Ineffable Page 2

II

  On the absolute edge of town, where one arm of a forking road trailed off into dense scrub, disappearing beneath the tangle of stabbing twigs and stinging petals, there stood what might have once been a magnificent Sycamore tree - a place maybe, where children would have met, and gleefully conspired against their mothers and fathers, or where lovers, as wards of its shade, might have imagined themselves with the courage to finally escape their persecution and disappear over the ridge together, behind the setting sun.

  This tree might have told a thousand tales and been inscribed with the besotted initials of a thousand lovers, only to wet its thirsted roots on the salted tears of a thousand broken hearts. It might have heard a thousand promises to never again speak of a thousand secrets, and over a thousand years, it might have heard them spoken, a thousand-fold more. It might have lived for ten thousand years and were it on the absolute edge of any other town, it might even live for ten thousand more. But here, a thousand miles from anywhere at all, this once incredible Sycamore tree was a curser for a town with no name and no place on any map, a town besieged by a ravenous plague of death and atrophy.

  “Don’t crowd me,” said The Ringmaster, buggered by the circle of bearded whores closing in around him, and by a chorus of pestering from a three-legged midget and The Octopus Brothers - four men conjoined at the elbows and buttocks. Each cursed with and against one another with such violent threat, as they sought to pitch in a desperate bid, for the opening and closing acts.

  Beneath the sickly old tree, on the absolute edge of town, The Ringmaster sat in his favourite chair, sipping whiskey from a straw while his greasy tufts of balding hair were carefully combed and braided, and his fingernails painted, the same tone of green as his alligator skin boots.

  “If you’ll just give me two minutes,” said The Three Legged Midget, “and if you don’t think it’s the greatest act you’ve ever seen…” he said pausing, putting his two hands into a deafened apology or defence.

  “Tomorrow,” said The Ringmaster. “I’m tired, it’s late, my feet hurt and my head feels like an old tea bag. We’re going with the show as we have practised, as it should be; at least for the first couple of performances. Let’s, you know…” he said, gyring his index finger in quick circles, as if he were dialling an imaginary phone, “let’s roll out any creases in the show before we start making any changes. We’ve been on the road for a great time. What’s say we get grounded first and find our feet? But I like your initiative. I like you get up and go. Now,” he said angrily, “get up and go.”

  “My new act, Master, it’s the most magnificent yet. It involves elastic, fire, a hammer, and tapeworms. It could easily open the evening. I know… If you could just spare me two minutes I could…”

  “Eeeeitttt,” said The Ringmaster, showing the back of his hand.

  “But, Master, It has sparks and fire. It has show. It has pizazz.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “But, Master…”

  “Get outta here,” shouted Rex, the towering giant, with coiled arms as long as an infant’s middle finger, and twisted skeletal hands, like a heron’s broken feet. He laid a firm boot into the backside of The Three Legged Midget, sending him cannonballing down the slight hill towards where the carriages stood, waiting to be unwrapped and unloaded.

  “Master,” said Rex, pausing to lower his stare, admiring The Ringmaster’s painted nails and his thick bulbous knuckles, that on a whim could shatter a man’s jaw, or crack, even the most stubborn nut.

  “It’s rude to pry,” said The Ringmaster, though he made no attempt to cover his painted fingers as a virgin might, her provocative knees.

  Rex turned red and his little hands shook like jelly.

  “Master,” he said, “all the preparations have been made.”

  “I have an itch,” said The Ringmaster, “in my middle back.”

  Rex balanced himself steadily on his left foot. He wasn’t a small man, he was a giant, so a task of this nature was no easy feat, but he was an old hand in the circus and capable of more than his size and strength would let on. As he stood like some gargantuan, muscled crane, he unslipped his right foot from its leather sole and raised it slowly, until his big toe was eyeing where he believed his master’s itch might be.

  “We have a problem on the stage, Master, a problem with the luminescence,” said Rex, scratching deep into his master’s back.

  “What’s wrong with the Light?”

  “There is none,” he said.

  “That is a problem,” said The Ringmaster.

  “It’s the pedal generator, Master. It seems a very important part of it might have been left behind in the last camp.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “The peddle,” said Rex, wobbling his useless limbs against one another.

  “Well then, just fashion something together,” said The Ringmaster, strangely understanding. “It needn’t be intricate, just enough so that I dazzle. Surely there is something that you can set on fire.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Rex, hunching uncomfortably under the sprawl of leafless overhang from the sickly, old tree. “The lady, master, she refuses to drink or to lessen the grip on the cadaver. I said ‘please’. She said ‘no’. I didn’t quite know then what else to do after that. I asked her, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ and she said that she was, and I was left with the thought that maybe she was right, in not letting go that is.”

  “Is Delilah still with her?”

  “She is, Master.”

  “And how does she seem?”

  “Difficult. She might not be so easy to tame this time.”

  “All women can be tamed. You just need to feed them what hungers them the most?” said The Ringmaster smugly, twisting the ends of his moustache into a curling and sharpened point.

  “What is that, Master? Rubies? Roses? Garter belts?”

  “Validation, my gigantic friend. It is what we all crave, every man, woman and child, both grotesquely normal and wonderfully deformed; validation. There are only two types of people, and only two reasons why anyone does anything – either to show their father that they did it or to prove to their father that they didn’t need him; that they could do it by themselves. But both require his avid attention, ” he said, tucking firmly on the ends of his purple coat tails, shaking off the thin coat of dust that had settled on his lapels from the kicking of horses hooves.

  By now, the camp had been well and truly set. What had, only hours before, been an enormous vacuous square, cut out of endless sprawl of brush and tangling weeds, was now a busied and colourful populous, with hundreds of tents being erected by just as many calloused hands. People of all sizes and colours, of all shapes and added appendages, danced and sang joyfully as they pounded thick metal spikes into the red dirt, with the sound of their hammers crashing onto bulbous iron heads, driving the rhythm of their boisterous chorus.

  The heaviest carriages stood on the edges of the thick scrub, making an impenetrable wall around the encampment. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out. Inside that wall, were the barred cages of elephants and alligators, black bears, and wild; followed by row after row of hammocks and tents. The spaces between them were lit with small fires that were dug into the earth and surrounded by a circle of stones. They did little to address the darkness but were snug against the night’s bitter cold.

  By the edge of the road, and guarded by machete-wielding madmen, there stood an enormous tent that was as tall as a wondrous gorge. And at the entrance to the tent, there hanged a man with no arms and legs, swinging back and forth on a rope that was tied around his waist. His eyes moved contrary to the swing of his body, and his inertia never slowed.

  Standing at the centre of their camp was the gaunt and sickly, Sycamore tree, with its crooked limbs, twisting and forking like an old man’s spine, looking like a deathly villain as it hunched and lurched over The Ringmaster and his troupe which gathered below. Seated by its cancerous looking roots was Gaia, shuffling a host o
f coloured and devilish cards, as the thorny vine, which was tattooed from her one side of her face, down along her neck and into her bosom, moved like a slithering snake across her body, disappearing beneath her shoal as she read aloud - a tale of astral intrigue that spelled from the cards laid out neatly before her.

