Part XXX

Part XXX

The Carnival was set off the road on a parcel of community land just West of Slaughterville. It hadn't been hard to find since all of the announcement signs were still peppered on telephone poles along the route. We pulled into the empty gravel lot and parked about twenty feet from the entrance.

I think you should stay in the car.

Why? It's a carnival. It's daylight.

It's daylight, but this isn't your run of the mill carnival.

I'm tired of sitting in the car.

Suit yourself, but no whimpering or crying when things go sideways.

Carl nodded, a look of worry skittering across his eyes.

My business here is not yours, so if you come, you're on your own while I take care of it.

Carl nodded and we hopped out.

The entrance to the grounds was pretty standard, a collapsible arch of wood announcing the a point of disconnect. It was a portal, like all carnival entrances, brightly colored with hints of the wonders inside. Along the main arch was MOTHER'S TRAVELING FABULON in fanciful script of peeling paint.

We'd just stepped over the threshold, when the biggest clown I'd ever seem stepped out from behind a rolling popcorn cart and moved wearily toward us, while he stuffed handfuls of corn in his face.

He stopped in front of us and looked down, surveying us.

I'm Mr. Jingles.

I'm Aubrey, this is Carl. I talked to Father earlier, I'm here to see Mother.

Follow me.

Mr. Jingles turned without pause and walked away. I followed, with Carl squirreling up behind me.

Dude, that is one scary clown.

Just try not piss him off.

We zigged and zagged through the Carnival proper, while around us the Carnies were deep in the work of dismantling the show. It was like being back stage in Vegas, watching the magic become pedestrian when the lights were up.

Eventually we came to the rigs, where everyone camped. And Mr. Jingles put out his arm and almost clothes lined me. I came up just short enough to keep my head. Carl of course slammed into the back of me.

I'll see if she's available.

Mr. Jingles went up the steps and disappeared into the trailer. While we were waiting I caught Carl staring at a pair of twin girls walking the grounds. They were Siamese twins, sharing a dress. I smacked Carl on the back of the head.

You see anyone staring at you?

Why would they?

They may never have seen someone with half a brain walking around.

Carl hung his head then took a sideways cursory glance back at the girls. I smacked him again. he yelped and the door to the trailer opened again.

Mr. Jingles stepped out and came back down the stairs.

She'll see you.

Thanks.

Mr. Jingles then turned his attention to Carl.

You want a beer half brain?

Carl stared slack jawed until Mr. Jingles pushed him away from the trailer.

I hope you brought money too, we're going to play poker.

Carl reached in his pocket, freeing a moth. I handed him a couple of bills.

As Mr. Jingles led Carl away I took the steps to the trailer door, unsure what exactly it was I was going to ask, or how I was going to ask it.

Stepping inside, I had to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. As the door closed behind me I found myself standing in a small waiting area replete with two wing-back chairs and a potted plant, like the waiting room of a doctor who has their practice in their home. To the right was a curtain under which bright blue and green lights pulsed. To the left was another curtain under which no light was visible at all.

The Right Curtain swung open filling the small space with the cold wash of the bank of monitors and communications equipment arranged in a spectacularly small but efficient space. I then heard a familiar voice as a man in a wheelchair rolled through.

You must be Aubrey.

You must be Father.

We shook hands.

Have a seat, it'll be a minute or two. She'll let us know when she's ready. I sat on the edge of one of the chairs.

Coffee?

Sure.

Father pulled a cup from the side of his chair and a thermos from the other and poured a cup, handing it over to me.

It's only about 30 minutes old. It should still have a decent flavor.

I'm used to road mud, so I'm sure it's more than fine.

When you spend as much time on the road as we do, it's the little things that make the difference.

I took a sip. It was probably the best cup of coffee I'd ever had, complex and balanced with almost no acid and warm under tones of chocolate.

It's single source. We roast it here.

It's good.

It's Ethiopian Blue Nile.

Our little back and forth was broken when a voice, simultaneously strong and quiet pushed through the curtain to the left.

Father?

Yes Mother?

Please show our guest in.

Father took the coffee cup from my hand and maneuvered himself to open the curtain. I stood and ducked through the curtain, just fast enough to glimpse the small sitting room before me, where a woman, dark skinned and large, sat in a chair; her white milky blind eyes fixed on me. Then the curtain dropped and the room was plunged into darkness.

