Broken Circle

by J. L. Powers

  “My favorite part of summer was when you’d take us to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk,” he says. “So I made this place for us.”

  I had always pegged Zachary as the guy who would own Hollywood. I never would have guessed he really wanted to be a carny. Would he be that sketchy guy with ratty hair and a beer belly who runs the children’s rides?

  “This place was a dump when I got here but now I’ve got all of the rides running,” he says.

  The Zachary I know would be bragging, and if he was talking to me that’s possibly how he would sound. But talking to his dad—or rather to somebody he thinks is his dad—he just sounds vulnerable. Like he’s done something to be proud of but he’s afraid I’m going to crap all over it.

  And that leaves me in a conundrum. We’re in Zachary’s Limbo. What am I supposed to do in his Limbo when he thinks I’m somebody else? Am I supposed to convince him that I’m just Adam? Or am I supposed to go with the flow, pretend to be his dad?

  And if I’m his dad, am I his real father—who sounds like he might be kind of a dick, if you want to know the truth—or the father he’d want me to be? Should I give him a big bear hug? Slap him on the back and say, Atta boy, Zachary! I’m so proud of you, son? Or should I piss all over his accomplishments?

  “That’s great, Zachary,” I say. “What’s wrong with the roller coaster?”

  The eagerness in his eyes dies. Of course, I had to comment on the one thing in the whole park that doesn’t seem to be working. Guess I chose a behavior exactly like his real dad, by accident.

  His shoulders slump. “You always said people come for the roller coaster. I’m trying but I don’t know if I can fix it.”

  “It’s all right, Zachary. The rest of this place is amazing.”

  “Thanks?” He masks his surprise, hammer clanking as he bangs on a part of the track that looks slightly bent.

  “Listen,” I say, hoping to get his attention—his real attention—for just a few seconds. “We need to go now. We need to get back to your body.”

  A cross look twists and distorts his face. For just a second, I think he sees me, Adam, but then the flash of reality is gone. “I’m not going anywhere until the roller coaster works,” he says.

  “Hey, no worries. But why don’t you take a break? We can walk down to the beach and you can see how great this place looks.” Maybe if I get him to the edge of his world, away from the core of his desire, I can convince him to come back to life.

  He glances at the hammer in his hand and wipes hair out of his eyes, leaving a huge smear of black grease across his forehead. He stares at the roller coaster, then out at this world he’s created. “Okay,” he finally says.

  We walk toward the entrance. I’m reining myself in, trying not to seem too eager to get out of here. Zachary walks slowly. He keeps turning his head to look back at the swirling lights.

  Then, for a split second, the whole carnival goes black—as if it blinked. When the lights come back on, they warp slightly before returning to normal.

  “What the—?” Shock wrinkles across his forehead.

  But I already feel it. Him, I mean, if he deserves a pronoun. Amaros is here in Zachary’s world. We’ve officially run out of time.

  “We have to hide,” I say, and steer Zachary into the nearest building, an old-fashioned arcade lit by rows of pinball machines.

  “Why?” Zachary shouts over the loud pings and rattles.

  “Somebody dangerous just showed up!” I yell. “Do you have any weapons?”

  “What?”

  “Weapons!” I scream. “We need weapons!”

  “What kind of person do you think I am? This is a place for kids. No weapons allowed.”

  Just my luck. Rachel had a twelve-gauge hidden in the kitchen of her world. Couldn’t Zachary have imagined one teeny-tiny weapon into his? I wonder if Amaros was able to bring Rachel’s gun into Zachary’s world.

  My question is answered a second later when a burst of gunfire erupts outside the arcade. Sparks fly as bullets riddle the machine next to us. We dive under a pinball machine. Bullets whiz over our heads and explode, shattering the wall behind us.

  Zachary starts to panic. “We have to put a stop to this before the rides are damaged.”

  “Stop worrying about the rides!” I shout.

  Zachary pins his mouth against my ear. “What the hell is going on? You show up and suddenly somebody is coming after us with a gun? What did you do, Dad? Who’d you piss off this time?”

