Totentanz Read online

  "I've got to be first inside here," Pup muttered, staring up in fascination at the Ferris wheel. "I've got to be."

  There was a fence around it all; even if it hadn't been there, they would have felt one anyway, one of electricity or another thing equally invisible and equally repulsive. But there was a real fence, black iron, thick, with the top curling over into the park. The big double gates were closed, bolted. Not now, the place said. Not yet. Soon. It looked deserted within the fence, with thin new rolls of dust bumping down the walkways and between the tarped rides.

  Go away. Not yet.

  Without warning, Reggie felt as if he wanted badly to be home. His feet began to turn around, scuffling in the dirt on their own. He wanted to be in front of the TV, in his own room with his mother close by. The calliope hooted mournfully, its workings invisible, and somehow the music wove a voice around them that nudged them homeward. Reggie knew that the music was doing this to him, and he knew that this was not the time to fight it.

  "I think we should go," he said.

  Jack concurred, but Pup stood his ground. "Let's sneak in."

  He knew he wasn't serious even before the words found their way out of his mouth, but once he had said them, he felt compelled to repeat them. "Let's be first in, just so we can say we were."

  "I have to get home," Jack said.

  Reggie said nothing.

  Nervously Pup toed the ground, and then he burst out: "What's wrong with you guys? Don't you ever want to do anything new? Are you going to be babies your whole life, wearing monster masks when you're fifty?"

  Reggie and Jack were silent.

  "Can't we ever do what I say?"

  The calliope doop-deep-deeped over them. Pup, too, had turned around unconsciously and was facing back toward Montvale. As Reggie and Jack began to walk away, he turned defiantly to the gate. "I tell you I want to be first in! Dammit! Come with me!"

  "I think we should go," Reggie said quietly.

  "Damn the two of you!" Pup yelled. He glared at the wrought iron, his eyes fierce. Reggie and Jack were pulling away from him, leaving him behind.

  Go home. Soon.

  Groaning in frustration, Pup put a foot out to test the climbing strength of the metal, but before his foot touched it, he pulled it back. "Dammit," he muttered under his breath. The sound of the calliope ran through his ears, down inside. He turned away.

  "Dammit."

  Soon.

  He gave a final malignant glance at the amusement park through the tall, silent gates, and then his feet kicked dust and ran him home.

  FIVE

  Spinning, spinning, round and round. Dust to dust, dust against dust. Bone against bone, flesh against flesh.

  Lucius.

  Blood from ashes, spittle from wood and stone. A tongue from salt, feet from earth clay, fingers of worms and crawling things.

  Lucius, Lucius, wake up. . . .

  Spinning, spinning, round and round and up out of darkness.

  "Ohhhhhhhhhh."

  A hundred-year wail descended into darkness, replaced by—the sound of birds.

  Lucius Boforth, as stiff and old as the pines in the forest, gradually lifted his hurting eyes. He looked from the earth below him, churned as though by a plough blade, up to his knees and then, in degrees, with a hundred-year creak, to the blue sky overhead, where a fat blackbird was dipping to look at him, its eyes huge in its small black face, peering down into him before it banked abruptly and shot away.

  "Good Lord Jesus," Lucius said, lowering his eyes. This body, this body of his (was it?) began to tremble as it had on the Sundays when he was a boy in front of the minister—when, more afraid of the man's wrath than of the scourging promised in the Bible ("Doesn't the Bible teach goodness, too?" he had once innocently asked; "Not when you're colored,” the minister had answered with his voice and with his hand, bringing his knuckles across Lucius' mouth and then leaning over him with his eyes on fire as the boy lay in the dust at the back of the church, not trying to get up because he would just be hit again), he had come to sit as far in the back of the church as possible, trying to hide from those eyes.

