by Ed Kurtz
“Sheriff, wait,” Theodora managed to say as Thomas broke free from the cashier’s cage. He dropped to all fours and fell into a loping gait, growling and lashing his head from side to side.
Rich took aim at the rapidly approaching man and bellowed, “Hold it!”
“Get out, get out, GET OUT!” Thomas roared, coming on fast.
The sheriff squeezed the trigger and his revolver bucked as a black burst formed in Thomas’s cheek and he went skidding back across the floor, leaving a broad swath of blood in his wake.
Theodora cried, “No!” and fell to her knees. “It wasn’t him! Oh God, it’s not any of them, can’t you see? It—it’s the magic!”
“Wouldn’t have made much difference whose fault it was after he’d bitten my throat out, Miss,” Rich said between heaving breaths.
“He’s right,” Charles agreed. “It’s just like the war. They all just kids over there blasting away at each other, but it’s that or get your head blowed off.”
“It isn’t though,” Theodora wept, her face hidden in her hands. “It isn’t a war.”
“You’re wrong about that, Miss,” Rich said sternly. “It sure as hell is.”
Washing the last of his shame down the drain, Jojo snatched a towel from the side of the basin and wiped down his freshly-shaven face, neck, and hands. He blinked several times in succession and looked in the mirror. The werewolf was gone. And so was Sarah.
He went back through the door to the hotel room, unsurprised when he closed the door and it vanished completely. He wondered if there was anything left to surprise him at all.
The bed was unoccupied, though the sheets remained pressed into the vague, wrinkly shape of the slight young girl who recently lay there. She had taken Margie away again.
Minerva.
Jojo scowled at the vacant room and repulsed the shiver building at the base of his spine; a shiver born from the frigid air blasting through an open window and the savage anger reeling in his brain. He was making sense of something so utterly senseless that it defied his sanity. They had taken everything away from him, Barker Davis and Minerva, but making him believe he’d ever had anything to begin with.
His hands tightened to fists and the freshly shaven skin there burned. He knew now exactly what he had to do and why, and the cracking report that sounded from somewhere in the hotel only galvanized him to get to work.
You want chaos? he thought as he raced from the room and down the hall. Well, you damn well got it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Some stars winked at Margie despite the smoky haze that filmed the sky, and she wondered why it was night. She was naked, on her back upon a bed of dead leaves and soft, loamy earth. The air was cold and the tree tops swayed gently in the breeze high above her. Her thigh stung, and she remembered the woman cutting into her, tasting her blood. She smelled the wood fire and worried for a moment that the forest was burning, but since she felt no heat she could think of no reason to move. If the air got warmer, she would. But for now she was quite comfortable.
Though she sensed movement in the middle distance among the trees, Margie still couldn’t be bothered to raise her head. Someone was coming, their footsteps scuffing through the detritus—maybe more than one person. And they were dragging something, or at least that’s what it sounded like to her. The closer they came, the more strongly she smelled the rich odour of upturned earth, no doubt dug out by whatever they were dragging. The haze was thickening but one star in particular shone brightly. She thought she recalled what it was, but the name escaped her. A gentle voice, much nearer than she expected, answered the question for her.
“It’s Venus,” he said. “Brightest thing in the night sky, apart from the moon. It’s my lighthouse, this forest my harbour.”
Margie raised her arms to cover her breasts and shifted her hips to conceal the dark patch of nakedness between her legs. The voice chuckled.
“Poor child. Saving your nakedness for that boy, Scooter, I imagine. Murdered his parents last night, you know. Brutal stuff.”
Now the man was looming over her, his shape illumined vaguely in the starlight. She glared up at him and breathed out. Someone else moved behind him, just out of sight.
“They’ll say I made him do it, but I didn’t. I’m no hypnotist, and even if I were you should know that hypnotism is not an art to make people act beyond their natural capabilities. Scooter Carew killed his mother and father because he wanted to. It’s not unusual, actually—not unusual at all. Youth always takes the place of its antithesis, just as life is required to make up for death. This place is positively marred by imperfections, in spite of my best intentions. There was only ever supposed to be one, my entry point in a way. An ugly door to a lovely house. Alas . . .”
“Who are you?” Margie squeaked.
The man smiled and turned to the person behind him. “Bring it up,” he commanded. Then, to Margie: “Patience, child; that’s what I’ve come to show you.”
The nurse came into her field of vision, a tattered rope grasped in both hands which she pulled with all her strength. The rope’s other end was affixed to a long wooden box, covered in loose dirt that fell off in clouds and clumps. A coffin.
“It had been a lot of years, of course,” the man said almost apologetically. “I nearly forget where I’d buried it.”
“Buried what?” Margie whispered.
“This, this right here,” he said, clapping his hand against the old, dry wood of the coffin. “My body.”
“Your . . . body?”
A grunt, then—a curt, impatient laugh.
“The author’s characters can never comprehend his intentions, can they? Otherwise, Othello would surely have avoided Desdemona like the plague, had he understood the playwright’s nasty little plans for them.”
