Zeena did come back. Stan met her, talking in whispers so as not to disturb the others in the tent, now snoring heavily in their bunks.

  “Where’s Pete?”

  “Passed out.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “I—I don’t know. He was over by the geek’s layout.”

  “God damn it, Stan, I told you to watch him. Oh, well, I’m tuckered out myself. Might as well let him sleep it off. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  “Zeena.”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Let me walk you home.”

  “It ain’t far and I don’t want you getting ideas. The landlady of this dump has a face like a snapping turtle. We don’t want to start no trouble in this burg. We’ve had enough trouble with the wheels pretty near getting shut down for gambling. This is bluenose.”

  They had left the tent and the darkened midway stretched out ahead of them, light still streaming from the cookhouse. “I’ll walk you over,” Stan said. There was a leaden feeling in his chest and he fought to throw it off. He laced his fingers in hers and she did not draw her hand away.

  In the shadow of the first trees on the edge of the lot they stopped and kissed and Zeena clung to him. “Gosh, honey, I’ve missed you something awful. I guess I need more loving than I thought. But not in the room. That old battle-ax is on the prowl.”

  Stan took her arm and started along the road. The moon had set. They passed a field on a little rise and then the road dipped between clay banks with fields above road level. “Let’s go up there,” Stan whispered.

  They climbed the bank and spread their coats out on the grass.

  Stan reached the Ten-in-One tent just before light. He crept into his bunk and was out like a shot. Then something was chirping in his ear and tugging at his shoulder. A voice like a fiddle’s E string was cutting through the layers of fatigue and the void which was in him from having emptied his nerves.

  “Kid, wake up! Wake up, you big lump!” The shrill piping got louder.

  Stan growled and opened his eyes. The tent was tawny gold with sun on the outside of it above him. The pestiferous force at his shoulder was Major Mosquito, his blond hair carefully dampened and brushed over his bulging baby forehead.

  “Stan, get up! Pete’s dead!”

  “What?”

  Stan shot off the bunk and felt for his shoes. “What happened to him?”

  “Just croaked—the stinking old rum-pot. Got into that bottle of wood alcohol Zeena keeps to burn the phoney questions. It was all gone or pretty near. And Pete’s dead as a herring. His mouth’s hanging open like the Mammoth Cave. Come on, take a look. I kicked him in the ribs a dozen times and he never moved. Come and look at him.”

  Without speaking Stan laced up his shoes, carefully, correctly, taking great pains with them. He kept fighting back the thought that wouldn’t stay out of his mind. Then it broke over him like a thunder storm: They’ll hang me. They’ll hang me. They’ll hang me. Only I didn’t mean it. I only wanted to pass him out. I didn’t know it was wood— They’ll hang me. I didn’t mean it. They’ll—”

  He leaped from the platform and pressed through the knot of show people around the seeress’s stage. Zeena stepped out and stood facing them, tall and straight and dry-eyed.

  “He’s gone all right. He was a good guy and a swell trouper. I told him that alky was bad. Only last night I hid his bottle on him—” She stopped and suddenly ducked back through the curtains.

  Stan turned and pushed through the crowd. He walked out of the tent into the early sun and kept on to the edge of the grounds where the telephone poles beside the road carried their looping strands off into the distance.

  His foot clinked against something bright and he picked up a burned-out electric bulb which lay in the ashes of a long-dead fire. It was iridescent and smoky inside, dark as a crystal ball on a piece of black velvet. Stan kept it in his hand, looking for a rock or a fence post. His diaphragm seemed to be pressing up around his lungs and keeping him from drawing his breath. On one of the telephone poles was a streaked election poster, carrying
the gaunt face of the candidate, white hair falling dankly over one eyebrow, lines of craft and rapacity around the mouth that the photographer couldn’t quite hide.

  “Elect MACKINSEN for SHERIFF. HONEST—INCORRUPTIBLE—FEARLESS.”

  Stan drew back his arm and let the bulb fly. “You son-of-a-bitch whoremonger!” Slowly, as if by the very intensity of his attention he had slowed down time itself, the bulb struck the printed face and shattered, the sparkling fragments sailing high in the air and glittering as they fell.