  The defeat in those blazing eyes was what scared him the most, made him shake and tremble. Wrath he could take, especially righteous wrath, but the assurance that life for him, for the preacher, for each one of them—for all those colored faces—might as soon be over now as later for all the happiness they would find in it: that was what he could not face and what made him shiver. That and the only other words the preacher had ever spoken that had frightened him: the promise of the judgment that awaited them—all of them, the colored and the white—when the final battle was fought and the dead rose from their beds of earth to see it. And even, years later, when he had washed himself of the preacher's defeat, this one stark image had clung to him like glue. And now he had raised his eyes from a bed of earth to see the blue sky again and

  "Lucius . . ." a voice behind him spoke.

  He knew that voice; he knew that voice like he knew his own. For a moment a flame of joy rose in him—yes, this must be the judgment day after all, because this voice that he knew and loved was with him, as all those he knew and loved must be with him. The wife and son he had sent away and never seen again. And the others . . . . He scanned the sky again before turning around and saw something that made him sure the judgment day was at hand. The blackbird was gone, and in its place a huge silver bird, of metal, with a long white tail behind it, made its way across the heavens with a faint roar.

  "Lucius," the voice called again. It was not a joyful voice. Why not? Why shouldn't the joy that he felt at this moment be in that voice too?

  He turned.

  "Jeff," he said. He reached out his arms, but they were stiff and covered with soil and would not raise straight for him. They dropped back heavily to his sides. Jeff Scott stood regarding him with a mixed look of sadness and revulsion and, there, a touch of happiness too. Why not all happiness?

  "Jeff, the judgment day," Lucius said.

  Jeff Scott shook his head. "Lucius," he said, and all of a sudden he looked as though he wanted to cry. "What is it?"

  Jeff Scott only shook his head, his face covered with his hands.

  Lucius looked around. Something out beyond the gates of the churchyard caught his eyes. Montvale was down there, laid out before him, but it was different. The buildings were more numerous, the town swollen. The church next to the graveyard looked newly painted, with a new addition to one side; though the main street was still where it had always been, the shops were different colors and there were more of them; the roadways were paved. There was more spread to the town, too; and it seemed more sculpted, more green. And there to his right, where the Scott farm used to be, built around the old Scott carousel, which looked brand new, a great carnival. The old farm was filled with bright tents and walkways and rides, great circles and canopies and poles.

  Then his gaze came back into the churchyard, lingering over the hundreds of upturned graves, the empty, neat, sharp holes in the ground surrounding him.

  "Jeff," he said.

  "I'm sorry, Lucius."

  Jeff Scott's eyes were dry and clear. His hands had lowered to his sides, and though there was anguish written on his features, there was not a tear mark on his cheeks. He looked the same young man Lucius had known, but he seemed to be carrying the weight of a hundred years on his shoulders.

  "Jeff, the judgment day—"

  "No, Lucius."

  Lucius looked at his hands, at the chopped, thrown earth at his feet, the changed sky, the fading trail of the silver bird that had passed overhead. "But—"

  Another voice called his name. His bones froze. He knew in an instant that what Jeff Scott said was true. The silver bird was not a herald. The sky was not the aether of salvation day.

  "Oh, God, Jeff."

  The other voice, the one that made him ice when it spoke his name in a whisper, whispered again. "Lucius, remember," it hissed, and he fell to his knees and cl
osed his heavy lids. He threw his fingers over them, pressing them down and trying to squeeze them shut forever. A wail escaped his throat, but he did not hear it because of the other voices, voices he had last heard a century ago.

  "Come on out, nigger boy."

  He was underground again, but he was not buried. He was back in the hidey-hole in Jeff Scott's barn, quiet as a mouse. He heard the men enter. He heard them sniffing like dogs. They were laughing, and he could almost smell the alcohol on their breaths—and with a nearly stopping heart, he realized that they were slowly making their way to the back of the barn, to the corner where he lay. He could feel them coming his way, almost as though they were toying with him.

  "Come out, come out, nigger boy," one of them sang, and then there was a pause while a bottle sloshed, after which there was a satisfied grunt of "A-h-h." Lucius guessed there were two of them. Their voices sounded familiar, but they were muffled by the camouflaged board over his head.