  Zachary’s dad sounds like a real winner.

  “Let’s just get out of here, Zachary.”

  We crawl in the opposite direction from the gunfire and huddle behind the last pinball machine. A few feet away, I spot a door.

  “I’ll open the door,” I tell Zachary. “Then you make a run for it.”

  I jump out from behind the pinball machine even as bullets riddle the wall above my head. The door’s locked.

  I dive headfirst back to safety.

  “You can’t escape, Adam,” Amaros calls. “If you come out nicely, maybe we can talk this over and come to some sort of arrangement.”

  “What do you want from me?” I yell. Maybe if I keep him talking for long enough, my dad will come and rescue me again, like he did in Rachel’s world.

  “I just want to talk, Adam. You should know that nobody can come and rescue you. I’ve put in all sorts of defensive devices to keep people from accessing Zachary’s Limbo.”

  “You mean that awesome barrier you erected? Yeah, that defense worked real well to keep me out.”

  “Weeeellllll,” Amaros stretches the word out, “I made some unfortunate errors which have already been fixed. The real question you should be asking, Adam, is not whether somebody can come in here and rescue you but whether you’re lucky enough to get out alive a second time.”

  I consider our situation.

  I’m not ready to die. But I can’t compromise. Amaros is sick. Sicker than sick. I mean, I saw him feeding on Rachel.That wound on Zachary’s neck tells me he was also feeding on Zachary not too long ago. There’s no way Zachary and I are getting out of here alive if we give him what he wants.

  So if I have to die, I have to die. But I’m going to make this as difficult as possible. “I’m not going to die!” I yell.

  “Adam, you may be right. Our operative tagged you as special from the first moment he saw you. But if you don’t cooperate with me, I will definitely hurt you.”

  His footsteps echo through the arcade.

  “I’m coming to get you now,” he sings.

  “Zachary, where is the key to that door?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know.”

  I grab him by the shirt and pull him toward me so that our noses are practically touching. “You do know where the key is. This whole world is your freaking fantasy.”

  Zachary’s head is down. He can’t look me in the eye.

  “Imagine it! Imagine where it is and pull it out of your damn pocket.”

  Amaros’s shoes scrape against the floor. He’s getting closer.

  “I—I don’t know,” Zachary repeats.

  I slam him against the pinball machine so hard, his head flops. “For god’s sake, Zachary, just check!”

  His hands shake as he fumbles with his pockets. “It’s not there.” Tears make trails through the smudges on his face.

  “You have the key. I know it.” I reach into the chest pocket of his overalls, willing there to be a key, my hand closing over the familiar indented surface of a metal house key. “See?”

  A sob catches in his throat but I don’t have time to be nice. We have just a few seconds before Amaros will be in point-blank range. “Get up and help,” I hiss, jerking him up. We push the pinball machine to a center aisle for cover while I unlock the door. The machine starts banging, lights flashing, as bullets thud into it.

  I slide the key into the lock and push the door open. We jump through. Bullets ping against the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “The haunted ho
use,” Zachary pants. “We can hide there.”

  We run past the Ferris wheel and plunge inside. Neon purples and greens light up the interior. Zachary’s teeth and the label on his overalls glow bright white in the funky black ultraviolet lights.

  We jump onto the tracks. As we tunnel deeper into the ride, mechanical skeleton prospectors with pickaxes lunge at us. Loud screams and howls reverberate from speakers in the walls.

  “Can we get to the top?” I ask, wondering if that might give us the vantage point to see what’s going on, maybe offer us an escape route.

  Zachary shoves a black curtain aside, revealing steel girders and wires creeping over the ground like vines. A rung ladder trails up the wall into the dark. He begins to climb and I follow, head swimming as I mount the ladder. But there’s no wraith waiting below us. My mother is gone. Maybe She’s gone forever. That’s something I still need to think about. Later.

  Zachary opens a hatch in the ceiling and crawls through. I follow, hauling myself up onto the roof. We hide behind a flashing purple HAUNTED HOUSE sign and peer through the gap between the two words at the amusement park below.