  “What do the stars say?” asked The Ringmaster, now looking proudly at his camp. “Is this what we were looking for?”

  “They speak only of death,” said Gaia. “Is it what you had wished to hear?”

  “You tell me,” he said.

  “The universe she tells me, we are at the place where only dead things grow.”

  The Ringmaster smiled. “Then we have arrived,” he said, stepping up onto a small platform and readying himself to address the merriment of colour and choir of his people, with one hand reached around what looked like a crystal femur and the other, pressed neatly between the second and third buttons on his purple jacket, so that anything he should say, would be an oath sworn upon his own heart.

  “Wonderful work, my darlings and fabulous freaks,” he said. “You never cease to inspire and to whet my passion. You are all my children, my family, and my heart. And I love each and every one of you. Now,” he said pausing to twist and curl his whiskers, “I know we have come a long way; a great many mile. So far indeed, that for most of us, the only sight we can remember is the back of our brother’s and sister’s feet. And some of you may ask,” he said. “Where in the name of God are we? What is this town? Why does it not appear on any map? And why have we stopped here?”

  He let the drama of his questions settle like dust on their thoughts.

  “Let us not forget the meaning of life,” he shouted, thrusting his cane into the dirt and puffing his chest in pompous flare.

  “To serve,” roared the crowd before him.

  “To be purposeful…” shouted one-half of the people.

  “Is to define one’s purpose,” shouted the other.

  “We have been walking for so very long,” said The Ringmaster, removing his hat and lowering his head to his feet in solemn salute. “And we have lost some dear friends along the way.”

  The troupe all lowered their heads, etching out symbols across their hearts.

  “But I promised you salvation. I promised you a holy plain. And I said these things,” he shouted, his voice carrying over the troupe, and into the prickly ears of the people lined up along the road watching in a leering address. “Not to fool you,” he continued. “I said these things because I believed them to be true. I said them because I believe it is our purpose to bring the Message of Light throughout the lands. It is our purpose to be the bearers of salvation. And though it is my voice that carries the Light, remember my children, you are my many hands. And without you, I could carry this Light no further than my own echo. We are Light,” shouted The Ringmaster.

  “And as such we are one,” shouted the troupe in joyous celebration.

  “I promised you salvation, a long time ago. I promised you we would reach the greatest heights, that we would scale the largest mountains, and that we would find sanctity. I promised you prosperity. I promised you hope. I promised you all the wealth that you could fathom. I promised you a stage. I promised you applause. And I can tell you now, as I stand here, under the sprawl of this sickly tree, all that I can see is salvation. You, my children, are the givers of salvation. You shall not have, for it is only now that I can see that in fact, you are. Salvation is not yours. You are salvation, each and every one of you. You are golden. You are Light.”

  “And as such, we are one” shouted the troupe again in joyous prosper.

  “And this,” he shouted, twirling like a top heavy ballerina, with his left hand held against his left breast, and his right, extending the crystal handle of his cane as far as his reach would allow. “This will be…Our grandest and final act,” he said, his pirouette finally coming to a stop with his cane pointing towards the greyish looking town not far from their encampment.

  “Sir,” said The Tiny Tattooed Man, pulling on The Ringmaster’s coat tails. “Master, sir,” he said.

  “All accounted for?” asked The Ringmaster.

  “All except for the girl,” replied The Tiny Tattooed Man.

  “Always a problem, always the girl,” said The Ringmaster, surly.

  “You want me to punch someone?” asked The Tiny Tattooed Man.

  “What?”

  “Or…if there’s anything else I…”

  “No. What the hell is wrong with you? Rex!”

  The giant scurried to his master as quick as he could.

  “Yes Master,” said the giant, with the merry of an unattended puppy.

  “Put one of the hounds on the girl’s scent.”

  “Would it be best to send someone to scout for her master? We could send someone on horse. It would no doubt be more expeditious. I’m sure she couldn’t be too far behind, but even still, we passed many an unsavoury sight that as you know, would do no good for a small girl to be seeing.”

  “Send a dog.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Rex, turning away quickly before his master’s kicking heel did just that for him.

  The Ringmaster sighed heavy. He dusted his coat with the back of his hand until a cloud of dry rain, drizzled from beneath his heavy glare. “Tomorrow,” he said with a pause, looking noble once more with his left hand neatly tucked between the second and third buttons of his coat. “Tomorrow, we shall perform for the first time. We shall bring salvation to these poor disparaged people. We shall bring warmth to their blood, colour to their skin, and Light to their souls. We shall save each and every one them; the living and the dead. Tomorrow. But tonight,” he said, unscrewing the small cap from a bottle of distilled poison. “Tonight we drink and we dance; we fight and we make love. Tonight we bury a dead child. We save its grey soul. We colour it with Light. Tonight there shall be a funeral, my children, and we shall celebrate, for a life has been lived, a story has been told. And isn’t that what life is about? Isn’t that what makes death such a grand affair? Tonight my delightful freaks,” he shouted. “Tonight we live.”

  As The Ringmaster spoke, beside him, Gaia sat cross-legged by the trunk of the tree, and with what she had carved out of a clump of its root; she wound together in tiny tight braids, what looked like a small arborous bullet.

  Stepping down from his podium, The Ringmaster left his troupe to begin their celebrations. The stage was still being prepared with mechanics and physics minded men and women, piecing together a strange contraption that was wired to large bulbs that dangled from the stage, and to one large lens that was secured to the top of one of the carriages.

  On the stage, many light hands pushed around many heavy objects, setting up tables and altars and incredible looking backdrops, all adorned with hundreds of coloured sigils. The Ringmaster walked proudly through his camp, towards his carriage with his little monkey running behind him, eyeing the comfortable dent and curve of his purple top hat.

  “Allow me to formally introduce myself,” he said, entering the carriage.

  The young woman sat on the edge of his bed, her decaying child still wrapped in blankets and held tightly in her arms. Sitting at the table, Delilah sat with a glass of whiskey in her hands, contemplating squashing a bug that had become caught in the wet ring beneath her glass. She looked at The Ringmaster with a contemptuous glare.

  “Delilah,” said The Ringmaster, kneeling before her and gently running his hand along the trim of her wonderfully manicured beard. “Would you give us a mere minute alone?”

  “Alone? Why do you need to be alone with her?”

  “My dear Delilah. Of all the whores that exist in this world, you know you are the only one that I love. You are my number one. You know it didn’t mean anything. I didn’t feel anything. You should know that. You are the only one. You are the only whore that matters. You know that, don’t you?”

  She did, but that didn’t mean it was of no comfort hearing it.

&nbs
p; “Now leave us alone,” he said. “Just a mere minute.”

  Delilah looked at the young woman in disgust.

  “If there is anything at all that I can do, rest assured, I will stop at nothing to do it,” she said, standing staunchly in front of the young woman whose constant tears made it difficult to see the stern and obliging counsel she was receiving. “You’re plain,” she said, before storming out of the carriage.

