The Accidental Siren (35 page)

I made my move. I jumped backward to avoid my
captor’s reach, then darted left toward the funhouse.

“James!” Whit yelled and I looked back. His
right wheel was caught between a trash can and the fallen jock.

I couldn’t help him.
Mara was alone with
Ryan.
Without a word, I spun around and abandoned my friend in
the fight.

The carousel screeched. The operator’s hand
was splayed against the red “stop” button and the jocks with the
signs lunged violently in the opposite direction. One boy was about
to step off when the ride slammed to a stop. His forehead bounced
against a brass pole before the inertia jerked him back and threw
him to the ground, cheek-first against the pavement. A ferret
sprung from the center of the carousel, shot the fallen jock’s face
with a squirt gun, then moved on.

It was Mara’s kiss that carried me through
the hysterical horde; her fading taste on my lips. I moved my arms
through the oscillating mass as if I was swimming. The funhouse
disappeared and reappeared from view as people zig-zagged between
us.

I unbuckled my belt and pulled it off, my
only weapon against Ryan Brosh. I would choke the bastard. I would
track him through the funhouse, loop the noose around his throat,
and pull. I would feel the metal latch drop into every new notch as
the belt tightened inch by inch. His eyes would turn to blood...
just like Mara’s.

The mayhem intensified around me but I
reveled in the chaos. I breathed the smell of beer as it mixed with
bleach from the ferret’s guns. I was spurred by the madness.
I
was part of the madness.
My jaw locked in jealous rage as I
imagined Mara’s betrayal, red and black, touching that boy, kissing
that boy,
doing God-knows-what to that boy
. The carnival
beast laughed at my determination but I ignored it and pressed
on.

Two kids tussled against a tent post. One boy
growled,
“The girl is ours.”
I looked closer and his face
brought me back to the night beneath the lamppost;
the mustached
boy with the tape recorder.
He was here, at the fair, white
tank top molded to his back, blue bandana circling his tight
crewcut, slapping a pudgy-looking boy who had dropped his spray
bottle to the curb.

Why was he here?

Did I really care?

I reached the funhouse gate and turned to
check on Whit. I located the can where he was trapped, but he was
gone.

The street had transformed into a gladiator
arena. A dozen boys with blue bandanas had joined the fight,
tackling and pummeling the scrawny bunch of boys from my trees. The
jocks were caught in the middle with bloody noses and pulpy skin.
The innocent bystanders had evacuated the scene and formed a circle
around the fray. A uniformed cop pinned one of the blue-bandana
boys against the carousel and screamed into his walkie-talkie as
the carnival beast devoured the children, one by one.

* * *

I rattled the aluminum gate between me and
the stubborn carnie. “My girlfriend’s in trouble!” I yelled. “You
gotta let me in!”

The man had varnished cheeks, a bald head,
and thin, hand-drawn eyebrows. He ignored me as he paced the
funhouse entrance, armed with a broom handle, fending off the
outbreak of rabid children.

“The line’s gone!” I said and pointed at the
empty cue. “You gotta let me through!”

“Beat it, kid,” he said, then jabbed an
approaching ferret with a blue-bandana in his back pocket.

I shook the gate harder. “You don’t
understand! My girlfriend’s in there with another boy–”

He aimed the broom handle at my head.
“Charlie’s inside,” he said. “He’ll make sure...” his voice trailed
off.

“What!” I asked. “Making sure, what?”

“Would ya look at all that...”

I looked over my shoulder. Six uniformed
security guards burst from the circle of bystanders and charged the
brawling kids.

“Here they come,” said the carnie.

Holy crap...
I thought.

The kids were not deterred, but fought back
against the guards.

Oh shit...

The guards pulled them apart and snapped
handcuffs onto every possible wrist... but that’s wasn’t what I was
watching.

Son of a bitch...
I thought.
It was
him!
King of the bullies. The hillbilly who killed Mara’s cat.
Danny Bompensaro
. He stepped through the havoc as if he
owned it, carrying with him a sinister presence despite his slender
frame.

“Did you do this, Danny!” I shouted, though I
knew the accusation was absurd.

