The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (24 page)

I didn’t answer that one either.

It wasn’t my place to force or nurture belief I
simply told the stories. What he did with them, what anyone did who
had ever sat with me and listened, wasn’t my concern. Dismissed as
clumsy fables, passed over as bonfire tales, accepted literally or
scoffed at — in the long run it didn’t matter except to those whose
lives I told.

Nina lit a cigarette with a flourish I feared
would bum my house down.

Callum suggested we go inside and join the
others in case they thought we were engaged in something illegal
and disgusting out here on the steps.

And I watched Deric, charted his confusion, saw
behind his eyes him marking what I had said beside what his brother
had told him over the years. Deric had never been to Oxrun Station;
his only contact with us had been his brother. Perhaps, as the
infrequent letters had arrived, he had decided they were the hints
and musings of an old man trying to make something of his past,
creating a little excitement for a small and unexciting town so it
would have all been worthwhile; perhaps, as the infrequent letters
had arrived, he had feared for his brother’s mind as it neared
eight decades of living and began to lose track; and perhaps, while
in bed and listening to the dark around him, he believed every
word.

I think he wanted to.

I think he was afraid to.

Which is what made me stand and stretch suddenly
and loudly, startling Callum, bringing Nina quickly to her feet and
looking around as if searching for some monster crouching in the
porch shadows.

“Walk,” I said, smiling the way I imagined a
shark did when he saw an innocent, stupid minnow. “I think it’s
time for a brisk walk before I get too stiff to move and have to
sleep out here tonight” I started across the lawn, “You can come if
you want. It wouldn’t kill you, you know.”

“What about the party?” Callum asked.

“It isn’t my party.”

“It’s your house.”

“So? Deric’s the honored guest and he’s out here
with us.” I paused on the sidewalk and took a slow deep breath,
summer air just a comfortable step away from cool. Deric was with
me before I’d gone a dozen paces, Nina a few more, Callum grumbling
behind about all the food he had missed because he had to humor the
nut I winked at him. He sneered back and wanted to know if Nina
feared for her virtue, strolling as she was in the middle of the
night with three obviously unrepentant reprobates out to raise a
little hell.

“One’s a cop,” she reminded him, grinning at
Deric.

Stockton grinned back.

“Swell,” Callum muttered. “The record lady’s a
smartass.” He dodged her kick, reached out, and poked my shoulder.
“So where are we going?”

“Around.”

He knew me better. “Around where.”

“Armstrong’s farm.”

“Damn. I figured.”

“What’s the matter?” Deric said.

Callum grabbed up a twig, snapped it, threw it
into the street. “Nothing,” he said, “that a comet landing on my
head wouldn’t cure.”

Once on Chancellor Avenue we headed west, alone
on the street, most of the houses dark, leaves talking to
themselves over our heads. Footsteps not quite loud, and too loud;
words begun, and not completed; hands fluttering and flapping into
and out of pockets, into and out of clasps, scratching, smoothing,
rubbing, pointing out the well-lighted Chancellor Inn, the
direction of the hospital, trying to inscribe a permanent map in
the air to show the Station’s relationship to Massachusetts and New
York.

I had a feeling we looked pretty damn drunk, and
I laughed to myself.

Then Deric said, “What’s Armstrong’s farm?”

“It’s deserted,” Nina told him before I could
answer. “On the other side of the highway. Some guy who used to
live there a zillion years ago. Nobody knows why he left. There
isn’t much left of it now — weeds, stickers, an apple orchard
nobody will touch with a ten-foot pole, some fields mostly covered
with new forest growth now.” She shrugged. “Not the most exciting
place in the world.”

“So why are we going there?”

“Don’t ask me, ask him,” she said. “He’s the
guide.”

I put a finger to my lips.

She slapped my arm. “Tell him, dope, before he
runs away.”

I shook my head.

Deric’s patience was amazing.

At Mainland Road we paused for a moment, not
waiting for traffic, just standing there a while so our vision
could adjust to the glow from the sky. Across the way, the ditch
was darker black, the high shrubs and thorn bushes more like a
stone wall.