Margie wrinkled her nose and turned her gaze to the nurse, who relinquished the rope and stood up to her full height. She wiped the sweat from her brow and squinted at the haze.
“Will that damned house ever burn down?” she asked.
“It skipped a day,” the man reminded her. “With the cat out of the bag so early on, I saw no reason to prolong the inevitable.”
Margie shook her head and tried to sit up, but she felt as though a great weight was pressing her down. “Skipped a day? What does that mean?”
“It means that it’s Friday night, child,” he explained patiently. “The best night for a performance.”
“What performance?”
The nurse hissed an angry sigh. “Will you shut her up?”
“Calm yourself, darling,” he said to her.
“She’s dancing on my last nerve.”
“You must learn to be more tolerant.”
Margie listened to them argue while she watched the man bend over the coffin, wiggling his fingers with uncontained excitement. He curled them under the lip of the lid and pulled. The wood groaned and something cracked. A strong, unpleasant musk escaped from within, sickly sweet and heavy like syrup. Margie gagged.
“Christ,” the nurse groused. “What a stink.”
“Thirty years,” he responded cryptically as he lifted the lid the rest of the way and flung it off into the leaves. “Have a look, girl. Come on, you can get up now.”
Margie sat up, the invisible weight gone, and pushed against the ground with one hand while keeping the other arm wrapped around her chest. She got to her knees, and then her feet, and stepped cautiously forward to look inside the coffin. A black, skeletal corpse rested there, its thin arms crossed over exposed ribcage. The jawbone was crooked and hair still sprouted from the top of the skull. She gasped and looked away, covering her face with her hand and stifling a small sob. The woman chuckled.
“You never looked better,” she said.
“An extraordinary thing,” he commented, “staring down at one’s own corpse. I cannot say I
recommend it, but still—extraordinary.”
“What is this?” the child moaned. “What’s it mean?”
“My poor girl,” said the man, resting a hand on her shoulder. She jerked away. He shrugged. “These are the earthly remains of one Black Harry Ashford, magician extraordinaire, who died not five feet from where you are presently standing. He died because I killed him, smashed his head with a rock which accounts for the sad state of the dead man’s jaw.”
“God, but why?”
“Because I am Black Harry Ashford, Margie. And I hadn’t any more use for those diseased old bones.”
Margie stared, open mouthed, and forgot to keep covering her chest.
Theodora heard the steps and spun around, her mind spinning wildly between flight or fight. When Jojo appeared from the staircase, she held her breath and felt tears spill down her face. He raised his brow and said, “Hiya, kid.”
Sheriff Rich laughed. “’Bout time you shaved, Walker. You were looking pretty rough there for a spell.”
“I guess I was.”
“What about the girl?” Charles cut in. “Ain’t she with you?”
“She wasn’t there,” Jojo said, sidling up to the trio and glancing around at their faces. “But I reckon I’ve got a good idea as to where we might find her. First I want us to split up into two pairs, though.”
“What for?” Rich asked.
“Because I want to burn this goddamn town to the ground tonight,” Jojo said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Here’s what I know,” he began, facing the semi-circle of allies in front of the hotel. “I spent my early childhood in a circus freakshow, on account of my condition.” He absently touched his smooth cheek when he said this. “I must’ve been nine or ten before I ran off, ended up in the home here in town. When I was little, there was a magician and a carnie, names of Harry Ashford and Tim Davis. Ashford died, and after that Davis came on strong and gradually took over the sideshow. I think he probably killed the magician and assumed whatever power the older man had, and he used that power to make a place for himself.”
“Some power,” Theodora said. “To place himself at the head of a sideshow.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jojo said. “The place he made for himself was this—he made Litchfield.”
Theodora, Charles, and Sheriff Rich stared silently for a moment before Charles said, “Come again?”
“Yeah, all right, so it’s not so easy to swallow. But hear me out. When Ashford died, the circus was camped out in the country, right at the edge of a forest. He’d been heading out into those woods every day, all alone, and staying out there until well into the night on some occasions. I know about it because it frightened a lot of the carnies, particularly when the guy started to get more and more introverted and less interested in performing parlour tricks. Looking back on it now, I think Ashford hit upon some real magic and he was going out there to practice.”
He paused, reviewing everything the Reverend Shannon had told him about the spells and the astronomy and the summoning of Barker Davis. The picture was coming together even as he told it.
“Now this carnie, this kid Tim Davis, he heard about it too, only he wasn’t scared. He was intrigued. I guess he followed the old sorcerer into the woods and tried to insinuate himself into the equation. The kid wanted some of that power for himself.”
“So he killed the magician,” Rich said skeptically.
“I don’t think so.”
“But you said—”
“I think Ashford killed Davis, more or less, but that Davis killed Ashford, too. Hang on, I’m getting myself mixed up. . . .”
“You and us, both,” Theodora said.
Jojo found a bent cigarette in his pocket and lit it. He offered the pack around, but no one was interested.