  He had started for Potterville like Jeff Scott had said, and only a chance meeting on the way with the same preacher who had taken in his wife and son had saved his life. There were men from Montvale waiting for him in Potterville. The sheriff had informed them that he was wanted for the death of Jacob Scott, Jeff's father, and if he showed up there, they would certainly hang him, or at least return him to Montvale for hanging. The preacher had told him to go back to the farm and hide until the next day, when he would come to sneak Lucius to safety.

  The preacher gave me away, he thought in horror.

  "Hey, nigger," one of the voices shouted, "we gonna get you!" The other one laughed, and then they both took a drink. Then, horribly and slowly, the trap door above Lucius was raised.

  A shotgun barrel came down close to him before the door was raised all the way and two faces looked down on him. "Well, damn if I wasn't right," one of them said. The other just smiled. They were the Major boys, John and Henry, who had been friends of Tom Scott's when Tom was a boy. They had played at the farm more than once. Lucius remembered that their father had paid three hundred dollars each to keep them out of the army in the war.

  "Why are you boys doing this?" Lucius asked, half-raising himself out of the hole and trying to keep his voice as steady as possible.

  "Back down, pickaninny," John Major ordered, pushing him with the snout of the shotgun. He took aim playfully along its barrel, the twin holes lined up with Lucius' eyes. "Bang," he said.

  "I've got no quarrel with you," Lucius told him.

  "They hanged ole Jeff this morning," Henry Major said. He was wiping his sleeve across his mouth, and he took another swill from the bottle before handing it to his brother. He smiled down at Lucius. "Good thing I remembered this hidey-hole we used to play in. Thought of it while I saw old Jeff kicking at the breeze. "

  "Oh, God," Lucius moaned, but even while he was saying it and feeling so bad for Jeff Scott, he also felt bad for thinking of how that preacher had turned him in.

  "Well, Henry," John Major said, "think we ought to shoot him here or take him to town to swing like Jeff Scott? Reward's the same either way."

  Henry stretched, putting a hand out for the bottle that his brother didn't seem inclined to give back. "How about let's shoot him here?"

  "Now, boys," Lucius began, but suddenly the end of the shotgun, which had dipped a bit as John Major drank, spurted white flame out of one barrel and he was pushed back against the bottom of the hole until the world went away.

  He felt the moist movement of things in the earth around him. He looked up to see other faces with averted eyes, figures shoveling dirt over his unmovable body. He tried to cry out but could not. He knew he was not dead, although his chest was on fire and he felt dead below his middle. He felt the thud of clods of earth as they hit his body, his powerless legs, his face; a sprinkling of dirt fell across his eyes and trickled away, giving him a last glimpse of light.

  It was cloudy and gray above; fast clouds with gray-white bottoms scuttled under a darker sky above. It would rain soon. And suddenly it was raining, and the men over him were cursing and hurrying their work. Dirt filled in around his neck, sending a curious dull pain through him, and then the pain was in his ears, muffling the packed sound of dirt still falling. "Couldn't they at least have sprung for a coffin for this poor nigger bastard?" he heard a faraway voice say, and then the rest of the words disappeared as earth fell over him and drowned out the noises of the men above.

  He tried again to call out, to raise his arms, but could not. The earth became heavier, weighing him down. A deep slumber was pulling him into its bosom, and then there was another voice in his ear that said, "Sleep." Someone very close to him was speaking these words, right at his ear, but he could not turn his head to see who it was. "Sleep with me," the voice said, and then the face—he could feel the face, so bright and cold, feel the breath on his neck and then, like winter ice, on his lips—moved closer, and the voice said in a gentle, cold whisper, "Kiss me." It sounded so soothing, so right, but he also felt behind the soothing tone bright anticipation and lust. There were lips touching his lips in the darkness. With a last surge of panicked life, he opened his dirt-filled mouth and screamed. He felt one of his hands, his right hand, shoot up above him, and then there was a hole in the dirt, and the gray sky, looking bright blue beside the dark of the earth, was above him and the two men were staring down at him, their faces frozen. One of them shouted, "Jesus, he's alive!" and he felt hands on his arm, pulling him up, but he knew that his shout had been his last breath and though they were pulling him up, he was sinking back underground, the fire in his chest blazing and then dying, and those lips were there, crooning to him, sucking the silent screams from him.