He shook his head as he approached; ten steps
away and my heart rattled in my chest.

“I don’t know what this is,” he said. His
voice was trembling.

I narrowed my eyes as he came closer. His
right cheekbone was black and green and mottled with purple flecks.
In the center of the bruise was a gash in need of stitches, though
it was dried now and at least a few days old. It wasn’t from the
fight.

He held up his hands in surrender. “I know
what I did was bad, James.”

He never called me “James.”

“You don’t have to kill me,” he stammered.
“I’m just looking for Mara.”

“What happened to your face?”

Danny forced an upside-down grin. “For real?”
He laughed. “You really wanna know what happened to my face?”

I stepped back, leaned against the barrier,
and shrugged.

“Your ol’ man called my uncle after I did
that thing to the cat. Told Hank that he’d kill me if I ever come
by your castle again.” Danny’s smile grew. As he spoke, bit of
tongue slipped through the gap of a missing tooth. “Threatened us
both. Said he had a gun.”

My chest heaved and my throat opened against
my will, but nothing came out.

“Hank let me have it pretty good.”

I shook my head. “M– My Dad–”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been hit,
James. Now where the fuck is Mara?”

“You’re not steppin’ foot anywhere near my
girlfriend. Now get the heck away from me before I call my
dad!”

Danny surveyed the brawl, unaffected by my
threat. “She wants to see me.”

“Mara hates you.”

“She
asked
to see me.”

I shook my head. “Bull.”

“I’m sposeda meet her at nine o’clock by the
Salt and Pepper Shakers.”

My brain staggered like the rusty innards of
the Tilt-a-Whirl.

“I’ve been waitin’ there fifteen minutes,
then I heard the yelling so I came this way.”

“She–” I couldn’t say it until my mind
understood it. “She–”

“She called me up three days ago. Said we had
to talk.”

“She... invited you?”

Danny nodded to the funhouse. “Is she in
there?”

I struggled to fill in the blanks of this new
puzzle, but every solution only pointed to a horrible, irrational,
unthinkable
–

The bald carnie shrieked and scrambled
backward, his broom was pointing at a boy bracing himself in the
funhouse entrance.

It was Ryan. Buck naked. Pale skin. Barely
standing. Alone.

“Someone call an ambulance!” cried the
carnie.

Gasps rose from the spectators as the naked
Romeo stepped forward like a beautiful zombie, then collapsed into
a pile of flesh and bones.

“Danny!” I pleaded as I hurdled the aluminum
gate. “Do
not
look for Mara! Do you understand me? Stay here
and do
not
look for Mara!”

He didn’t respond. He was transfixed.

The carnie was twenty feet from Ryan, still
backing up and shouting for help.

I ran to Ryan’s side and fell to my knees.
Two minutes ago I would have killed him.

His eyes were stuck on some invisible object
over my shoulder. To the left of his adam’s apple was a mark the
size of a quarter. The outside was a bruise. The middle was a hole,
a bleeding gash with the skin sucked out.

It was a hickey.

I took his head in my hands and turned it
away until I couldn’t see the blood.

His mouth was moving.

I put my ear to his lips and asked, “What is
it?”

Ryan replied with one word, whispered over
and over, stuttering, then unmistakably clear:
“More.”

* * *

Charlie stumbled from the funhouse entrance,
pounding a pack of Camels on the butt of his hand. A cop arrived at
Ryan’s side. It was Sheriff Beeder.

The bald carnie approached with caution.
Danny paced the gate like a wild boar.

“What happened here!” asked Beeder, sweat
forming beneath his eyes from breaking up the brawl.

Charlie fumbled with a zippo and spun in a
slow, tight circle.

His friend snatched the lighter, lit the
cigarette, and put it in his lips. “Quit spinnin’ and tell us what
you saw!”

“The mirrors,” he said. “I heard a– a boy in
the mirrors. Loud... he was loud but I couldn’t tell if– if– if he
was laughing or... or crying for help.”

The sheriff checked Ryan’s pulse and barked
an order over his radio. He looked up to Charlie. “Did you see
anything? Did you see who did this?”