  “Delilah,” shouted The Ringmaster, his disheartened plea carrying with her out of the door. “My apologies, my lady. We are an impassioned people, and Delilah…” he said before pausing to kneel down before her. “As you have noticed, she is very fond of her place in my troupe. And I do apologize if she or any of my family has caused you any fright or offence. We wish not to disturb you or your townsfolk.”

  Outside, shadowed about the flicker of gas lamps and crackling fires, scores of hands pulled on the ends of ropes, raising banners, flags and all sorts of balancing contraptions. They built platforms and stages and even a giant alter, made entirely of granite and gold. And all the while, they cheered, cursed and hurled insults and orders as they sang songs about Light and salvation.

  And barely an inch from their heaving and hoeing, a young boy, having just escaped the tyranny of his father’s protection, wandered through the encampment alone.

  The Young Boy had never seen colour before, not such as that which was painted on the clothes of the troupe in circular and swirling patterns, and even on the faces of many who looked more like grinning moons than they did actual people. He looked at his own hands, holding them out as if he were begging for spare change. They were the same shade of grey as everything else in his town - as the people and their clothes, as their houses and cars, as their scrapbooks and televisions, and as their lipsticks, lamp posts and even Light itself.

  He then put his hands in his pockets, real casual like, and stepped out from behind the wheel where he had been spying. He stood there for a moment, expecting as usual, to be swept up by his father, or shooed away by his neighbours, teachers or garbage men, thinking of him as sick like all the rest.

  He expected to be kicked or prodded – to be knocked about and bumped along. He expected to be found out and discovered – to be cursed about and then shouted and pointed at. He expected to be told to ‘go home’ and to be kicked in his rump and then told to ‘bugger off’ like some scabbed and starving dog.

  He half expected flags to be raised and alarms to be sounded – for weapons to be drawn and examples to be made of him. He expected everything that his father had said would happen if he ever wandered off.

  The Young Boy took his hands out of his pockets and he looked around, this time without mistrust or conspiracy. He watched in silent awe as the many scores of people in coloured pants and painted faces, all went about their work and their obligation, stopping momentarily to address, validate, kiss, embrace, or to just congratulate, praise, and celebrate the efforts of another. They touched, not how most grown-ups did, out of a moment of passion or a lifetime of jealous possession; they did so in the same nonchalant manner as the sun did, upon everything that it shone.

  Feeling less like an ant at a picnic, the boy lessened his tense grip of himself and wandered freely through the encampment. He divorced himself from his expectations; from what his father had told him since he was a boy, of what would happen should ever he leave his sight and sure hands. And free from what he thought might happen; he was amazed by what did.

  There were surprises around every corner. There were animals that he had never seen before, behind bars that he hoped none of them could bite their way through. There were people of all sizes; men and women as big as skyscrapers whose pointed ankles were as tall as he.

  And there were men and women too who looked old and wise in the lines drawn over the faces, in the cracks of their mouths and in the length of their teeth, but who were no taller than an infant that was struggling to take its first steps, and no more arted in walking.

  There were people that were so large and round that they had to scuttle about like crabs so they didn’t get stuck between two sides of things. And there were people that were so thin and gangly that they would be invisible to the average eye, should they not be walking in clusters of four or five at a time.

  The Young Boy didn’t creep about, he walked. He walked with his arms swinging back and forth as if he were marching on patrol. And everywhere he went, he saw strange looking people with the strangest deformities, and all of them smiling and stopping what they were doing every minute or so, to hug and to laud one another.

  Had he been drawn without a mouth, it would still be impossible to wipe the smile off his face. Ear to ear, his grin rose with his eyes like two great cinder blocks; beaming as best they could from behind the dull grey that shaded his face, his body and the clothes that he wore.

  He wanted to look under, behind and inside everything. He wanted to open every door, climb inside every window and peer inside a dresser drawer. And so he went, carriage by carriage and tent by tent, lifting flaps, opening doors and stretching on his tippy toes to peer inside half-closed windows.

  The first tent he came across, he peered inside and he saw a woman with four legs and with half of a head that grew out of her side, sitting on the edge of a bed, whilst a man with crablike hands, painted her twenty-two toes with a thin brush that he clenched between a groove that had been worn into his toothless gums.

  “As beautiful as they are,” she said, “and as much as I adore the spectacle….”

  She sighed.

  “Go on,” said the man, now holding his thin brush in his crustacean hands. “Please, don’t leave me in suspense. If it’s my work, if it’s the colour…if it’s me,” he said, turning away in shame.

  “It’s not you, my dear. Your art and your colour are marvellous. It’s just…” she said, pausing again, this time turning her bland and blemished fingernails towards the man. “I only wish there was as much spectacle for my fingers, as there is toward my toes.”

  The man smiled and scuttled across the room, his excited breath sounding like bubbles being blown through a straw.

  “I had meant to keep this for another time,” he said. “I had planned another occasion, not now, sometime in the future,” he babbled nervously. “There would have been more time. Appropriate time. Appropriate place. Appropriate attire,” he said, staring woefully at his shabby overalls; borrowed from a man more than ten times his size. “Oh, it was never meant to be like this. There should have been petals on the floor, and all over the bed too. You would have been smiling and happy and…”

  “What is it, my dear?”

  “There was supposed to be petals” he shouted, snapping his claws. “And all that we have are these rocks,” he said, crushing a small boulder into a mound of dust.

  “Stop being so heated, my dear. You’ll burn yourself out.”

  “I wanted it to be perfect,” he said.

  “Wanted what?”

  “This,” he said, scuttling to her side, falling to one knee and raising his crab-like hands before her. “I found something marvellous. And nobody in the world knows that it exists.”

  “What is it?” she asked strangely, looking at the small vial.

  “A new colour,” the man said. “Never. Painted. Before.”

  The woman’s eyes opened like a morning shade. Light beamed from her eyes.

  “Where did you find this?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. No-one will ever know, only us.”

  “I feel so special,” she said, wiggling her many toes.

  “I hoped you would,” he said, but still without the courage to ask an inappropriate question.

  “But where will we hide it?” she asked.

  The man smiled.

  “Where no-one would ever suspect,” he said, taking her hand in his claw and lightly brushing against her bland, blemished fingernails.

  “What shall we name it?” asked The Four-Legged Woman.
>
  As surprised as he was delighted, The Young Boy snuck away from the tent the moment they started to undress. What an incredible colour!

  He walked around the encampment, gawking at anything and everything. These people were strange it was true, but they spoke with such care and gentility. And even an accidental or passing bump, felt more kindly, considerate and less caustic than his father’s sheltering hugs.

  He peered inside The Big Top, which was taller than any skyscraper he had ever seen. Inside, there were rows and rows of empty seats; enough to fit half the town. They circled around the entire tent, except at the back, behind the stage, where all sorts of boxes, of all shapes and sizes, were stacked in neat order beside a trap door or a lift of some kind, which had been lowered from a part of the stage, behind a red velvet curtain.

