Tucker’s Grove (21 page)

“
I brought you someone else
, someone who deserves to die more than I do,”
he said breathlessly. “
Fair exchange, right? Now you won
’
t take me, right?”

The
Ankou
stared coldly at him, then placed a hand on the rough edges of his cart, and Ray understood immediately. The spectral man w
atched as Ray shuffled forward, pulling the victim up to the side of the cart. Ray paused, panting, and then tried to heave DuBay up over the edge and into the wagon.

DuBay let out a loud groan. He wasn
’
t dead!

Ray shoved with his shoulder, and DuBay
’
s shi
ning white dentures dropped out of his mouth, clattering against the wood before falling to the ground. Finally, the old man dropped aw
k
wardly into the wagon, limbs flopping every which way
—
and after he fell over the lip, he kept falling. With one insane g
limpse, Ray looked over the edge and saw that the cart had no bottom at all: it was a swirling vortex of bottomless stars, like a gaping mouth that was always hungry.

Ray collapsed in shock, sliding against the cart
’
s rough planks until he was kneeling in
the wet grass. The two oxen turned t
o
ward him at last, and Ray cried out. The beasts had grossly di
s
torted human faces that wore idiot expressions, with blunted horns curving out of their foreheads and blasted eye sockets that had already seen far more tha
n any human eye could bear.

If I
bring you someone else, will you promise not to take me?

The
Ankou
shouldered his scythe and turned away, letting Ray get back to his feet. Shaking, he stepped backward, afraid to take his eyes from the spectre as the
Ankou
dropped the sharp impl
e
ment back into the cart, no longer interested in Ray.

The barbed wire of pain unwound from his joints, like a long sigh of relief. Ray
’
s head stopped pounding; his bruises were healed. He ran his tongue along his gums and found them
whole and healthy again. New energy surged through his bloodstream, and he felt explosively
alive
. He knew that the leukemia had fled into the night, defeated. He knew it! Ray laughed out loud until he began to cry, and he kept sobbing until he managed to
get back to the convertible. By the time he had found the keys and started the engine, he saw that the spectral figure had vanished.

Of course
, he thought, chuckling again.
Only
dying
people can see the Ankou.

He had murdered a man, an old man who had done nothing to Ray…
but it
was
all worth it. As he drove off, he laughed heartily because it felt so good to
laugh
. He filled his lungs with air, raised one triumphant fist, and reveled in how his body respon
d
ed as
it was meant to respond, without the claws of cancer dra
g
ging him to death.

He felt euphoric as the Buick flashed down the highway, and he paid little attention to DuBay
’
s darkened home or the deserted gas station as he passed. Back at the motel, he left
the convert
i
ble
’
s lights on and the engine running as he leaped over the dri
v
er
’
s door in a boyish gesture he hadn
’
t wanted to do in years. Look at the stuffy bank vice president now, whooping like a wild Indian! He tossed the motel room key high in the ai
r and caught it with one hand, then he grinned as he fit it into the lock. He ready to explode with joy and love for Betty.

The
Ankou
didn
’
t take me!
All
’
s fair in love and war
—
and death.
He didn
’
t take me! He took another life in exchange for mine
.

As he
strode through the door, whistling, Ray saw that Betty was not in her chair. Instead, he heard an animal-like sobbing of despair, a heart-torn keening.

She hunched over Scotty
’
s basket, and her body shook with spasms of stunned helplessness.

After years of producing nothing but horrors as crops, the farmer and his family had split up and fled Wisconsin in their separate dire
c
tions, abandoning the land to seek a normal farm and a normal life. Far away. Pestilence had spread across
the acreage adjacent to the road, through the hilly cornfields half a mile back, and all along the barbed-wire fence lines. It looked as if the Grim Reaper had flown over at midnight and shaken the bad blood off his scythe blade, le
t
ting droplets poison th
e ground. Nothing would grow there.

And so, for a pittance, Collier & Black
’
s Traveling Circus and Sideshows had rented one of the vacant fields. They hadn
’
t played in Tucker
’
s Grove in many years.

As the sun thought about setting and the muggy air hoarded
its heat, the sideshow wagons pulled into their slots, and the roustabouts set up tents, rides, midway games, and concessions. A few locals had driven by in old pickups on the county trunk road, slowing down to take a glance, then speeding up as they saw
the surly looking strangers pitching tents and stringing lights
—
not the type of people normal folks wanted to be seen with. Some farmhands might finish their chores and creep over to get a preview after dark, but most would wait until crowds and daylight
m
ade it safe to have a look around….

Two of the sideshow freaks hiked away from the main activ
i
ty with their own peculiar gaits, heading toward the blighted cornfields, as if drawn there. The two had been together a long time, and they knew how to walk side
by side, adjusting to each other
’
s pace. Scarecrow remained silent, while his companion jabbered, as always.