  "Lucius," that other voice hissed again, dragging his name out in long, affected syllables and then laughing. Jeff Scott was staring past him, but Lucius would not turn around to meet the voice. He knew its owner. "I'm sorry," Jeff Scott repeated in a small voice, and then that other voice called his name again and stepped around into view next to Jeff Scott. It wore black stiff clothes, but Lucius knew its form, would know it anywhere.

  "I thought you might like to help your old friend," it said, its face smiling a sharp red line. "Isn't that right, Mr. Scott?"

  Jeff Scott had his eyes to the ground.

  Lucius turned to the left and right, surveying the empty, upturned holes that surrounded him, row on row to the back fence of the churchyard, and then he looked to heaven once more. There was no bird there for him now, neither black nor silver. The sky was an empty slate-blue. He cried out and fell to the ploughed earth before him, and, crying and crying, he tried to dig his way back into the ground.

  SIX

  The gate was locked.

  "Goddam jerk Poundridge," Barney Bates cursed. He was wondering why he had voted for the mayor; he damn well wouldn't vote for him again. The only thing the man was interested in was making sure his own tie was tied—and the hell with the rest of the town. Well, if Poundridge wouldn't do anything now—"Take it easy, Barney. Let me go through channels." Channels? Ha!—then Barney would take care of things himself. He'd be damned if he was going to let some loud, rowdy carnival show put its stakes down in his backyard for God knew how long. He would face the owner of this tin show himself and make the man produce his papers, or else.

  He edged away from the double-locked gate—good strong iron fence, too—and moved a little way down from it. The wrought iron here was just as high but wasn't topped with curled-in spikes. How in hell did they get all this up in one night? But no matter. Going into a low crouch, he jumped with an ooof! and grabbed the top bar of the fence, pulling himself up.

  Jesus, but it was quiet in there. He hesitated for a few moments, half over the top, feeling for the first time the eeriness of the place. The phrase "Disneyland for the Dead" floated through his mind and he wanted to laugh, and at the same time he wanted to climb down on the town side of the wrought iron and think about it some more. But then he seemed to tilt the other way, an
d before he knew it, he was down—again Ooof!—and on the other side.

  Jesus, even the grass was fresh-cut. It looked greener than the summer-bleached stuff around his place. A sod lawn and everything, and all in one night.

  He began to walk, and he became aware of how loud his boots were. Too loud. The grass gave way to macadam, as smooth and black as a new parking lot and with a hint of real gravel showing here and there.

  He found himself among a maze of small, newly painted buildings, shut tight, green tarp across their fronts. Feeling ill at ease, glancing behind before he did so, Barney pulled the edge of one canvas back to see a hollow room. Along the back wall were shelves filled with new-looking, fat stuffed dolls decorated with long feathers. A bucket of baseballs to throw at them was pushed against one wall. The sides of the room were covered with shelves too; and these were filled with cheap toys and stuffed animals—pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and something that looked like a kewpie doll with big wide eyes and fangs. There were also, Barney saw, a couple of big boxes filled with the usual plastic Hawaiian leis.

  "Jeez," Barney said, dropping the flap and turning around quickly. He could have sworn that someone was standing right behind him. It was almost like he had felt a touch on his shoulder, a cold breath on his neck. But no one was there, and the preternaturally quiet row of games huts, all tarped, stretched nearly as far as he could see until it was abruptly cut off by a low chain-link fence surrounding a gaudily painted ride consisting of large cups attached to a central hub.