  While four muscled women and a horde of miniature men, dragged on ropes and hauled a giant crystal symbol up above the stage, Rex, the man with giant legs and miniscule hands, kicked at the hunched back of a man fashioning pedals and cables to an old bicycle.

  “This had better work,” he shouted. “Or else…”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The man with the hunched back, though kind in his nature, had spent the entire of his life thinking up the unimaginable, and there was nothing at all more formidable, than an unfinished sentence.

  “It will work, it will,” said The Machinist. “If there’s anything I know, it’s contraptions; contraptions that work. It will work, it will work.”

  “It had better.”

  Looking back around the encampment, The Young Boy wondered in what direction he would travel next, and what incredible oddities he would see.

  Of all the strange sights and colours that buzzed about, it was a sound that caught his attention, which had him scooting off to a carriage just a stone’s throw away. It was the sound of a woman shrieking, but not loudly, as if her face were being smothered by her hands or a gagging cloth of some kind. It was a distraught sound, like a man or a woman, discovering their first cyst, sore or lump. It was one that was as common to the boy, as was the sound of his own name.

  When he reached the carriage, he quickly spun around to make sure no-one was looking. Egged on by his curiosity, he climbed up onto the spokes of the carriage’s wheels to peer through the partly shut drapes. He stepped carefully onto the spokes, flinching when the wood creaked, expecting some policing hand at any second to grasp his lawless shoulder. He steadied himself, though, managing to balance by clinging desperately to the window frame while he nudged his head between the drapes, staring into the dimly lit room. And there he saw an enormous man with an enormous belly that was covered in thickly woven hair, kneeling naked, pulsing and sweaty, in front of a demure woman whose naked body trembled and shivered as the enormous man wrestled with his left hand back and forth at something in the dark shadow between her thighs.

  The Young Boy peered further, trying to see what it was. The woman moaned as dull and lagging as the Light in the carriage, and the boy knew instantly that she was ill and that the enormous man must have been a doctor of some kind.

  “We are here to liberate you, from the darkness that dwells within, and paints itself around you,” said The Ringmaster, reaching his hand out, and making a prisoner of the young woman’s.

  He cusped her hand, curling his thick fingers like a hangman’s noose around her fragile wrist, stroking the inside of her palm with his middle finger. “Let your child go,” he said, “let us free him. Let us return him to Heaven, where all souls belong. God awaits your child. But the way to God is through salvation, and salvation comes only at my touch,” he said, swelling in his crotch. “Release your clasp. Release your fears. Release yourself to me,” he said, undoing the young woman’s grasp and taking her dead infant from her hands; walking across the room and laying it on a table.

  He took both of her hands in his and brought them up to his lips.

  Still spying outside, The Young Boy reached his hand in through the window to get a better grasp so that his feet wouldn’t slip. But as he did, he touched something cold and wet, and he looked at his fingers, and they were yellow and sticky. And then he stared at what he had touched on the table below the windowsill – a dead child, smouldering in decay. The Young Boy panicked, losing his footing and kicking the wheel, making a god awful racket.

  The enormous man turned, tearing his hand from between the thighs of the naked and shivering woman, who then collapsed onto the bed. “Who’s there?” he shouted. “Who is it? Delilah?” said The Ringmaster, nervously.

  The Young Boy stayed quiet, wanting to release his clasp and run, but unable to do so. The Ringmaster paced back and forth, peering through the window but unable to see anything in the darkness outside. He looked back at the naked woman on the bed, stroking his small but erect penis and gently massaging his swollen clitoris. Then, thinking that it was probably nothing, The Ringmaster licked his lips and pressed them between the naked woman’s thighs, growling like a hungry wolf as he continued to save her soul.

  The Young Boy let go of the windowsill and fell to the ground. His body made a little thump, but nothing too startling. It hurt like hell, though. He got up and ran, in any direction he could. It was confusing, though, how all the dimly lit paths seemed to circle around one another. So in his panic, no matter how many steps he took, and no matter how many corners he turned, he kept returning to the same spot; by the old tree that looked as if it has outlived many cancers - cancers that had stripped it of its bark, and pillaged every leaf, every inch of life and every speck of colour that it had once attired.

  The Young Boy ran his fingers along the trunk, feeling little bumps of what seemed like words or initials, still carved into the bent and contorting wood. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine who might have been here before, picturing young boys and girls in love, hiding behind the tree and carving their affection through what would once have been thick, crackling bark.

  And neither was as grey or as smudged as he.

  “Call my name,” spoke a whisper. “Call my name and I will come.”

  In his thoughts he saw his father, standing beside the tree; tisking and shaking his head in a ‘told-you-so’ kind of rhythm. And though he looked disappointed and somewhat riled, the energy that he gave off was animated and jubilant, as if the danger of his boy wandering off were lost in the wake of him having been right all along.

  “Call my name and I will come,” spoke the whisper again.

  It was followed by a cracking sound, like a heavy branch, splitting its bark, and falling to the floor. The Young Boy blinked and his father was gone.

  Instead, a thing stood in his place.

  The Young Boy gasped, unable to shout or scream, feeling as if a giant boulder of fear had been dropped into the swirling sea of weakness, fright, and vomit that swelled in his stomach.

  “Call my name,” said The Demon, standing as still as he, and close enough to snatch him, if that’s what it wanted.

  He couldn’t run.

  He stared at it.

  Still and stupid, he stared.

  Unsure what it was.

  It was the height and shape of a man that much was true. And it dressed in brightly red attire as if it were anomalous yet stately. Its body was arched and splintered, and made of decay, while its fingers, reeking of tragedy, were shaped like a poet’s quill.

  Where its face should have been, there was nothing but vacuous rot, looking more like an aged and arborous canker, upon arched and skeletal shoulders. And it spoke, just as a man might, but the sound of each word was less like a man’s, and more like the deciduous fall of ripened fruit. Between every word, its teeth chattered and ground like the hacking of a rusted saw, with every breath that it took, sounding much like the calamitous whoosh that might follow a fell tree.

  It wore too, the strangest boots The Young Boy had ever seen. On each ankle were what looked like a baby eagle’s wings, which flapped whenever it became alarmed or excited.
br />   “Call my name and I will come,” said The Demon, turning to the old tree and running its scratching quills against the names and initials carved into the trunk, rising out of and falling into, each and every one. And as it did, it made a sound that was akin to a deflating tire.

  “Yu…Yu…” stuttered The Young Boy.

  The Demon’s wings fluttered.

  “It’s real,” the boy thought.

  He turned and ran. He ran in any direction that he could. He ran wherever his legs would take him. He ran trying to think of where the road was and he ran, hoping that there, was where his father might be. He ran in circles. He ran in squares. He ran in numbers, and he ran in hundreds of colours. This encampment, though, it was like a maze, and the more he ran, turned, ducked, dove, and sprinted, the less he felt like he was getting away.

  “Hey,” came a call from behind. “Little boy.”

