Outside the tent, a talker repeated the lines from the sign above giving his own alliterative spin on them. Withers queued up in a long line of people waiting to get in. He tapped the man in front of him on the shoulder and asked, “You seen this act before?”
“I came here last night. The rest of the place is a rip-off, but I had to come see this again.”
“Worth it?”
“I’d pay twice what they’re asking to see the Doctor again. I gotta figure out how he does it.”
Withers suppressed a cough and pulled at his collar a little, trying to loosen it without undoing a button. “Can you spare a butt?”
The man grinned at him and shook a cigarette out of a crumpled red pack. “The wife says I’ll get lung cancer. She actually believes what they say ’bout that.” He laughed. “Suppose if I do, I can just come back a third time.”
Withers nodded and smiled back. He wasn’t a carnie, but he knew a mark when he saw one. He could tell this guy was going to get taken for everything he had someday. If he hadn’t already.
Inside, Withers took a seat far off to the right. Normally, he’d sit near the exit in any place he thought a fire might break out (and the gel covers on the stage lights were already smoldering and throwing up wispy little streams of smoke). This time, he was headed for the backstage tent flap ten feet in front of him. It was that way out, disaster or not.
A guillotine loomed in front of him, the blade glinting in the sickly yellow light. At the opposite end of the stage stood a coffin with a half-dozen broad-bladed swords shoved through at different angles. But the most compelling prop on the stage was a brushed steel autopsy table with a mirror angled over top like they used in the cooking demonstrations his wife dragged him to at the county fair. Come see the Treman Electronics Teamco Blend King. It’ll revolutionize your kitchen!
Despite its position behind the torture implements on either side, it was clear the table was the pièce de résistance—the reason anyone would spend hard-earned money to come back to this tetanus trap. Unlike the guillotine and the swords opposite, the table was not gleaming clean. It was stained with dark reddish-brown streaks that credibly resembled dried blood. Very convincing for a sideshow act. It was as convincing as anything he’d seen in the war or his career as a murder cop. He felt a little nervous staring at it. Whoever was in charge of art direction, knew their business. Or, it wasn’t paint.
Withers felt his hope grow.
A slender young woman wearing a ruffled, lace-up corset with matching bra and panties, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, and a black executioner’s hood walked out onto the stage. Surprisingly, she had no tattoos. The crowd immediately quieted down even though she didn’t say a word. A couple of men in the back let out weak wolf calls, but the hood was a boner-killer. She made a slight curtsy and sashayed over to the coffin. Wheeling it into the center of the stage, she slid a sword out and set it in a rack behind. She walked around the box shaking her skinny ass, removing swords and stacking them in the rear rack, until only one remained. Spinning around with her back to the audience, she unlatched the front and swung open the lid revealing a pale man in a black mortician’s suit, run through by the wide blade. The assistant slowly drew the sword from the box. From Withers’ angle it looked like the thing was going right through the man’s body. He was impressed by the quality of the illusion. He was no expert, but the blade sure didn’t look collapsible.
As the tip slipped free of the man’s body, he stepped out of the box and held out his hand. His assistant handed him the sword and he held it up in front of his face in a salute before dropping the tip and driving it into the wooden floorboards, where it stuck most solidly, wobbling a bit. The crowd erupted in enthusiastic cheers and applause. The man bowed deeply and held up hands with long, spidery fingers imploring the assembled spectators to save some of their energy. He smiled with a look that said I’m just getting started.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I am Dr. Samael Morningstar and this . . . is my psychic surgery!” The crowd began clapping again. Not the polite kind of applause you give when someone has done nothing to earn it. They seemed ready to leap to their feet. Withers wondered how many, like the man ahead of him in line, had seen this show before.
“Although I do see some familiar faces in the audience, it is incumbent upon me to repeat that this display is for adults only. And even then, if you find that you are easily shocked, have a weak constitution, or any infirmity of the heart, the acceleration of which would endanger your life, I beseech you to go and find other entertainments along our midway to fill your evening. The good people at the front of the tent will be happy to refund the price of admission if you leave now.” Morgenstern . . . Morningstar waited a beat. No one moved. He closed his eyes slowly and bowed his head. “Then let us begin.”