Part XXIX

Part XXIX

The Old Man was pissed by the time we got back. He'd worked up a noxious combination of hair ball and hate, and had dropped it outside the sandbox, where it had festered in the heat and turned the atmosphere inside the van un-breathable.

We rolled down the windows and Carl lit match after match and flicked them at the Old Man trying to catch him on fire. I eventually put a stop to it. We pulled into the fist Hotel I could find, but not before we stopped into the S’Enivrer, the rotting corpse of a roadhouse, whose name meant "drink to excess".

I dumped the Old Man's sandbox just beyond the gravel parking lot and poured him a new landing strip. I'd given him his potion with just the juice from a can of tuna and told him he'd get the rest as soon as he quit pissing me off. He gave me the stink eye and a hiss and then curled up on the bed in the back.

I've heard people say before that beer tastes better in the heat of Louisiana. If they're talking about some dreck like Bud, they might just be right. What they forgot to mention is that from the moment the bottle is put in front of you, it's a race against time. You against thermodynamics. By the time you down the last, now tepid, sip, the outside of the bottle has enough condensation on it to drown a mouse.

We were two beers in before Carl said anything, and to be truthful I was grateful. I liked Carl, but most of what came out of his mouth was a mix of misinterpretation and stupidity.

You think that guy is actually part Gater?

No Carl, he's not, and I think you might not want to talk about it.

Carl had asked his question loud enough to garner the attention of just about everyone around us. We were being looked at like our our welcome was wearing thin. So I ordered another round and waited to see if anyone wanted to do anything about it.

It turned out they didn't.

Back at the hotel, I let Carl go under before I picked up my cell phone to call Father. I stepped out side onto the landing and leaned over the rail. I looked down at the swimming pool and wondered for a minute what lived beneath the fuzzy brown surface.

The phone rang through three times.

Donny's Donut Hole.

Gater hadn't said anything about a password, but I knew I had to say what I needed without saying what I meant.

I hear you make 'em from an old family recipe?

Where'd you hear that?

From a little girl and her brother.

He a big University of Florida fan?

Yes he is.

There was a click and then a squawk. The phone signal had been scrambled.

You must be Aubrey.

You must be Father.

How'd he look, we haven't seen him in a while.

He seemed content. Then again I'd never met him before.

There was a momentary pause on the line.

What can we do for you?

I need to speak to Mother.

Well, I can't promise you anything, but we're just outside Slaughterville, Oklahoma. We'll be here two more days, cleaning up, and then we're gone.

I'll be there.

That was it, phone call done, and a 13 hour trip to make.

I set the alarm and laid on the bed without taking my clothes off. I'd meant to, but I had just wanted to rest my eyes. As soon as the room went black, the alarm went off.

My eyes felt like they had bees trapped under the lids. I rolled off the bed and headed to the bathroom. By the time I had showered, Carl had woken up. I don't know for sure if he'd done it on his own, or if it was because I'd turned the TV on as I'd passed it.

I found him enraptured by cartoons.

Thirty minutes later we were eating breakfast and thirty after that we were on the road. While I drove, Carl looked up Slaughterville on the cell phone browser so he could be comfortable with its name. It had been named after a grocery store, not a slaughterhouse. As Carl poked deeper into the cities online presence, all of eight wikipedia paragraphs, we'd discovered that PETA had tried to get them to change the town's name. Sounded like a real swingin' place. In the back of my mind I kept hearing Father say they'd be cleaning up, but cleaning up what?

We passed the time listening to evangelical nut jobs on the AM, and playing sad games of I-Spy, that seemed to delve into the surreal of our subconscious. After about thirty minutes or so we'd just be making stuff up. The last thing Carl spied put an end to the game and made me take my eyes off the road to look at him.

What?

There's something not right about you Carl?

Part XXVIII

Part XXVIII

Gater, there's two men with bad sunburns coming up fast in a canoe.

Oh hell Aubrey, she's seen us.

We weren't sneaking up Carl. It'll be fine, just make sure that when you see Alexander that you don't say a single thing that comes into your mind. Ok?

I'll try.