  The Young Boy stopped running. His heart beat rampant, expecting to turn and see a faceless devil. Instead, a lady with coloured pants, which felt as slippery as moss, and with more stars painted on their face than there were in the sky, leaned down to the boy, throwing her arms around him.

  He went limp, expecting to be constricted and swallowed whole. Fear rippled fervently in his belly and though he wanted to scream, he couldn’t. The lady’s hands wrapped around his body, clasping like prison shackles, and all he could do was think of his father, about how right he had been all along. He wished he were here right now to save him.

  And then, just as he was about to cry out, the lady released her grasp. She stepped back, and she smiled. She didn’t frown, scour or grumble. She didn’t lick her lips, gnash her teeth or draw her finger across her throat. She didn’t open a sack, ready a shovel, or wipe clean the ends of her favourite eating fork. Unsure what to do, The Young Boy stood like a concrete slab, his hands still maimed with fright.

  “Oh my child,” she said, “has never another shown you compassion and love?”

  The boy shook his head. He still had no voice, no shout or alarm of his own. He had absolutely no defence. Behind the lady, he could see The Demon, pointing to a small carriage with a broken wire door.

  “My god you’re shaking so much. Do you have a fever? Are you with sickness like the others?” she asked, rubbing his goose-bumped arms.

  The Young Boy lifted his hand, pointing over her shoulder.

  “It,” he said.

  The lady looked quickly and then turned back at the boy smiling.

  “There’s nothing there, dear child,” she said.

  But she couldn’t see The Demon, not like the boy.

  “No,” said the boy, shaking, and white. “It.”

  “That? Well, it’s just an old tree,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “It can’t hurt you.”

  The Young Boy shut his eyes and sank nervously into his shoulders. Were he a turtle, there would be nothing left but a rocking shell. The lady wrapped her arms around him once more, pressing him so tight against their chest that he could hear her love and compassion in the beat of her heart. It was much slower than his and so loud and convincing was it that his own heart started to lessen its rush.

  “My child, do not be frightened or alarmed,” said The Coloured Lady. “You are Light. And I too am Light. And as such, we are one. We are all family and we are all existence. Each of us is the omniverse and the stars above; the matter, the waves, the particles, the people. We are all Light. We are all one. And just as I love myself, and I worship my Light, so too do I love you, and worship yours.”

  The Coloured Lady kissed his cheek and the boy blushed.

  “You know,” she said, lifting the boy’s sunken chin, “I know someone just your age. I bet you two would make excellent friends.”

  “I don’t have any friends,” said the boy. “My father says that they’re dangerous; that they’re no good.”

  “You father doesn’t want you to have friends?” asked The Coloured Lady.

  “He doesn’t want me to get sick,” replied The Young Boy.

  The lady rested her palm against the boy’s face, tilting her own like a confused yet admiring hound, and she smiled. She smiled in such a way that the look in her eyes, and the gentle touch against the boy’s skin, they felt warmer, as if, like the switch on a fridge door, her drawing lips had awakened a sun inside of her. She smiled as if the boy’s had awakened too. She smiled in such a way that the boy had no other choice but to smile back.

  She smiled for many reasons, but most of all, she smiled because her Light and love were real and true. She smiled because she knew that, even though the boy was grey and most likely dying, his were too.

  The Coloured Lady’s hand was damp and warm while the boy’s cheek was as cold as the draft that crept about, trying to wreak havoc beneath their clothes. As she ran her hand along his face, she asked, “How did you get this way?”

  The Young Boy fashioned a mute response. Over the lady’s shoulder, The Demon stood. It had its hands on its hips and its quills crooked and curved, sticking out like a spider’s legs. One of its knees was bent and the tip of its boot pointed towards the ground. It swayed back and forth lightly, like a straggling branch, deprived of leaves. It swayed, not by the wind, but with it. And it looked as if it might dance at any second.

  The Coloured Lady said something, but the boy wasn’t listening.

  Behind her, The Demon danced back and forth, left and right. As it pranced about, its legs shot out from its gangly body like stabbing spears, while the wings on its boots flapped tirelessly, helping to carry it up high; almost higher than the tops of the tallest trees. And when it landed back on the ground, it did so without an ignorant thud, with the pointed ends of its boots touching with the same gentility as a mother’s kiss, and its darting legs, coiling back into soft, considerate arches.

  The boy was not impressed. He offered no applause, and yet, he could not look away, ignoring the lady who had been speaking the entire time. She’d been talking about Light as if he’d never before heard of electricity. She’d been speaking of love, as if he had never before seen, a heart being broken. And she spoke of family as if his own were trite because it was paltry, just he, and his worrisome father. She spoke of being saved as if she were certain that that, right now, was entirely what was happening.

  Behind her, The Demon stood still once more. Though it had no face, it stared straight at the boy. It stared at him, through him, and into him. “Call my name,” it said, raising its branch-like arm and pointing its indexing quill at the carriage with the hanging door. “Call my name,” it said, “Call it, and I will come.”

  “Do you want to see some magic?” asked the lady.

  The Demon jumped on the spot, exhilarated.

  “Can it be somewhere else?” asked The Young Boy, nervously eyeing The Demon who was now walking towards the lady, its arms outstretched and its quills, bent and contorted, ready to strangle her craning neck.

  “Ok,” said the lady, whisking the boy up in her arms. “I bet we can find you a friend too.”

  The boy looked at her in educated reluctance.

  “And it can be our secret,” she said, smiling once more.

  The boy smiled too.

  The Demon returned to a small cavity in the sickly tree, and there it crawled inside. It had left not one print in the sand. There was nothing at all; nothing but the sound of a rusted wire door, beating against a broken down carriage, wheezing like a cancerous lung, as the wind molested its worn and rusted hinges.

  The lady took the boy through the encampment and introduced him to every oddly coloured and strangely shaped person he could see. She even let him put his hands inside some of the cages and pet the tigers, the seahorses, and the alligators.

  “The magic is in there,” she said, pointing to The Big Top. “Do you want to come and see?”

  The boy nodded. Of course, he did. What child didn’t love magic?

  “Welcome,” said The Man with No Arms and Legs, swinging like a pendulum.


  The Coloured Lady smiled and led the boy inside, and then showed him to a seat that was as close as possible to the stage. The Young Boy looked around. The whole town was here, probably his father too. He tried searching frantic, looking for the top of his head in how a mouse might search, for the wretched talons of its sure and imminent death.

  Once the grey people had settled, there was an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of ropes and pulleys, being turned and tightened. All eyes were trained on the stage, where there stood an altar that was empty, except for a small crystal and an empty glass.

  And then the lights went out.

  And everything was black.

  “Light,” bellowed The Ringmaster, from somewhere in the dark.

  Everything was still, and as black as night.

  “Light,” he bellowed again, kicking his heel as a stern and belligerent request.

  This time, a small spark flickered from the roof of the tent. It flickered once or twice and then extinguished. The darkness engulfed once more, and the fear that it extolled was heightened by a whizzing sound, coming from somewhere under the stage.