“I ain’t going to fly,” Callum grumbled as we
crossed.

“There are ways,” I told him, and found a gap
and led them through.

And once on the other side, Deric stopped me
with a touch.

“Pilgrim’s Travelers was here?”

I nodded.

“I see.”

I knew what he was thinking — though moonlight
and starlight weren’t their brightest tonight, it was more than
clear, and would have been so in pitch black, that nothing the size
of that itinerant carnival could have fit into the open space
between the thorns and the orchard, and the trees that flanked
them. Not even half. Not even a quarter.

There simply wasn’t any room.

And there were too many rocks, too many
boulders, too many saplings and yearlings and old weeds and
depressions and burrows and wildflowers. This place hadn’t been
used since King George was in charge.

Nina stood close, fumbled for my hand and held
it; hers was cool.

Callum followed Deric here and there, answering
questions I couldn’t hear, staring at the ground, hunkering down
and poking at the earth with a stick or a finger, standing, looking
up, finally turning to me and waiting with his hands loose on his
hips, looking every inch a cop demanding explanations.

There wasn’t much more I could tell him.

Casey Bethune went on vacation and hasn’t been
seen since, his house looking as if it hadn’t been lived in for
years; on the other hand, his famed gardens had grown wild in that
time, and despite the neglect were amazingly lovely after each
summer rain. Especially the roses.

There was speculation among the regulars at the
Brass Ring that he’d run off with Norma Hobbs. Few believed it.
Tina Elby claimed her friend had been murdered. Few believed that
either. Norma, they claimed, was just too damn mean to die. Closer
to the truth was the notion that she, at Kayman Kalb’s behest, had
taken Estelle someplace west where Estelle’s children couldn’t find
her. They’d been back a couple of times — a more obnoxious pair I’d
never met — threatening lawsuits and arrest and a government
investigation, but old Kayman didn’t seem to care. He just sat on
his porch no matter what the weather was. Rocking. Watching the
street. Every so often walking over to the Ring or up to the Crow
and having a drink. Always alone.

He talks to himself a lot. Nobody minds; he’s
one of ours.

Sadly, the Lumbairds were forced to move back to
Cambridge when Neal lost his already tenuous job.

Rene Saxton, shortly after the mass funeral for
her sister and family, took over the insurance office in Harley and
was, by all accounts, practically minting her own money. Her son
did well at Hawksted College and still worked on occasion at the
Station Herald.
He was, as they used to say, a good boy, who
loved his mother.

“So . . .” Stockton said thoughtfully, a hand
turning me around and starting us back.

I nodded. “They’re holding on, Deric. They’re
holding on.”

In the middle of the highway Nina stopped,
grabbed my arm, and pointed up and west. “Hey!”

We looked.

“Make a wish,” she said quietly.

A shooting star, flaring green in an arc that
took it behind the deserted farm.

She pinched me lightly. “So, smarty, where did
it land, where can we find it?”

It didn’t, and we can’t.

It flares, and there is no grave.

“Well, that’s all well and good,” Callum said,
holding his watch close to his eyes, “but I’m bloody damn thirsty,
and if we hurry, we can still make last call at the Inn.”

Nina agreed, urged us on, but Deric and I
stopped when we reached the other side.

I wasn’t going to, though; I was hoping he
hadn’t heard.

But he had.

It was obvious in the way his face took on a
mask of the melancholy that comes only deep into morning, after
midnight and before the sun.

He looked at me; he looked back at the field; he
shook his head; he walked on.

I joined him a step behind as the night breeze
pushed me gently, and my shadow merged with his, and we both
ignored the carousel.

Playing music.

Tin and silver.

Slipping away like the shooting star.

Leaving us here.

Holding on.

The
Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant

Volume I:
Nightmare Seasons

The Complete
Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant

Volume II: The
Orchard

The
Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant

Volume
III: Dialing the Wind

The
Hour of the Oxrun Dead