As if on cue, the man they called the Swamp Devil stepped out of the small house. He was drying his hands with a towel. I could only imagine he'd been doing the dishes.

He was shirtless, and who could blame him in this heat. His skin was the color of cigarette ash, speckled with with bumps like a 70's spray foam ceiling. When he flapped the towel over his shoulder to give it a place to rest, it sounded like it was hitting concrete, not skin. When he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth were big and stained the deep rich color of saffron broth. Carl started to shake, and I was afraid he was going to start crying.

I took the advantage and cut Gater off before he could do more than clear his throat.

Alexander Delacroix?

How do you know my name?

It was told to me a long time ago by my Uncle.

I brought the canoe to a rest a respectful distance away. Carl whimpered in the front.

Did I know him?

No.

You've come a long way to find me.

I need your help.

What is it you think I can do for you?

I need to find the woman they call Mother.

Gater smirked and caught a small laugh from getting away.

What business do you have with her?

I need to ask her some questions. I'm hunting The Tall Man.

I saw what the name of the moniker did. Olivia quietly took her brother's hand, and the chill from her touch froze the moisture still on his hand.

The thing was that they'd probably never heard him called that, because everyone had their own secret name for him. But when someone said their name for him, the intonation was always the same, the understanding instant in its dread.

Come inside. Speak no more here. The Swamp is always listening.

The house was humble and sparce, but it also exuded charm. All of the furniture was handmade from the floatsum and jetsum of the world just beyond its front door. We sat at the kitchen table, whose base was a small cypress stump with a finished Oak door for a top. The chairs were similar to one's I'd seen in the Appalachian Mountains, tethered branches and logs manipulated with steam and held in place with wood pegs.

We don't have much, but I can offer fresh sassafras tea.

Sounds good.

Gater poured three glasses and Olivia went around the table and one at a time, she gripped the glass and chilled the tea.

Carl picked his up and took a long drink. It seemed to settle him.

Thank you.

Gater looked at him and dropped a smile of pity for Carl's obvious fear. Then, he turned back to me.

Your Uncle, was he a Magician?

You could say that I guess.

I think I have heard of him. There was a Magician twenty years ago or so, turned Mother down when she offered him a place among the Uniques.

Uniques?

Like me. People with the great gift of uniqueness.

The Carnival?

Gater nodded.

He never told me that.

You're unique too, aren't you?

Not really. There's a lot of people that can do what I do.

But not a lot who use it the way you do.

I couldn't answer that, so I took a sip of tea.

What is it you think Mother can do for you?

Help me figure out how to put an end to the Tall Man.

Gater leaned back and I could see him mulling it over. I was asking a lot, and I had a feeling it would probably come with a price.

Gater picked up a pencil and tore off a piece of newspaper from small stack lying on the floor behind him. He wrote phone a number on it and before he handed it across he locked his yellow eyes on mine.

How do I know I can trust you?

You don't.

Gater nodded and slid the piece of paper across to me. It wasn't much, but I memorized the number then turned the paper to ash with a green flame from my palm. It seemed to be enough.

I'll tell Father you're coming.

Thanks.

That little matter out of the way, we were invited to stay for dinner. I'd never known snake could taste so good.

It was dark out when we climbed back in the canoe. We hadn't brought flashlights, so I mumbled under my breath. At first I didn't think it had worked, but then they started to arrive. Around us the swamp began to pulse with the light of a thousand fireflies. I could hear the pleasured yelp of Olivia as they clustered around the canoe and then fanned out in front of us to guide our way. In a rare show of solidarity, they blinked in unison. As I lowered the paddle into the water and pushed us off and away, I was overcome by a feeling of well being, a sense that I was on the right path.

Part XXVII

Part XXVII

The first stop we'd made was New Orleans. It wasn't for Pirate Jane this time, but to get a few things at the VooDoo shops that I'd not picked up last time I'd left Jane's. I couldn't go back there, no one could. As we rolled by, I noticed the place had already changed hands, and it looked as though someone was going to wash away the years of bad mojo by converting it into a nail salon. Somewhere Pirate Jane was cursing the heavens.

I knew a few other shops, ones that Jane had actually turned me onto. I didn't know the Priestesses who ran them, but we shared a few memories of Jane as they bundled up my purchases.