  Beneath the stage, and behind all the glitz and the glamor, there was a hive of frenzied activity as men and women, all with and mulish expressions, and hands brimming with all sorts of ratchets, spanners and anchoring ropes, scuttled about swift and silently. Though not a word was spoken, and barely a rustle of sound made, there was a great deal of shouting and demeaning cursing going on.

  “Make it work,” said Rex in a whisper that was more like a hushed holler.

  “I am doing my very best,” said The Machinist. “Especially with what tools I have on hand.”

  “Just fix it,” said Rex, his hearing glued to the silence. “Wait for the cue.”

  “Light,” shouted The Ringmaster again, smacking the heel of his foot on the stage. “I give you Light,” he screamed, his voice clapping like thunder.

  “Now,” said Rex.

  The small spark flickered once more, and then a single Light flooded the stage. There, cut out of the darkness, stood The Ringmaster; a rounded man with a thick bulbous nose that as red as every pint of wine to have ever wetted his deserted tongue; long mutton chops that hanged well past the bend in his jaw, almost resting, like an elephant’s ears, on the cusp of his shoulders; and eyes, that were round and hollow, like the end of a soldier’s rifle.

  He wore a flamboyant crystal studded purple suit with glittering coat tails, Rhinestone boots, and an indecently large purple top hat, whereupon it curled, like an expensive skinned fur, a small sleeping monkey. His whole body shone. He sparkled and glimmered like all the expensive and glamorous colours in the rainbow. He looked like the contents of a countess’ purse.

  The Young Boy watched in the same wonder as everyone else.

  Carrying a small empty glass, The Ringmaster stood at the front of the stage. “I hold the omniverse in my hands,” he said, stalking the stage back and forth, and never unlocking his eyes from the empty glass. “In my two hands,” he said, pausing as he lifted the glass above his head, his wrists and knees, trembling lightly as if it were as dense as a star. “In this finite space,” he continued, “therein lays….infinity.”

  Front and centre, The Ringmaster stood unnerved, like a stout and colourful statute, while, before him, his audience sat in dumb and crippled attention, as if his words were complex geometry. Written in bold, on a cue card that was taped to the floor, were the words, ‘Hold for Applause’. What the card failed to mention, though, was how long he should wait.

  “What’s going on up there?” whispered a man on a small bicycle.

  “Shut up and keep pedalling,” ordered Rex.

  He had his body bent in half with the side of his face pressed against the bottom of the stage, listening to the painful silence.

  “Why. Isn’t. They. Clapping?” asked the man on the small bicycle, pedalling furiously; heaving and spitting out his words like seeds, caught in the back of his throat.

  “Shhhh,” whispered Rex.

  “He’s got a point, Rex. Shouldn’t there be applause and the like?”

  “Have faith,” said Rex. “In Master, and in Light.”

  “But Mr. Rex sir…”

  “Shut up and wait for my cue.”

  Silence swelled beneath the stage and then rippled out into the stands where the audience sat in seeming disinterest, like well-disciplined children heaped upon uncomfortable church pews, moored by moral obligation, to see it through until the end.

  “All is Light,” said The Ringmaster, trapping his hand over the top of the glass.

  “Now,” said Rex, barking his command in the direction of a set of cables on both sides of the stage.

  The pulleys squealed as many hands tugged and pulled on many cables, heaving and hoeing beneath the stage. From his seat, The Young Boy could see perfectly, watching in a deluded kind of awe as on all sides of the stage, mirrors of all shapes, sizes and oddly dimensions rose, as artless and facile as the morning sun.

  The mirrors came to rest on all sorts of angles, and they surrounded the bulbous man entirely. It was how they juggled the Light on the stage, though, that mesmerized The Young Boy, making a delicious kind of sickness, tickle in his belly.

  Standing just shy of the rays of luminescence that bounced off the many mirrors, The Ringmaster lifted his hands once more so that Light flooded into the glass. “And as such, all is one,” he said, staring into the spotlight and imagining a bedazzled audience, quieted by wonder and disbelief. “Existence,” he said, “is Light. All is Light. There is but one Light in this space. You cannot see its source. You do not know from whence it came. But it is there. You have no reason to doubt any different. You see what it fills, here on this stage. You see how it reflects about me, catching on these gems and jewels and crystal trinkets. You see how it shimmers ‘neath the round of my crystal cane; and you can see now, how it paints the colour, curve, and girth, of my common attire. Look at how Light fills this glass. Even with my hand as a lid, blocking the Light from entering, still, benightedly, its contents fill this glass. But how can this be? How can this one Light be in all places at once? How can the very same Light be on the floor beneath my feet, on the belled bottoms of my trousers, shimmering on the golden band of my many rings, in the tanned leather of my belt, in the white of my eyes, in the sparkle of my teeth,” he said before raising his hands and closing his eyes, “and how can it, while it is in all these things, be here, in this glass? How can one Light be in all places at the very same time?”

  “All is one,” mouthed the workers below the stage.

  “All is one,” said The Ringmaster. “Just as Light fills all of these things, so too does Light fill you. Like you, like all of us, this glass and these trinkets that I wear, they are vessels. They are vessels for Light. And so too are we, vessels for Light. Though all of these things have a different name and purpose, it is the same Light that fills them, that defines their names, and gives them purpose. The very same Light that fills this glass is the very same Light that fills my shoes. There is but one Light in the omniverse and it fills all things; human, beast, living and inanimate. There is but one Light and you have known it all this time as life, existence, consciousness, nature, God, Anti-God, matter, anti-matter, the soul….one. It is the very same Light that fills me, and it’s the very same Light that fills you. It fills everything in our omniverse. Without it, there is void; zero. With it, there is eternity; one. We are not ourselves. We are each other. If the same Light passes through all of us, then we are Light, and as such, we are one. I am my brother, I am my sister, I am my lover, and I am my very worst enemy. I am you, I am I, and I am this glass. I am the Light that burns inside of me, and not the flesh I will someday leave behind. I am the very Light that burns inside of you. I am myself, and I am you. We are one. We are Light. We are existence…..We are eternity,” said The Ringmaster, mouthed in perfect unison by every member of his troupe, in and out of The Big Top, above and
beneath the stage.

  “What should happen to this Light, when this vessel breaks?” said The Ringmaster, holding the glass high in the air, expecting to pull the imaginary string of gasping disbelief from each mouth of the audience.

  But they all looked disinterested.

  The Ringmaster threw his fist downwards, smashing the glass against the stage.

  “This vessel is ruined. It is gone, defeated, dismantled, and broken. This vessel is dead. It is no longer a glass. It is a broken glass. It can no longer have its place on a table, for it belongs….with all the other trash. And then what of the Light? What has happened to the Light? Where has it gone? Where is it now?” he said, drawing the audience’s attention to the shards now bunched on the stage by his feet.

  The Ringmaster turned his head about the stage. His eyes were wide and maddening as if a sudden and obvious truth had just dawned upon him.