  Amaros appears relaxed, lounging on a bench opposite the haunted house. The bench is nestled between the legs of a large plastic clown holding up a gigantic plastic ice-cream cone. Amaros holds the gun loosely across his legs.

  “I know you guys are up there!” he shouts. “I don’t want to hurt either of you but I’m about out of patience! When that happens, I promise I won’t miss!” He pats an assault rifle, quite a jump up in class of weapon from the revolver he’d found in Rachel’s world. “Look, I helped Zachary refine this place so I know a thing or two about it, including where to get things! Stop the BS now! Next shot kills!”

  He pulls a lighter out of his pocket, flicks it open, watches the flame idly. Strolls casually over to the haunted house and holds the flame underneath the heavy purple curtains that drape the ride from top to bottom.

  Zachary pales. “This place will go up like kindling.”

  “Amaros, if you kill us both in Limbo, you won’t have a body to go back to!” I call. I sound a little desperate but that’s the crux of it . . . I am desperate.

  “Ha!” His laugh echoes off the buildings. “I don’t need your body! Limbo is an ever-revolving door of souls. Somebody else will come along. The only reason I’m entertaining your little—game—is because I want to talk to your father. So don’t be stupid! Come down and talk to me!”

  The drapes ignite suddenly and fire eats away the curtains, moving slowly toward us on the roof.

  Zachary slides to the ground, puts his head between his hands, groans. “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But let’s make sure that asshole doesn’t get what he’s after, okay?”

  Zachary nods slowly. “Okay, Dad, I’m with you.”

  Flames shoot up through the haunted house sign. Sparks fly up toward the stars.

  I peer over the side. Amaros saunters back to the bench and sits down, gun across his knees. Waiting.

  “What’s holding up the curtain?” I ask Zachary.

  “An iron bar,” he says. “I installed it myself.”

  I look him dead in the eye. “It’s faulty, isn’t it?”

  “No, everything’s good, Dad. I took a lot of time. I was careful.”

  “No,” I say. This time I don’t ask. I just state, “It’s defective.”

  “No,” he insists. “I put in the best of the best.”

  “No,” I say. This time it’s more than a statement, it’s an accusation. “You put in whatever you had.”

  My words take instant effect. They weren’t true a second ago, but suddenly, because Zachary absorbs them and accepts them, they become the truth. “You’re right, Dad.” He swallows. “I can’t do anything right.”

  The instant he says these words, the bar breaks. Purple curtains whoosh as they fall. Zachary watches, shocked. “That could have hit a child!”

  I don’t feel good about what I’m doing, messing with his head, with the perfect world he created. But I don’t know any other way out of this. He has to reimagine everything as crap.

  I just hope he’ll accept my apology. After. When we’re safely out of here.

  Amaros stands up, aiming his gun at us.

  “Look, there are no children here, the only people who can get hurt are us,” I say. And I make the leap. Maybe I’ll burn in hell for this. Maybe it’ll save us. “That clown over there isn’t supported by anything, is it.” I state this as if it’s an established fact.

  “I—I—I thought I did that,” Zachary stammers.

  “It’s not bolted down, is it!”

  “No,” Zachary admits.

  The metal clown creaks. We look over the edge. Amaros glances back in horror and starts to run as the clown pitches face-first into the pavement. Its outstretched arm holding the ice-cream cone crashes into the haunted house’s façade and lands with a rending shriek, ripping a gigantic hole in the front.

  “Now!” I yell at Zachary. “Let’s go!”

  We half climb, half slide down the ladder, crouching low to keep out of the line of fire. I have no idea where Amaros went, only that he headed back toward the Ferris wheel.

  “I’m sorry, Zachary,” I say.

  “For what?”

  I don’t answer. I just do what I decided to do, diving right into his mind. And then I run helter-skelter through this world he so carefully created. I remove memories of tightening huge bolts, of putting the lid on the generator gas tank, of wiring the rides correctly.