  As if an abscess inside him had broken, Stan could breathe again and the knot of fear loosened. He could never fear again with the same agony. He knew it. It would never come again as bad as that. His mind, clear as the bright air around him, took over, and he began to think.

  CARD IV

  The World

  Within a circling garland a girl dances; the beasts of the Apocalypse look on.

  SINCE morning, Stan’s brain had been full of whirring wheels, grinding away at every possible answer. Where were you when he was over by the geek? On my platform, setting up my cot. What did you do then? Practiced a new move with cards. What move? Front-and-back-hand palm. Where did he go? Under the stage, I guess. You were watching him? Only that he didn’t go outside. Where were you when Zeena came back? At the entrance waiting for her.…

  Now the crowd was thinning out. Outside the stars had misted over and there was a flash of lightning behind the trees. At eleven Hoately stopped the bally. The last marks left and the inhabitants of the Ten-in-One smoked while they dressed. At last they gathered with sober faces around Hoately. Only Major Mosquito seemed unaffected. He started to whistle gaily, someone told him to pipe down.

  When the last one was ready they filed out and got into cars. Stan rode with Hoately, the Major, Bruno, and Sailor Martin toward the center of town where the undertaker’s parlor was located.

  “Lucky break the funeral happened on a slow night,” the Sailor said. No one answered him.

  Then Major Mosquito chirruped, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” He spat. “Why do they have to crap it up with all that stuff? Why can’t they just shovel ’em under and let ’em start falling apart?”

  “You shut up!” Bruno said thickly. “You talk too much for little fellow.”

  “Go frig a rubber duck.”

  “Tough on Zeena,” Bruno said to the others. “She is fine woman.”

  Clem Hoately, driving with one hand carelessly on the wheel, said, “That rum-pot ain’t going to be missed by nobody. Not even Zeena after a while. But it makes you take a good think for yourself. I remember that guy when he was big stuff. I ain’t touched a drop in over a year now and I ain’t going to, either. Seen too much of it.”

  “Who’s going to work the act with Zeena?” Stan asked after a time. “She going to change her act? She could handle the questions herself and work one ahead.”

  Hoately scratched his head with his free hand. “That ain’t too good nowadays. She don’t have to change the act. You could work the undercover part. I’ll take the house collection. We’ll throw the Electric Girl between your spot and Zeena’s, give you time to slip in and get set.”

  “Suits me.”

  He said it, Stan kept repeating. It wasn’t my idea. The Major and Bruno heard him. He said it.

  The street was empty and the light from the funeral parlor made a golden wedge on the sidewalk. Behind them the other car drew up. Old Maguire, the Ten-in-One’s ticket seller and grinder, got out, then Molly; then Joe Plasky swung himself out on his hands and crossed the sidewalk. He reminded Stan of a frog, moving deliberately.

  Zeena met them at the door. She was wearing a new black outfit, a dress with enormous flowers worked on it in jet. “Come on in, folks. I—I got Pete all laid out handsome. I just phoned a reverend and he’s coming over. I thought it was nicer to get a reverend if we could, even if Pete wasn’t no church man.”

  They went inside. Joe Plasky fumbled in his pocket and held an envelope up to Zeena. “The boys chipped in for a stone, Zeena. They knew you didn’t need the dough but they wanted to do something. I wrote the Billboard this afternoon. They’ll carry a box. I just said, ‘Mourned by his many friends in show business.”’

  She bent down and kissed him. “That’s—that’s damn sweet of you all. I guess we better get into the chapel. This looks like the reverend coming.”

  They took their places on folding chairs. The clergyman was a meek, dull little old man, looking sleepy. Embarrassed, too, Stan figured. As if carny folks were not quite human—like they had all left their pants off only he was too polite to let on he noticed.

  He put on his glasses. “… we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken …”

  Stan, sitting beside Zeena, tried to concentrate on the words and guess what the reverend was going to say next. Anything to keep from thinking. It’s not my fault he’s dead. I didn’t mean to kill him. I killed him. There it starts again and all day I wasn’t feeling anything and I thought I’d lost it.