  “The Light is still here. It is all around us. It is in everything. It is in me. It is in you. Light is never extinguished. It does not break. It does not die. It is forever. It is infinite. It is one. And like this glass, one day, when my body ages beyond what my heart can bear, when, like this mound of shards, I am broken and scattered about the Earth, the Light that burns inside me will return to its source; that which we cannot see, but which we imagine, know and believe to be true. The Light from every broken vessel returns from whence it came, in wait of another. All is Light and as such, all is one,” said The Ringmaster, to the bowed and silent prayer of his troupe, etching stars across their hearts with their fingers in a symbolic gesture.

  The Ringmaster knocked his heel once more.

  “Now,” shouted Rex, pointing is little hands towards a cable tied to the stage by The Ringmaster’s feet.

  The cable was cut away from a heavyweight and the line slowly rose as part of the stage cut away and lowered down below. Beneath the stage, the crew worked fast, and without sound, taking the dead child that was wrapped in florid textiles, and placing it kindly on the trap door, before gently pulling on the cable and lifting the prop smoothly so that the cables and pulleys didn’t squeal. And then, when The Ringmaster stepped aside as if he were unveiling a secret or a prize, the dead child was there on the stage, for all to see.

  “This vessel,” said The Ringmaster, picking up the dead child and resting it upon the altar, centre stage. “It is like the glass. It is broken. It is inanimate. It is fragmented. It is contrary to the whole. But like the shards of glass, the Light that once filled this child, the Light that this dear woman had come to love,” he said, pointing to the dead child’s mother, who stood by the side of the stage, wearing one of Delilah’s shoals. “It has not extinguished. It is free. It has returned to its source. Death is in the state of the vessel, and not the state of the soul. If a person were to crash their carriage, or if their horse or vehicle were indisposed, would it spell the end of that person? Or would they walk a bit, until the found another? The child that this dear, dear woman loved,” said The Ringmaster, turning in a passionate address to the dead child’s mother, much to the scorn of Delilah, and other nine whores. “That child was not its vessel. The child that she loved was Light. It was Light that was born from her womb, from between her….” he said salaciously. “From between her parted legs. The Light in this boy has not gone, it has returned to its source and when a new vessel is born, it will return again.”

  The audience didn’t react.

  “I, as the Bringer of Light, hereby bless this child. May his body become the Earth and feed the insects and the birds and wild beasts that we too feed upon. And may his Light return to its source in Heaven, and may it be without pain and illness, may it be without fear or despair. May the Light of this child shine in each and every one of us. And may we be lucky enough too, to one day, when our vessels have tired of age and disease, to return to our source, to Heaven above, back where we belong. Praised be to Light, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

  “Aymen,” said one and all beneath the stage.

  “Go, child,” The Ringmaster hollered, into the air. “Go toward the Light. Be not afraid. Do not question. Be without doubt or alarm. Go with open spirit toward the Light. Look nowhere else except into all that you are. Go, my child, go into the Light.”

  The Ringmaster held the dead child in his hands. He looked to the right of the stage and nodded. The child’s mother, nervous and sobbing, slowly made her way to The Ringmaster’s side and rested her head on his shoulder, staring at her blessed son, wrapped in a bounty of colour. She rested one hand on the curve of his cheek and the other on the burly waist of her confidant.

  “And as we return this vessel to the Earth, and it’s Light unto Heaven,” said The Ringmaster. “I ask you all to join us in celebration, as we drink to the dead, to the living and to Light.”

  Rapturous applause, the kind that sounded like thunderstorms, and landslides, broke out in a deafening and rumbling roar beneath the stage. Eyes lit up like headlights, and smiles were drawn on every painted face as one and all jumped about, stamping their feet like tribal drums, clapping their hands hysterically, and dancing about by hopping from on one leg to another, whilst hooting like deranged and rabid owls. Yet out in the bleachers, the townsfolk looked on with grey and joyless expressions; illiterate to the troupe’s brand of celebration.

  “Let’s get scuttering drunk,” shouted The Ringmaster jubilantly.

  From beneath the stage, the troupe flooded like fetid water from a burst main. They spilled out into every aisle and, like a foul smell, the townsfolk fought to avoid their touch, creeping back into their seats so as not to graze against their gloved hands or polka dotted pleats, for fear of catching whatever chronic mania was making them act in such uneducated, demented, and disrespectful manner.

  “You have nothing to fear,” the troupe exclaimed, each taking a cautious and dubious hand in their own. “For we are Light and Light is love.”

  And that word, love, it sounded like a dentist’s drill.

  “We wish only to bring you joy and colour. We wish only, to bring you Light. And the only payment we ask is for your wilful permission,” they all said, in unison.

  The Young Boy looked to The Coloured Lady beside him. “And maybe a smile too,” she said, taking the boy’s hand and paying him one of her own.

  “Why are you here?” asked The Young Boy.

  “Are we not welcome?” replied The Coloured Lady.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “Nobody has ever come before. And my father says only bad things about what you want, and what it means for you to be here. ”

  “We bring Light where it does not shine, it is what we do. We bring colour to where mankind is merely stencilled and unfinished. We are painters of faith and jubilation. We just want to make you smile. That is why we’re here. That is our meaning. To make you feel loved. All of you. To sing for you. To dance for you. To tell you stories. To entertain you. Why do you think we are here?”

  The boy thought for a second.

  “To make the curse go away.”

  “What curse?” asked The Coloured Lady.

  Before he could speak, a hand reached behind and grabbed the boy’s shoulder, pulling him out of his seat. “Where did you go?” shouted The Father, pinning the boy to his chest. “You keep away from him,” he said, pointing his accusing finger at The Coloured Lady. “You keep away, or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill every one of you. You leave him out of this, whatever you’re planning,” he said.

  “We mean him no harm,” said The Coloured Lady.

  “It’s true,” said The Young Boy. “They’re kind. And all they want is to help.”

  “You have no idea where you are. Fuck off. Leave us alone,” said The Father, embracing the boy in a strangling fashion in one hand, and pointing his judging finger at The Coloured Lady with the other. “Nobody can help us, especially not them,” he said, staring straight at The Coloured Lady. “I can’t lose you,” he said, almost suffocating his son under his burly embrace,
still staring The Coloured Lady in the eyes. “I will not lose him. Do you hear me?”

  Under the wing of his father, The Young Boy disappeared through the flurry of townsfolk who were being ushered from their seats and guided out into the evening light where whiskey and ale poured freely into tall glasses, and an open grave awaited the burial, of a recently blessed child.

  And as the town and the troupe joined together in celebration, drinking like droughted lizards, The Ringmaster, embracing The Grieving Mother, carved a star into the mound of sand where the dead child had been buried.

  “Look into the Light,” he said, to the mound of dirt, comforting the dead child’s now ascending spirit. “Walk into the Light, follow it, for Heaven awaits.”

  The child’s mother threw herself onto the mound of dirt, digging at the earth like a bored and unsettled dog.

  “I can’t leave my baby,” she sobbed.