Withers sat quietly while Morningstar ran through the paces of several pedestrian sleight of hand illusions and fakir’s tricks with needles, broken glass, and razor blades. The audience kept its rapt attention, but seemed to be waiting out these minor miracles for the sake of the large props behind the performer. Eventually, he wrapped up the small part of the act and reintroduced his assistant. Withers couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she wheeled the guillotine out into the center of the stage. That’s the point of having a beautiful assistant: redirection. Every second I’m looking at her, I’m missing him doing something he doesn’t want me to see. Withers looked back at the tall man to find him standing still, staring at the girl with a momentary look of confusion. He regained his composure and launched into the next part of the act.
“Previously reserved for ‘criminals of noble birth,’ decapitation was perfected by Joseph-Ignace Guillotin in 1789, and during The Terror in revolutionary France, the National Razor claimed the lives of over sixteen thousand.” The assistant walked around the front of the device and started to crank a winch, raising the gleaming blade. Morgenstern placed a melon in the bottom half of the circle where a neck would rest—the “lunette” as he called it. “Although its use has decreased since the war, Madame Guillotine is still in use today, having just kissed Jacques Fesch, the murderer of a French policeman not even a year ago.” Morgenstern glanced at Withers in the front row, winked, and pulled a small handle he called a “déclic” sending the angled blade slamming down with a terrible ferocity that made the audience gasp and sent a shiver up Withers’ spine.
As Morningstar’s baritone boomed through the tent discussing the finer points of death by beheading, his assistant bound his arms behind him. When she finished with his arms, she tied a blindfold around his eyes. The magician continued his soliloquy blindly as she rewound the winch, raising the blade to the crossbar again: “And now, to satisfy any representatives of law enforcement in the audience tonight, I submit to you that this demonstration is presented for scientific and educational purposes exclusively. If you bring any prurient, ill intentions with you to this theater, they are yours alone and the management and performers are not responsible.” The girl led Morningstar around to the rear of the device where she strapped him to a teeterboard before tilting his body down and pushing him forward so his head emerged through the lunette. She closed the trap over Morningstar’s neck and moved a basket underneath his face. Withers thought he saw Morningstar’s forehead wrinkle in confusion.
With no more ceremony, the black-hooded assistant pulled the déclic, sending the blade crashing down. Despite his certain knowledge that it was another illusion, Withers could barely keep his hands from flying up to shield his eyes. Although it was subtle, unlike with the fruit, the blade seemed to bog down at the last second as it slammed into place. Morningstar’s head fell into the wicker basket below. A gush of convincing stage blood jetted from behind the blade and coated the rolling platform upon which the device stood. The assistant walked over to the basket. Withers expected her to withdraw from it a badly rendered rubber likeness of the magician’s head in deathly repose. Instead, she draped a small black shroud o
ver it and left the stage.
The crowd murmured discontent and Withers heard one woman begin to sob. At the back of the audience, the talker pulled open the tent flaps and announced, “That’s it folks. Next show is at noon tomorrow. You don’t wanna miss Dr. Morningstar’s miraculous resurrection!” Withers’ agitated mind raced. Next show? He didn’t finish this show. The crowd collectively grumbled as it filed out into the night to spend more money on rigged games and rickety rides. Withers slipped the opposite direction, toward the back of the tent where the assistant had fled. He paused beside the guillotine. Noting the lack of a body on the teeterboard, he was tempted to pull the black shroud off the basket and satisfy himself fully that it was only an illusion. Of course it’s an illusion, you fucking mook. Now go do what you came for. Withers sneaked through the backstage curtain. Behind the stage was a narrow area where the magician stored his trays of needles and glass and other props. Behind that, another tent flap led the way outside. Withers slipped out into the night. He paused, coughing into his fist, trying to catch a breath in the cool air.