  “Lord, let me know my end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live …”

  Pete never knew his end. Pete died happy. I did him a favor. He had been dying for years. He was afraid of living and he was trying to ease himself out only I had to go and kill him. I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. Sooner or later he would have taken a chance on that wood alky. I only helped him a little. Christ, will I have to think about this damn thing the rest of my life?

  Stan slowly turned his head and looked at the others. Molly was sitting with the Major between her and Bruno. In the back row Clem Hoately had his eyes shut. Joe Plasky’s face held the shadow of a smile that was too deeply cut into it ever to vanish completely. It was the sort of smile Lazarus must have had afterwards, Stan thought. Sailor Martin had one eye closed.

  The sight of the Sailor rushed Stan back to normal. He had done that a hundred times himself, sitting beside his father on the hard pew, watching his mother in a white surplice there in the choir stall with the other ladies. There’s a blind spot in your eye and if you shut one eye and then let the gaze of the other travel in a straight line to one side of the preacher’s head there will be a point where his head seems to disappear and he seems to be standing there preaching without any head.

  Stan looked at Zeena beside him. Her mind was far away somewhere. The reverend speeded up.

  “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death …”

  Behind them Major Mosquito heaved a sharp sigh and wriggled, the chair creaking. Bruno said, “Shoosh!”

  When they got to the Lord’s Prayer Stan found his voice with relief. Zeena must hear it. If she heard it she couldn’t suspect him of having anything to do with— Stan lowered his voice and the words came automatically. She mustn’t ever think—and yet she had looked at him sharp when he had said Pete was hanging around the geek. She mustn’t think. Only he mustn’t overplay it. God damn it, this was the time for misdirection if ever there was one. “… for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever.”

  “Amen.”

  The undertaker was silently brisk. He removed the coffin lid and set it noiselessly behind the casket. Zeena brought her handkerchief up to her face and turned away. They formed a line and passed by.

  Clem Hoately came first, his furrowed face showing nothing. Then Bruno, holding Major Mosquito on his forearm so he could look down and see. Molly came next and Sailor Martin fell in behind her, moving close. Then old Maguire, his cap crushed in his hand. Joe Plasky hopped across the floor, pushing one of the folding chairs. When it came his turn to view the remains he moved the chair into place by the head of the coffin and swung himself up on the seat. He looked down and the smile was still aro
und the corners of his eyes although his mouth was sober. Without thinking he made the sign of the cross.

  Stan swallowed hard. It was his turn and there was no way of getting out of it. Joe had hopped to the floor and pushed the chair against the wall; Stan shoved both hands deep into his pockets and approached the casket. He had never seen a corpse; the skin of his scalp prickled at the thought.

  He drew his breath and forced himself to look.

  It seemed at first like a wax figure in a dress suit. One hand rested easily on the white waistcoat, the other was by the side. It held a round, clear glass ball. The face was rosy—the undertaker had filled out the drawn cheeks and painted the skin until it glowed with a waxen counterfeit of life. But there was something else that hit Stan like a blow between the ribs. Carefully fashioned of crêpe hair and stuck to the chin was a lifelike, neatly trimmed, little black beard.

  “For the last demonstration Mamzelle Electra will perform a feat never attempted since Ben Franklin harnessed the lightning with his kite string. Holding the two filaments of a carbon arc light, she will allow the death-dealing current to pass through her body….”

  Stan quietly slipped into the compartment below the stage of Zeena, the Woman Who Knows. It no longer smelled of whisky. Stan had installed a piece of canvas as a ground sheet and had cut ventilation scrolls in the sides of the boxlike little room. Over the bridge table and on three sides of it he had erected a cardboard shield so he could open the envelopes and copy the questions on the pad by the light of a flashlight.

  The rustle of feet surging around the stage outside, then Zeena’s voice in her opening spiel. Stan took a bundle of dummy questions—blank cards in small envelopes—and stood by the window where Hoately would pass behind the curtains.