“Okay,” he went on, “here’s the thing. Ashford used his magic to take over Tim Davis’s body, and once he was in there, he killed his old self and came back alone.”
He sucked at the end of cigarette and inhaled deeply. Ernie Rich scratched his head and narrowed his eyes.
He said, “You don’t say.”
“Maybe a day or two ago you’d lock me up and call the nearest bughouse, Ernie, but today—now—you know better. I was there . . . and so was she.”
Jojo gestured with his head at Theodora, who gulped and nodded.
“You?” Rich asked, dumbfounded. “What in hell were you doing in a freakshow?”
“I wasn’t in it, but I saw it. One hell of a coincidence, really.”
“Except that it isn’t one,” Jojo countered. “Ashford did his magic and died in the woods behind the church, only there wasn’t any church there at the time. . . .”
“Nonsense,” Rich interrupted. “That church has stood there for five generations.”
“Which church, Ernie? Shannon’s crumbling old clapboard shack, or the towering black thing I know you saw out there yesterday?”
“I . . . well, I—”
“Some years later we returned to the same encampment, and that was when Theodora and her nanny came to see the circus.”
“The first time we met,” she said, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“I tried running away then, but I got caught. Later I tried again, and that time I made it. Or I thought I had.”
“The home was a . . . a place keeper,” Theodora said.
“Yes, but not just the home. What I’m telling you is that there wasn’t anything here but open land and trees and scrub. There was no Litchfield. Ashford, or Barker, or whoever made it all up to keep me here. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Charles asked.
“For him to come back, when the time was right.”
Rich snorted and made a face. “Right for what, Jojo? What’s the point?”
“He’s the God who went away,” Jojo said, striking a puzzled look at his own wording. “He made a little world, this town, and let it come into its own over the last thirty years or so. I think I was the seed, in a way—Litchfield’s own Adam. The link between the first world—the sideshow—and this one. Slowly, he sent others along, too; Theodora and her nanny, for example. I’m very sorry to tell you this,” he said to her, “but I don’t believe you ever went home again after that. You came here.”
“But I’m from here,” she argued, her face betraying her fright. “My daddy was from here. I can take you to his grave right now.”
“A trick,” he said sadly. “An illusion. This place is a lie, always has been. That son of a bitch collected people to fill it up until he was satisfied, then stopped to let it grow. Kids like Margie Shannon were born here, sure, but that doesn’t make it any less the lie.”
“And what about your wife? And that black girl . . .”
“Sarah,” Jojo said. “Her name was Sarah.”
“All right, Sarah. Was Sarah a lie, too?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
Ernie Rich grunted and stamped his foot on the pavement.
“Bullshit, Walker. Bullshit! This pavement, it’s real. This . . . this hotel! It’s fucking real!”
“As real as that black church was. Or the circus wagon and the clowns that vanished into thin air. Come on, Ernie—it’s hard to accept, but look at the facts. We’ve been duped, all of us. Prisoners for thirty years.” He dragged on the smoke and laughed. “We’re all a bunch of goddamn rubes.”
“But what’s the point, Walker? What’s the damn point?”
“Control, for one thing,” Theodora calmly suggested. “It’s like Jojo said: Davis got to be God, and that’s no small thing.”
“And even God destroyed the world he made that one time,” Charles said.
Jojo flicked his butt into the street and watched the orange sparks burst when it hit the pavement. He smirked at the talk of God, an entity in whom he�
��d never believed, and he remembered the pastor’s faithlessness and how it had seemed to set the maelstrom in motion. All Shannon had really done, Jojo thought, was toss out one deity and take on another. Now Barker Davis was God and Devil both, and he’d come back to the world he made to destroy it and everyone in it.
The sheriff asked what was the point. Jojo decided it was a good question.
“Look,” he said to the group, “Davis never set foot in this hotel, so he must have been staying elsewhere. My guess is the woods where all this started.”
“And that’s where Margie is?” Charles asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But unless one of you’s got something better, that’s where I’m heading.”
“I’m going with you,” Theodora announced.
“Fine,” Jojo said. “That leaves Charles and Ernie with the other thing.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rich said.
“As a heart attack, buddy.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jojo—you do realize you’re instructing the elected sheriff of this town to set it on fire, don’t you?”
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re the elected sheriff of jack shit, pal. This is a dream, and half the folks in it are stark raving bug-fuck crazy. Now, I don’t have the first clue what’s to become of us once Litchfield is done and gone, or at least those of us who’re still left. There’s implications here that are far beyond me. All I know is that Davis is here to turn this place into a madhouse and I don’t reckon you can destroy what’s already burned to the ground.”
“Scorched earth,” Rich muttered. “That’s what they call it in war. It’s crazy.”
“Fight fire with fire,” Charles said.
“Right,” Jojo agreed.
“Jesus jumped on Mary,” the sheriff blasphemed, glaring at the night sky and the winking stars that filled it. “Say, how’d it get so dark so fast?”