“Hey, you can’t be back here!” said a carnie in an unseasonable white undershirt stretched across improbably large muscles. Withers’ frayed nerves had him reaching behind his back, under his sport coat for the comfortable feel of his piece before he realized what he was doing. He slowly removed his hand from inside his coat. The gesture was not lost on the carnie.
“I was just looking for Morgen—Morningstar. I want an autograph,” he said.
“You’re a fan, huh?”
“Yeah. His biggest. You know where I can find him?”
“Next show’s tomorrow.” The muscled man jerked his thumb back over his shoulder toward the midway.
“You sure I can’t get an autograph right now? My kids would just love it.”
“Look pal, you don’t want Sam gettin’ his hands on you. Whatever it is you really want, better just take it on the heels and pretend you never saw him.”
“You’re doing me a favor, huh?”
The strongman folded his massive arms. Ropey muscle bulged and flexed, but the gesture looked more like a freezing man trying to protect his organs than a tough guy puffing up. “If you’re looking for trouble, you found it, brother.”
“I ain’t your brother.”
The strongman gave him another long, hard look before deciding that if Withers wanted to go running toward disaster, who was he to stand in his way. “Suit yourself, cuz.” The man nodded his head toward the gate in the movable fence a few yards behind him. “Trailers’re back there. Sam lives in the gypsy one.”
“Was that so hard?”
“Not on me,” the man chuckled. He stalked off leaving Withers alone in the dark. Withers patted the gun in his waistband for reassurance as he pushed through the gate. Ahead, he saw a row of pull-along trailers ranging from silver streamlines to Winnebago campers. In the middle was an ornate vintage Romani vardo wagon. Withers climbed the first carved wooden step and knocked on the gilt door, keeping his other hand on the pistol grip in the small of his back. A girl opened the top half of the Dutch door. “Hello,” he said, putting his foot up onto the next caravan step. “You must be . . . the assistant. I’m looking for—” Before he could climb higher, he found the world swimming around him. And then it went away.
The voices were faint, as if miles away, drifting on the fog that obscured Withers’ mind and blurred his vision. “What about him?” one asked. “He’s a cop.”
“By the time they figure out what’s left of him ain’t me, we’ll be in Mexico. Let’s dust out.”
Withers tried to blink away the haze. His head ached. Every movement made him feel vertiginous and sick. He cautiously opened an eye. The blinding light sent a convulsion of sharp pain arcing from the back of his skull down into his stomach. He felt sick.
“I think he’s awake.”
“So what,” the girl said. “I thought you were my big strong man. You tied him down. Do you think he can slip your knots?”
“Not one I tied.”
“Then leave him. They’ll burn away too.”
Withers smelled it then. Kerosene. He opened his other eye and made an effort to focus his vision. Ahead of him the doll was splashing the shit around the small trailer. The inside of the place looked like the outside: antiquey. Like a transplant from another time—another continent.
She doused the velvet curtains, the chair cushions, and the bed at the far end. Behind him, he felt someone tugging on the ropes that held his arms and legs tight to the chair. “Sorry about this,” the man said. Withers tilted his head back carefully and peeked. The strongman. “I told you to take it on the heels.”
“Don’t talk to him,” the girl shouted.
“I’m looking for Morgenstern,” Withers said through the pain. “I don’t give a shit about anything else.”
The girl stood up straight and looked at her hulking partner. Although it was plenty big enough, he still looked confined in the space. Unable to stand up to his full height or square his shoulders as though the caravan were shrinking around him, pushing him down. “Well, you can tell Sam what I think of him when he meets you in Hell,” she said. Her voice was nothing like Withers had expected. It was rough and gravelly like she’d been the one doing the razor-eating act instead of her boss . . . and it’d gone wrong.