  The Ringmaster pinned her hands against her side. He kneeled behind her, holding her hands gently but stern, like leathered restraints. As the child’s mother wept and blubbered, The Ringmaster pressed his cheek against hers and whispered in her ear. “Your child is in Heaven now. He is walking into the Light. He is without pain and suffering. He is home.”

  The Grieving Mother continued to writhe, desperate to free her hands to dig out her son, but The Ringmaster, holding her wrists tightly, crossed her arms against her chest. He held her in this heavy embrace, feeling the printing of her heart against his free stubby fingers which grazed ever so lightly, against the round of the woman’s breasts. “You need not be alone, not at a time like this,” he said, pressing his swollen crotch against her buttocks. “Come, drink with me in private. Let me tell you a story.”

  The Grieving Mother nodded. She was too weak to disagree. The two walked off quietly towards The Ringmaster’s carriage, watched by Delilah and the other nine whores.

  “Father,” said The Young Boy. “I saw it.”

  “You saw what?” replied his father, pushing and shoving.

  Already he knew that he shouldn’t say. It was a feeling in his stomach that urged him to keep his mouth shut. “The Demon,” he said. “I saw it, father. I saw it for real.”

  The Father said nothing. He continued his sprint along the road, carrying his son like an injured bird in his angered and defensive hands. He wanted to hold him forever, for fear of losing him, but more than anything, he wanted to punch someone or something, so hard that they splintered into a hundred thousand pieces.

  It was only when they reached their house, with its windows boarded shut, that they stopped, and the boy’s father allowed him back on his feet. He fell to his knees and touched the side of his son’s face as if it were a lightly bruised fruit.

  “I told you to never leave the house,” he said, gripping the boy sternly. “I told you never to leave my side. Never!” he shouted, shaking his son.

  “I’m sorry father. I didn’t mean to escape. I didn’t, I…”

  “Of course you did. That’s exactly what you meant. You don’t at all worry about the consequences of your actions, about what can happen. You don’t ever think,” he shouted. “That’s what you do.”

  The boy’s eyes swelled with tears.

  “I’m sorry father. I promise I’ll think next time. It’s just…”

  “No, there’s no just. There’s no, ‘it’s just’. No, not anymore. Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me?” he shouted.

  The Young Boy looked like a fledgling, having, on his first unready flight, found himself fallen and being squeezed, rolled and kneaded, beneath the paw of some domestic cat.

  “I just wanted to see, father.”

  “To see what? What did you want to see? Death? Disease? That’s what you want? Or do you want to see you father angry, like this, or dead like your mother? Is that you wanted? Well, congratulations. You got it. Now I have to scream and shout. You think I like this? You think I wanna be the bad guy?”

  “No but…”

  “No buts,” shouted the father. “There is no argument.”

  “I just…”

  “You just… You just...” stuttered the father like a mean sibling. “You just what?”

  The boy’s lips quaked so that any word he tried to form crumbled as if they were made of sand. His father took a long breath, and he loosened his grip on the boy’s arm.

  “It’s ok,” he said, speaking soft and considerate, as a father should. “What did you want to see? What was it?”

  His tone changed entirely, as is he had become so aware of the ass that he was.

  “I just wanted to see if there was another kid, like me; someone I can play with.”

  The father hugged his son, and he wept on his shoulder.

  “The lady, she said they have a kid as well.”

  The boy’s chest froze with nerve.

  “If it’s true,” said The Father, “it changes nothing. You can’t have friends. You know what will happen.”

  “But they’re different like you said. Maybe it won’t be as bad as…”

  The Father kissed his son’s forehead, and before losing himself in compassion, as any father would, he gripped the boy in vile contest, almost breaking the child’s collar bone. “I can’t let you outside, you know that. It’s for your own good.”

  The Father took his son into his bedroom and sat him on his bed. A candle flickered on a table next to a picture of his mother and his younger sister. The air in the room was thick and warm. It smelled like wet sawdust. Its windows were barred on the outside and boarded within. The boy sat on the edge of his bed, expecting the suffocating boredom to envelope him once more.

  “They’re not so bad, father.”

  “How do you know?” said The Father, holding a handful of nails in one hand, and a hammer in the other; the same hammer that had built the boy’s first Billy cart when he was four, and then a doll house for his sister just, two years later.

  “I just know is all,” he said. “In my heart.”

  “You know do you?” he said, jingling the nails.

  The Father slammed the door shut. He rested his head against it for a second, drawing a long and tired breath and swallowing the gulf of sadness that threatened to break his conscious levee. He thought of his wife, whose wonderfully crooked smile he hadn’t seen in so long, but who’s dying face, clustered with blisters, boils, and toothless decay, was the only image that stayed with him, like a pained and swollen joint, all this time.

  He thought about the sound of her voice. He tried to think of any inane thing she might have said on any common day; shouting out his name, or cursing over spilled milk, anything at all. All he could hear though was the sound of her last breath, as a mixture of liquid and air, gurgled in her stricken throat.

  He tried to remember the sensation of her touch, whenever she took him, or when he elatedly snuck up behind her, cupping the curve of her waist. He tried to remember what it felt like to squeeze her hand; and when her hand pulled away from his, as her slender fingers lightly scratched against his palm. He tried to, but all he could feel was the sting of open blisters from the hours of relentless digging with the very same shovel his wife had bought him, so that they could one day get round to making their very own garden, of the wildest and most colourful flowers.

  He tried to remember the perfume of her breath and the wetness of her kiss, but all he could taste on his lips and on the back of his throat was the acrid and saliferous cocktail of sweat and soil.

  He tried to imagine a place for her in this home that wasn’t the grave where the wild and colourful flowers should have been. As he took another cold, icing breath, he went about the turning of the many locks on the boy’s door, before sliding a large wooden board against two metal braces, and then hammering in nine long curved nails.

  “They can help, father. I know they can.”

  “No-one can help us son.”

  “They can stop the curse.”

  “There is no curse,” shouted The Father.
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  “But I saw it, father.”

  “What? You saw what? What did you see?”

  “The Demon.”

  “Stop with this nonsense. There is no demon. There is no curse. And there’s no goddamn magic,” said The Father sternly. “There’s nothing. Nothing but you and I. The two of us. That’s it. That’s all that matters. That’s all there is. Just you and me,” he said, his voice crumpling like paper under the sheer weight of his useless depression. “Promise me,” he said, on the verge of breaking something. “Promise me you won’t go back there again. Promise you’ll stay away from that tree. Promise me you’ll stay away from those people. Promise you’ll never leave.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t real…”

  “Promise me,” shouted the boy’s father.

  “I promise,” said the boy.

  And he wanted to keep that promise, he did. He hated the idea of going against his father. He hated seeing him so sad and angry all of the time, but he couldn’t help thinking about what The Coloured Lady had said, about the girl who, perhaps, could be his friend.

  The boy had never had a real friend before. He had never been allowed one. And now that all of the children in town were dead, he never imagined ever actually having one. He did, though; imagine what it would be like, to chase or to hide from anyone other than his own shadow; until now.

  He thought about the girl and he wondered, “What would be her favourite game?”