New Orleans faded fast as I headed down 23 to Plaquemines Parish and Port Sulfer. As we rode 23 down, it looked so different from the only other time I had seen it. This is some of America's best fishing country, but Katrina had rolled through like a mistress drunk on Gin, and had busted all the pretty vases.

I wasn't even sure the person I was looking for was alive, or even here. Last I'd heard he'd been building himself a home out deep in the marshes where he went by the name of Gater.

He'd been persecuted most of his life for the visual transformation the ichthyosis had performed on him. Grey scaly skin, and a yellowing of the eyes, that while unrelated, had significance. He'd lost his family in a fire, when some drunken good 'ol boys had tried to kill what everyone else referred to as the "swamp devil". Some said it was the beer that made them do it, some the heat, but in the end everyone secretly knew that what had made them do it was fear.

Plaquemines Parish is home to the first seventy miles of the Mississippi river, or the last seventy depending on how you look at it. It's where the river disgorges into the sea. It's what made all the Voodoo and witchcraft so prevalent in the area. With all the moving water, the dead could be handled with ease. So could just about anything susceptible to the pull of the mighty Mississippi.

It took a while to find anyone to talk to, not because everyone was skittish, but because there was literally no one in sight. I finally found a gas station, and after mumbling a little translation spell, I had a short conversation in creole with a man who looked like he'd lost weight recently so his clothes were loose and crumpled. Problem was, while his clothes where a a bit big, it was his skin that hung loose.

All it took in the end was a simple question.

Where's the swamp devil?

He raised a claw and pointed down the road a piece and told me we could rent a swamp boat and that if we took it 30 minutes west, we'd know it when we came to it. He said after Katrina rolled in, only one stilt house had remained, and that was were the Devil and his sister lived.

He tried to tell me not to go, but then just gave up and sat back down in his folding chair, lighting a hand rolled cheroot and coughing out the smoke.

It took a few more dollars than the rental to convince the proprietor I knew how to drive the boat and didn't need a guide. I asked him to look after the van and told him no matter how much the Old Man complained through the cracked windows, to not let him out. I lied and said I was afraid he'd wander too close to the water and get eaten by a gater. Truth was, it was the gaters I was worried for.

Carl smiled as the wind slapped him and we ran full throttle through what was left of the still recovering marshes. I hoped Gater would be able to help me, I needed to find someone he was close to. I needed to find his former home, the traveling Freak Show they called the Fabulon. I needed to ask the woman who ran it a few questions, a few questions about the Tall Man. Her name was Mother, and she knew the Tall man very well.

It was almost thirty minutes on the dot when the marshes started to become thick again and I had to slow down to maneuver more precisely through the tangle. Eventually, the Cypress appeared and we switched from the swamp boat to the small canoe we'd rented as well.

We tied the swamp boat to a tree and marked it by hanging the extra life jacket tied as high we could on the propeller cage. Fluorescent Orange stands out in a swamp of green and brown. It took a few minutes to balance Carl in the front of the little canoe, that reminded me of the ones I'd paddled on many times before in the camps my parents had always sent me to for the summer. I was going in the back. I didn't trust Carl to paddle well, let alone steer.

Ten minutes later, soaked to the bone with sweat and pretty sure that every mosquito biting me was going to give me malaria, the house on stilts rose into our sight. Carl kind of choked on some spit as he saw it, and I could feel the vibration of his nervous leg rolling through the canoe.

It's just a house.

Yeah, but what lives in a house that takes two kinds of boats to get to, through alligator and mosquito filled bong water.

A friend's house.

You really know this guy?

Well, I know of him.

The boat almost rolled as Carl shot back as though a snake had crested the side of the boat and slithered up his shorts.

Carl. you roll us and I will feed you to the first thing with teeth that pays a visit.

Carl raised his hand and pointed just to the right of the house.

I looked past his arm and saw what had spooked him. Standing on the little cross bridge that lead from the house to the patch of dry ground across from it was a little girl. She was dressed in a nice pink frilly dress and patent leather shoes as though just back from church. Through her I could see the trees.

She's not going to hurt you Carl. She's just a little girl.

A little transparent girl.

She's a runner Carl. She's Gater's sister. I think her name is Olivia.