“My inside coat pocket. Look there.” The couple stared at him as though opening his coat might trigger a bomb or a gas canister. The strongman crept over and pulled open Withers’ sport coat. “Other side,” he directed. The meathead did as he was told. Withers assumed that was the whole reason he was along for this ride: indomitable physical presence—didn’t ask questions. He felt like telling the goon that as soon as she got clear of the midway, she’d need to be clear of him too. She looked like she was getting ready for a vanishing act and a body like his was going to draw attention wherever they went. The key to a magic trick like disappearing was to have the audience looking in the other direction as you slipped out of sight. Nobody took their eyes off a gorilla if it was out of its cage.
The man dug in Withers’ pocket with clumsy, short fingers, pulling out the thick envelope. He held it up to the girl who asked, “What is it?”
“Dunno,” he said.
“It’s from my doctor,” Withers explained. “Open it.” He nodded at them to let them know it was okay to look. The small gesture hurt. He wondered if the ape had hit him with a lead sap or a brick wall. Either way, lung cancer didn’t look like it would be what killed him after all. If the swelling in his brain didn’t do it, being burned alive would. He’d never smoked a velvet curtain before. He hoped that he got a good couple of satisfying last drags before the smoke suffocated him.
He was racked by a coughing fit, but couldn’t cover his mouth with his hands tied behind his back. A spray of red mist billowed out of his mouth, and blood-tinged saliva dripped down his chin.
“You’re really sick.”
“I told you. I came to see Morgenstern. Dr. Morningstar.”
“The psychic surgery bit? You think he can really pull tumors out of your fuckin’ lungs and cure you?”
“If he can do the tumors, then radiation will do the rest. They say they can’t operate.”
“I don’t get it,” the meathead said.
“Psychic surgery. It’s a swindle,” she explained. “A shyster like Sam tells people he can pull tumors and shit out of their bodies without even making a cut. He folds a bunch of their flabby skin over—and they’re all flabby—pinching so it feels like he’s doing something, and then he palms a chicken liver or some blob of meat out on to their stomach. ‘Voila! I have removed your wicked tumor!’” She mocked Morgenstern’s stage presence, throwing back her head and then sharply bowing. “Desperate rubes eat it up and then shit greenbacks. Best part of the grift is they all die, so nobody comes back looking for a refund.”
“Morgenstern beat cancer,” Withers said.
“That’s what he tells suck
ers like you. Right before they give up their life savings. ‘I stared death in the face,’” she mocked, “‘and spat in his eye! I am—’”
“I am constant as the northern star!” The booming voice rattled the caravan like a cannon blast.
The caravan door came off its hinges and flew away into the night, replaced by the tall magician, stooping to enter his home. His white shirt was stained a brownish red and the collar had been hewn off. A ragged, weeping line encircled the man’s neck. “Lili, this has been very dispiriting.”
“But, I—”
“You jammed the trap, so it didn’t open in time. I dropped after the blade hit. Clever girl. I can imagine the write-up in the papers now. ‘Dr. Morningstar died in an accident owing to an occupational hazard of the death defier.’ And then, what? You were so distraught you self-immolated?” Morgenstern shook his head with disappointment. “My dear. I thought you believed in me.”
The strongman fired Withers’ pilfered gun at the figure in the doorway. The bullets made Morgenstern’s black suit puff and ripple, like firing into smoke. He smirked and stepped fully into the caravan. “And you, Karl.” The magician held up a finger, cocked his thumb, and aimed. “Well, you can hardly blame an ass for pulling against a harness.” He dropped his thumb. The man dropped to the floor.
Morgenstern walked past Withers’ chair toward his assistant. She held up a can of kerosene and a Zippo. “Don’t come any closer!” she shouted.
“Fire?” Morgenstern’s black suit fluttered, though the air in the caravan was still. “Didn’t you know I was baptized in fire?” He snapped his delicate fingers and the can in Lili’s hands burst, soaking her with the clear fluid. With a sleight of hand gesture, a match appeared between the great man’s fingers. “I love you,” he whispered.
13 Views of the Suicide Woods Page 10
