Mystery Walk

Puzzled, Wayne frowned. 'Dad ... I thought you said medicines were sinful, and those people who took medicines were doing the Devil's bidding.'

'Some medicines are sinful. But if you're in pain, and you're confused, then you need something to take the burden off you for a little while. Isn't that right?'

'I guess so,' Wayne agreed, though he could never remember his father talking about drugs like this before. Percodan, had he said?

'I'll be here when you need me,' Falconer said. 'But if you tell anyone, even your mother, then I can't come back and help you anymore. Do you understand?'

'Yes sir.' He paused for a moment, then whispered, 'Dad? What's being dead like?'

'It's . . . like being in a black hole, son, on the blackest night you can imagine, and you try to crawl out but you don't know which is the top and which is the bottom.'

'But . . . haven't you heard the angels sing?'

'Angels?' He grinned again, but his eyes were still gelid. 'Oh, yes. They do sing.' And then he put his fingers to his lips, glancing quickly toward the door.

An instant afterward, there was a soft knocking. 'Wayne?' Cammy's voice carried a tremble.

'What is it?'

The door opened a few inches. 'Wayne, are you all right?'

'Why shouldn't I be?' He realized he was alone now; the yellow-suited figure was gone, and the room was empty. My dad is alive! he shrieked inwardly, his heart pounding with joy.

'I . . . thought I heard you talking. You're sure you're all right?'

'I said I was, didn't I? Now leave me alone, I've got a long day tomorrow!'

She looked nervously around the room, opening the door a little wider so the hallway light could stream in. The mounted airplane models and large wall posters of military aircraft took up a lion's share of the room. Wayne's clothes were strewn on a chair. Cammy said, 'I'm sorry I bothered you. Good-night.'

Wayne lay back down as the door closed. He waited for a long time, but his father didn't come back. You bitch! he seethed at his mother. You killed him a second time! But no, no . . .his father would return to the world of the living when he was needed; Wayne was sure of it. Before he drifted to sleep, Wayne repeated the word Percodan ten times to burn it into his mind.

And in her room down the hallway, Cammy Falconer lay in bed with all the lights blazing. She was staring at the ceiling. Every so often a shiver passed through her It was not Wayne's voice, in the middle of the night, that had been so bad.

It had been the guttural, harsh mumbling that Cammy had heard faintly through the wall.

Answering her son.

39

The game booths, rides, and sideshows had sprung up from the mud covering Birmingham's fairgrounds. The rain fell in drizzles and sheets for three days, blasting the state fair business to hell. Still, people continued to slog through the sawdusty mud; drenched to the bone, they sought refuge in the arcades and enclosed shows, but they left the rides alone as light bulbs and wires sputtered under the rain.

That was for the best, Billy knew. Because people wouldn't be riding the Octopus in the rain, and it would be deprived of what it needed. This was the last stop of the season. If whatever presence, that controlled the Octopus was going to strike, it would have to be in the next four days. At night, even while the rain pattered on the Ghost Show tent's roof, Billy could hear Buck Edgers working on his machine, the hammer's noise echoing down the long ghostly corridor of the midway. While setting up the Octopus on the slippery field, a roustabout's shoulder was broken by a piece of metal that toppled from above. Word had gone out about the machine, and now everyone avoided it.

Billy stood outside Santha Tully's trailer, in a light drizzle that had washed away the last of the night's customers. He had been here twice since the carnival had reached Birmingham: the first time, he'd heard Santha laughing with a man inside there, and the second time he'd come out through the rows of trailers to find a short, balding figure standing in the shadows not ten feet from him. The man had instantly whirled toward him, and Billy had gotten a quick glimpse of his startled face, wearing dark-tinted glasses, before the man had run away. Billy had followed him for a short distance, but lost him in the maze of trailers. He'd told no one about the incident at the Killer Snakes tent, fearing that the man would find out and put his snakes to work, perhaps on Santha or Dr. Mirakle. But he still desired her, and still needed to see her.

He screwed up his courage, looked around to make sure no one had followed him, and then walked up a couple of cinder-block steps to the trailer's door. A curtain was closed in a single oval window, but light leaked out around it; he could hear the scratchy whine of a country singer. He knocked at the door and waited. The music stopped. He knocked again, less hesitantly, and heard Santha say, 'Yeah? Who is it?'

'Me. Billy Creekmore.'

'Choctaw?' A bolt slid back, and the thin door opened. She stood there in the dim golden light, wearing a black silk robe that clung to the curves of her body. Her hair was a dusky halo, and Billy saw that she wore practically no makeup. There were a lot of lines around her eyes, and her lips looked sad and thin. In her right hand there was a small chrome-plated pistol. 'Anybody else out there?' she asked.

'No.'

She opened the door wider to let him in, then bolted it again. The room was a cramped half living area and half kitchen. The bed, an unsteady-looking cot with a bright blue spread, was right out in the open, next to a rack of clothes on their hangers. A dressing table was cluttered with a dozen different kinds of creams, lipsticks, and various cosmetics. On a tiny kitchen table was a battered record player, next to a small stack of unwashed dishes. Posters of Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen decorated the walls, along with a rebel flag and a Day-Glo Love poster. A door led into a tiny bathroom and shower stall.

Billy stared at the pistol. Santha flicked the safety on and put it away in a dresser drawer. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Sometimes I get jumpy late at night.' Santha stepped past him and peered out the window for a moment. 'I was expecting a friend of mine. He was supposed to be here about thirty minutes ago.'

'Anybody special?'

Santha looked at him, then gave him a little crooked smile. 'No. Just a friend. Somebody to pass the time with, I guess.'

Billy nodded. 'I'd better go, then. I don't want to—'

'No!' She reached out and grasped his arm. 'No, don't go. Stay here and talk to me until Buddy gets here, okay? Really, I don't like to be here alone.'

'What'll he think if he finds me with you?'

'I don't know.' She didn't release her grip. 'What would he think?'

Her eyes were luminous in the weak light from a single table lamp, her fingers cool against his rain- dampened skin. Billy said, 'Maybe he'd think . . . something was going on between us.'

'Do you want something to go on between us?'

'I ... I hardly know you.'

'You didn't answer my question, Choctaw. Is it you who's been sneaking around my trailer at night?'

'No.' Tell her about the man, he told himself; but what good would it do? It would only scare her more, and the police couldn't prove the snake-man had had anything to do with Chalky's death. No. In four days, the fair would be over and she'd be leaving, and then that man couldn't bother her anymore.

'Well, I think it has been you. I think you've been sneakin' around and spyin' on me! Naughty, naughty!' She grinned and let go of him. 'Sit down. Do you want a beer?'

'No, thanks.' He sat down on a faded blue sofa while Santha rummaged through her small refrigerator and popped open a Miller's.

'Excuse the mess in here. Sometimes I'm as lazy as a leaf.' She sipped from the can, walked to the window, and looked out again. 'Damn! Rainin' harder.' The drops sounded leaden on the trailer's roof. 'I've been meanin' to come by that Ghost Show of yours.' She let the curtain fall and stood over him. 'Do you believe in ghosts?'

He nodded.

'Yeah, I do too. I was born in New Orleans, see, and that's supposed to be the most haunted city in the