“C’mon, it’s harmless. If it was full of Tinker Toys it wouldn’t bother you, would it?”
“No, Alan, it wouldn’t,” she said, her tone of disapproval growing. “But I’m pretty sure there’s no fucking Tinker Toys in there.”
He just shook his head. The rain was still falling hard out there, but the wind had lessened. That was a good thing. At least the house was no longer shaking. He pressed his hands back against the box, feeling an almost atavistic repulsion against touching it. He gave it a shove. Then another and another. It wasn’t moving.
“Now what?” Meg said.
“Now I push a little harder.” He smiled. “No harder than pushing out a baby.”
“Ha, ha.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Just leave it there,” she said again.
“If I leave it there, you’ll never get any sleep and you need your sleep.”
“Like I’m going to sleep anyway. In case you haven’t noticed, Alan, there’s a coffin trying to get into my living room.”
Funny. Well, she might have been eight months down the road, but her mouth still worked just fine.
Bracing his feet, he put his hands back on the end of the coffin and gave it everything he had. The box moved maybe an inch or two before the panel bowed in again and a trickle of black water came oozing out, running over the back of his hands. He yanked them away like he’d been scalded, letting out a little cry. God, of all things. Drainage from a coffin.
Meg giggled into her hand. “It’s just a wooden box, Alan. That’s all it is.”
He chose to ignore her amusement. Yes, it was just a wooden box hammered together in a casket factory somewhere and a spider was just a spider, still you didn’t want to go touching one if you could help it. And you sure as hell did not want to grab a fat, juicy one in your palm and squeeze your fist shut until that spider’s soft body pulped in your hand and brown juice ran between your fingers. And the coffin-and the juice running from it-gave Alan about the same sense of aversion and disgust.
But it had gone beyond that now.
At first, he was hesitant to touch it. Then merely revolted at its feel. But now he was simple pissed-off. The storm wasn’t bad enough. The damage to his house and yard were not enough, now he had a fucking coffin stuck in his window. And that sonofabitch was going back outside whether it wanted to or not. He put his hands on the box again and this time, he really put his back into it. His back and his upper body strength, which was considerable after working in a lumberyard these past twelve years. The panel almost completely collapsed, but before it did the box moved five or six inches, enough so that most of its length was hanging out the shattered window. Gravity did the rest. The casket balanced precariously there for a moment or two, then fell out the window.
“Ha!” Alan said.
It hit the water with a great splash, stood straight up and down like a ship about to go under, bobbed for a second or two, then righted itself, twisting in a lazy circle as the current found it and carried it away. It joined that gently rushing river of filth and bobbing things. And was gone from sight.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said. “Just needed some convincing was all. A little push to show it who was in…”
Alan’s words dried up in his mouth.
For one crazy second in the glare thrown by the flashlight beam, he’d thought somebody was standing out in the street. But that was crazy. Nobody could stand out there. At least not for long.
“What is it?” Meg said.
“Ah, nothing.”
And it was nothing. Just a shadow or something swept by in the current. That’s all. There was nothing out there now but that black, oily water and all manner of flotsam caught in its pull.
“Look at your hands,” Meg said.
Alan did. They were muddy and dark. “Grab me a towel from the kitchen, will ya?”
“You’re not going to wipe that crap on one of my towels.”
“Meg, please.”
Sighing, she turned from him and then stopped. Stopped dead as he stopped himself. He could not have just heard what he’d thought he’d heard. Not on a night like this. Not in a storm like this. It just couldn’t be. But then it came again: a slow, insistent pounding at the front door. Thud, thud, thud.
“Alan…”
But he ignored his wife, things flowing through his brain, thoughts that told him how there could not be anyone out there knocking. Not tonight. It just wasn’t earthly possible. There were other thoughts, too. Thoughts that told him to take his wife by the hand and run upstairs, pretend that he had not heard a thing.
But that was silly…wasn’t it?
The porch angled away to the side, so he could not see who was out there from the living room window.
“Don’t answer it,” Meg whispered.
The pounding came again. An almost mechanical sound.
He walked over to the door, something seizing up inside him, his belly pulling up like it wanted to fill his throat.
“Alan, please…”
But it was too late, because his hand was already gripping the knob and his other was undoing the latch. Behind him, his wife made a weird, moaning sound. And something in him, something like panic, wanted him to make it, too.
Without further ado, he opened the door to what waited out there.
3
Any given night in the summer or fall, had you been out walking down Angel Street in Witcham’s River Town, you might have noticed a garishly painted edifice squeezed dead center of a group of false-fronted buildings between 12^th and 13^th Avenues. Though the block featured everything from pawnshops to fried chicken counters, there was no mistaking that particular establishment with its bright scarlet facade and gold scrolling along the roofline. And the sign which read: COSTELLO’S MUSEUM OF MORBID MEMORABILIA in antique lettering.
From June through October, it was strung with red, yellow, and white bulbs and calliope music played from speakers over the door. Its proprietor, a somewhat seedy character named William Barney, was from a long line of carnival and circus performers. Though he had not labored on the midway for thirty years or more, Barney-as his father and grandfather-had amassed a sizeable collection of souvenirs and mementoes from those heady and raucous days of yore.
Step inside and the walls were plastered with old circus posters and railroad show banners and sideshow accordion boards advertising everything from bearded ladies to three-headed goats, half-girls and half-boys to fire- eaters and armless wonders and alligator men. You could view the skeletons of giants like “Sky-High” Lester Brown to those of dwarves like Wee Willie Wilkins in their respective, neon-lit caskets or marvel over the death masks of Bobby the Frog-Boy and Slim Gerou, the Caterpillar man. And if you were especially daring, you might want to investigate the body cast of Laddy the Human Larva or see firsthand the implements of old-time torture shows and view a photographic panorama of the lives of rubber men and monkey girls and nail-eaters.
As can be inferred, Barney’s collection concentrated mostly on the more grim and sensational aspects of carnival lore.
On dusty shelves and scattered over tabletops there was an exceptional collection of natural and decidedly unnatural wonders. Everything from embalmed devil-babies to stuffed mermaids, the tanned hides of man-eating snakes and giant rats, shrunken heads and ossified hands.
There was another room in the back that drew most of the museum’s business. And for an additional three dollars, you could go inside and view Barney’s collection of bottled babies and pickled punks. In jars and glass vessels and tanks of preservative were human and semi-human curiosities, things that died at birth, things unborn,