“I thought they were kissin’. Lotsa– lotsa
kids kiss in the mirrors...”

“But did you see what happened?”

“It was on him... then it was gone... it flew
between the mirrors like... like a banshie from hell.”

Beeder inspected the hole, called again for
an ambulance, then rolled Ryan’s head gently to the side. The boy’s
lips were crusted and red. He was smiling.

From the opposite side of the midway came a
terrible groan like the landing of an alien craft, breaking the
night in half and silencing the brawling kids. There was a moment
of quiet, followed by a wave of screams and the snap of bending
steel.
The beast was trying to talk.

“What in flaming tarnation was that?” asked
the bald carnie, his brows caught between the folds of forehead
wrinkles.

Charlie sucked again on his cigarette.
“Somethin’ broke,” he said.

I looked to the gate. Danny was gone.

Panic sent bursts of blood into my
extremities so quickly I could feel the thump in my wrists.

I stood up and I scanned the arena. Every
head was turned toward the terrible sound, but one head moved
sideways through the crowd. I saw the scar. I knew it was him. And
he was searching for Mara.

* * *

I left Ryan in the care of Sheriff Beeder and
the carnies. On a hunch, I was rounding the corner of the funhouse
between the colorful siding and the back of a row of
port-o-potties. I had been watching the entrance and exit the whole
time they were inside. If Mara left, she came out a different
way.

I rounded the second corner and my suspicion
was confirmed. A door was open. The handle read, “Emergency Exit
Only.” On the ground, laying between a blanket of yellow rose
petals, were two halves of a broken tiara.

I ran as fast as I could away from the
funhouse, past the carousel, and through the midway.
Where was
Mara? Where was Danny!

Cherry red lights bounced in the sky. The
wail of sirens stood out among the racket.

Again, the carnival had undergone a
despondent metamorphosis. The carnies worked quickly to sedate the
beast like the hunters who tried to tame King Kong. The games were
closing. The lights were turning off. The kiosks and ticket booths
were folding away like origami boxes.

But the carnival was still breathing.

Policemen spoke on megaphones from three
different points throughout the park. Their voices overlapped and
bounced through the streets, giving the beast an unintelligible,
garbled language.

The people who stayed were clustered around
the accident that I heard but couldn’t see. It was the
Tilt-a-Whirl. My parents were probably there, terrified that I was
somehow involved in whatever incident created that sound, pacing
circles and damning themselves for leaving us alone.

I stood in the center of the midway and
searched for Mara. I stood on a trash can and called her name.

No reply.

In the distance, a single ride was still
dancing along the horizon; the Salt and Pepper Shaker, twirling,
twinkling, still singing the “game over” sound as the carriages
rose and fell with screaming children.

* * *

I was panting. I keeled and grabbed the cramp
in my stomach. But I had reached the ride.

I looked up and saw her, malevolent in her
purple dress, weaving leisurely between a faction of unaware
bystanders.

Her lips trembled. Her eyes were closed. I
couldn’t hear the words,
but she was singing
. Behind her,
Danny followed like a rat to the Piper, lured by her melody and the
poetry of her stride.

“Danny!” I screamed.

Through the safety gate. Past the operator. A
cage zipped a foot from Mara’s face and her hair fluttered in its
wake. Her timing was perfect as she stepped between the pair of
tumbling carts.

“MARA!” I screamed! “NO!”

The girl reeled just in time to see the first
cage slam into Danny’s body, his limbs twitching as the ride
carried him like a deer on the hood of a car; up, around, then
down, declaring “game over!” as it propelled him into the pavement
with a loud, dull slap.

If people were screaming, I didn’t hear. I
was focused on Mara Lynn watching me through the ride, the cages
spinning between us, her image flickering like a film reel
projected on a bed sheet.

The tempest of blood in her right eye watched
me. Golden brown locks of hair snapped in the wind. Her ears bled
from those amateur holes I bore, and her lips acknowledged me with
a smile. The longer I watched, the deeper the sensation of calling
Bloody Mary into a pitch-black mirror.

Mara, I knew now, was the carnival beast.

Mara was its brain.