“
Something ain
’
t right around here,”
said the Raven, using a stubby arm to indicate the sick and stunted trees along the fence line. He scampered
ahead with a birdlike gait, jerking his elbows behind him and up in the air. Cocking his head, he added, “
Rawwwkk!”
for good measure.

The Raven
’
s grotesquely outthrust face made him look like a surly bird. During shows, he wore a costume adorned with black
feathers, but even without fake plumage his dark skin, his ma
n
nerisms, and his raucous voice kept him in character. In cut-off trousers for the humid heat, the Raven
’
s short legs looked like drumsticks. His large eyes glinted black as he jerked his attent
ion from one sight to another. “
You know where we
’
re going?”

Beside him, Scarecrow sighed. “
No. I just want to be away from the sideshow for a while. I
’
m tired of getting stared at ev
e
ryplace we go.”

He looked into the rows of weirdly rotten corn: freakish
corn, as misshapen as he and the Raven were. Purple-gray blobs of smut oozed from the cornstalks. One of the ripe ears had split open, showing sharp kernels like the yellowed teeth from an old skull.

Scarecrow shambled along, flopping his many-jointed arm
s and legs in the choreographed jittery walk he had learned to master. Tall and gangly, he wore patchwork clothes, mussed his blond hair, and seesawed too much as he moved, like his nam
e
sake from
The Wizard of Oz.
But his sunken skull-face and dead-man
’
s s
kin gave no one the impression he was a lovable buffoon.

All summer long, as the circus worked its way across the Midwest, both he and the Raven would wander around the mi
d
way before and after their scheduled appearances in the sideshow tent, handing out l
eaflets, fascinating the towners, and steering them toward particular shows. The two freaks were comic relief, horrid enough to titillate the customers into wondering what
else
might be lurking inside the sideshow tent.

Today though, with the roustabouts d
oing all the setup, Scarecrow and the Raven took the opportunity to get away for an evening. But Scarecrow wasn
’
t certain if he wanted to come back. What, after all, would they really be leaving behind?

The two passed a dead choke-cherry tree so gnarled th
at it looked as if a huge hand had crumpled it. The bark writhed in the heat, contorting into silent screaming faces. The tall crabgrass hissed like a pit full of snakes. Virginia creepers had twined into the rusty barbed-wire fence, snapping the posts wi
t
h slow vi
o
lence.

Keeping his voice neutral, Scarecrow gestured into the cor
n
fields, toward the low hills. “
Let
’
s go straight that way. The farmhouse should be over there.”

He plunged into the rows of sharp, drooping cornstalks. When his arm brushed one of
the ripe ears, the kernels burst like a line of boils, splattering yellow pus onto his patchwork clothing. This was a very odd place indeed.

The Raven leaped into the field, knocking down stalks and flapping his stubby arms. He startled several crows, whic
h flew toward the sanctuary of trees along the fence line. “
Look! I
’
m doing your job, Scarecrow!”

Through the fluttered blur of black wings, one of the crows appeared to have two heads.

Scarecrow watched, but said nothing.

The dirt lane ended at a cleared
yard where the nameless farmer had once lived. An old, dilapidated barn stood near the toppled metal skeleton of a windmill, but only a foundation with burned timbers, broken glass, and scorched ground marked where the farmhouse had stood, leaving an emp
t
y pit for the ce
l
lar.

Scarecrow stared. The air was silent. He heard no birds. The sky bled orange with sunset, and the breeze died down.

“
Over here!”
the Raven said, hopping up and down beside the rusty hulk of a tractor. One giant wheel had slumped
off its axle and fallen to the ground. Black oil oozed from the crankcase into the dust.

Flopping his arms and popping his knee joints, Scarecrow ambled over to the tractor. A wide rake had been attached to the rear, with hundreds of detachable tines to r
oll new-mown hay into a long swath for a baler to scoop up. The rake was blood-rust brown; globs of dust-clotted grease cemented it to the hitch of the tractor.

“
Here, here!”
The Raven cocked his head and jerked his pr
o
truding chin to indicate the rake
’
s c
laws.

Though dead weeds and clumps of crabgrass covered the farmyard, every scrap of vegetation had been erased in a circular swath that extended outward from the rear of the tractor, as if the plants had pulled up their roots and fled the contamination th
at oozed from the old machine.

Scarecrow could not bend down the way other people did. I
n
stead, he marshaled all of his joints and
folded
himself closer to the ground, wrapping his body into a tighter package so that he could see.

One of the rake
’
s detacha
ble tines was strikingly different, oozing a rainbow-colored light like an oil slick. It was a smooth metal claw, a talon of steel designed to rip into the dirt for the crops
—
but this one
felt
different from other tines on the tractor rake. Scarecrow touch
ed the cold, weirdly slick metal, the center of the whirlpool of strangeness. The curved tine seemed to pop off in his hand, jumping into his grasp as if it wanted to be free of its prison. Scarecrow held it up to the failing light of sunset.

The Raven pus
hed closer. “
What is it, Scarecrow? What did we find?”