  Zachary quickly lets his mind shrink to a small knot somewhere nearby as I take more and more control of his world. “This is just like you, Dad,” he mutters at some point. “Wrecking everything I ever created. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  The changes wreak havoc immediately. The cars on the Ferris wheel drop off and crash through the pier into the water below. The Tilt-A-Whirl cars come off their moorings and skid across the wood boards, crashing into other rides.

  I glance at Zachary. He sits back and folds his arms across his chest.

  “Do it,” he says. “But don’t expect me to help you.”

  As I burrow deeper into his head, I feel myself split off from him. Like a bird, I circle in the air above us, watching as the world collapses below. I see myself, body erect and arms raised to the heavens. Amaros runs through the wreckage as I demolish one ride after another. The roller coaster erupts into flame as he jumps into the sea, swims to the sandy beach, and scrambles over the dunes.

  Then he’s gone.

  Something sweet spreads from my mind down my esophagus and settles warmly in my belly. Much like the shandies we drank the first night of school. All I want to do is rip and shred and tear, more and more and more. The noise is incredible, a roar in my ears that I feel from my teeth to my toes.

  But I look at my feet and notice Zachary. Perfectly silent. Huddled beside me. He isn’t crying. He isn’t anything. He’s just sitting there, hunched into his overalls, staring at the wooden pier.

  “Are you okay?”

  He tries to lift his head but he can’t.

  The sweet feeling crashes into bitterness and I snap back into myself, sinking to the ground beside Zachary. It feels like I’ve been swimming through mud. Like I’m lost in a world of muck and algae. I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

  “I’m really sorry, Zachary.”

  It sounds as though I’m speaking through a tunnel. A long tunnel. And I’m not even sure if there’s anybody there at the other end.

  “It’s okay, Adam.” He can barely get the words out.

  “You finally realized I’m not your dad, huh?”

  He nods. We sit. I put my arm under his back and prop him up so he can look around. “Wow, what a wreck.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined it,” I say. “I know you worked hard.”

  His eyes are clear. “You did what you had to do.” He sniffles. “I should hate you, Adam. B
ut I don’t. Remember that, okay? Because it’s going to kick in, later, what you did to me. I don’t hate you. I know you aren’t asking, at least right now, but I forgive you. I do.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “And I have to apologize too. I’m sorry for spying on you.”

  “Spying on me? You mean for La Luz? I already know about that, dude. You were out of your head or something. I think what happened when we went to Limbo together affected your brain somehow. Made you more vulnerable.”

  “You’re right. But I’m talking about before. Back at school, before going to Limbo. I was spying on you for my family. For the Angels. They wanted to know who you were. What powers you have.”

  “What?” I stare at him. And then I realize it doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to think about this. And neither does Zachary. I crouch, arm under his shoulder to help him stand up. “Actually, forget about it. We can talk about it later. Right now, we have to get out of here.”

  Zachary shakes his head. “I know where I am. I thought I would be scared, but I’m not.”

  “Zachary? I hate to burst your drama here but we can get back.”

  He smiles at me. Gentle. Ironic. “Don’t ask me how I know, but my body’s dead. I’m not going back to life. So please . . . say goodbye to my mom and Liliana. Tell them I love them.”

  “Is Liliana really your sister?”

  “Half. We only found out when she sneaked into Principal Armand’s office last year and found her birth certificate in his files. We share the same asshole dad. That was just before she got expelled.”

  “Did she get expelled because of that?”

  He shrugs. “It’s too late for me to worry about it.” He slugs my shoulder, halfhearted. “Hey. Will you say goodbye to Rachel too? I liked her. She was different.”

  “Then why were you such a dick to her?”

  “You know, just because you interpreted everything I did in a negative light doesn’t mean—” He stops and sighs. “Never mind. It isn’t important.” He licks his index finger and makes an imaginary mark in the air. “Never thought you’d be the one to take me to the other side. I’m your first soul, the first one you helped cross Limbo. That means you’ll never forget me. You know what? I’m glad it’s you. Maybe you’ll forgive me now for taking you to Limbo that time?”