William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

Zeena met them at the door. She was wearing a new black outfit, a dress with enormous flowers worked on it in jet. “Come on in, folks. I-I got Pete all laid out handsome. I just phoned a reverend and he’s coming over. I thought it was nicer to get a reverend if we could, even if Pete wasn’t no church man.”

They went inside. Joe Plasky fumbled in his pocket and held an envelope up to Zeena. “The boys chipped in for a stone, Zeena. They knew you didn’t need the dough but they wanted to do something. I wrote the Billboard this afternoon. They’ll carry a box. I just said, ‘Mourned by his many friends in show business.”’

She bent down and kissed him. “That’s-that’s damn sweet of you all. I guess we better get into the chapel. This looks like the reverend coming.”

They took their places on folding chairs. The clergyman was a meek, dull little old man, looking sleepy. Embarrassed, too, Stan figured. As if carny folks were not quite human-like they had all left their pants off only he was too polite to let on he noticed.

He put on his glasses. “… we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken…”

Stan, sitting beside Zeena, tried to concentrate on the words and guess what the reverend was going to say next. Anything to keep from thinking. It’s not my fault he’s dead. I didn’t mean to kill him. I killed him. There it starts again and all day I wasn’t feeling anything and I thought I’d lost it.

“Lord, let me know my end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live…”

Pete never knew his end. Pete died happy. I did him a favor. He had been dying for years. He was afraid of living and he was trying to ease himself out only I had to go and kill him. I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. Sooner or later he would have taken a chance on that wood alky. I only helped him a little. Christ, will I have to think about this damn thing the rest of my life?

Stan slowly turned his head and looked at the others. Molly was sitting with the Major between her and Bruno. In the back row Clem Hoately had his eyes shut. Joe Plasky’s face held the shadow of a smile that was too deeply cut into it ever to vanish completely. It was the sort of smile Lazarus must have had afterwards, Stan thought. Sailor Martin had one eye closed.

The sight of the Sailor rushed Stan back to normal. He had done that a hundred times himself, sitting beside his father on the hard pew, watching his mother in a white surplice there in the choir stall with the other ladies. There’s a blind spot in your eye and if you shut one eye and then let the gaze of the other travel in a straight line to one side of the preacher’s head there will be a point where his head seems to disappear and he seems to be standing there preaching without any head.

Stan looked at Zeena beside him. Her mind was far away somewhere. The reverend speeded up.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death…”

Behind them Major Mosquito heaved a sharp sigh and wriggled, the chair creaking. Bruno said, “Shoosh!”

When they got to the Lord’s Prayer Stan found his voice with relief. Zeena must hear it. If she heard it she couldn’t suspect him of having anything to do with- Stan lowered his voice and the words came automatically. She mustn’t ever think-and yet she had looked at him sharp when he had said Pete was hanging around the geek. She mustn’t think. Only he mustn’t overplay it. God damn it, this was the time for misdirection if ever there was one. “… for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever .”

“Amen.”

The undertaker was silently brisk. He removed the coffin lid and set it noiselessly behind the casket. Zeena brought her handkerchief up to her face and turned away. They formed a line and passed by.

Clem Hoately came first, his furrowed face showing nothing. Then Bruno, holding Major Mosquito on his forearm so he could look down and see. Molly came next and Sailor Martin fell in behind her, moving close. Then old Maguire, his cap crushed in his hand. Joe Plasky hopped across the floor, pushing one of the folding chairs. When it came his turn to view the remains he moved the chair into place by the head of the coffin and swung himself up on the seat. He looked down and the smile was still around the corners of his eyes although his mouth was sober. Without thinking he made the sign of the cross.

Stan swallowed hard. It was his turn and there was no way of getting out of it. Joe had hopped to the floor and pushed the chair against the wall; Stan shoved both hands deep into his pockets and approached the casket. He had never seen a corpse; the skin of his scalp prickled at the thought.

He drew his breath and forced himself to look.

It seemed at first like a wax figure in a dress suit. One hand rested easily on the white waistcoat, the other was by the side. It held a round, clear glass ball. The face was rosy-the undertaker had filled out the drawn cheeks and painted the skin until it glowed with a waxen counterfeit of life. But there was something else that hit Stan like a blow between the ribs. Carefully fashioned of crêpe hair and stuck to the chin was a lifelike, neatly trimmed, little black beard.

“For the last demonstration Mamzelle Electra will perform a feat never attempted since Ben Franklin harnessed the lightning with his kite string. Holding the two filaments of a carbon arc light, she will allow the death-dealing current to pass through her body…”

Stan quietly slipped into the compartment below the stage of Zeena, the Woman Who Knows. It no longer smelled of whisky. Stan had installed a piece of canvas as a ground sheet and had cut ventilation scrolls in the sides of the boxlike little room. Over the bridge table and on three sides of it he had erected a cardboard shield so he could open the envelopes and copy the questions on the pad by the light of a flashlight.

The rustle of feet surging around the stage outside, then Zeena’s voice in her opening spiel. Stan took a bundle of dummy questions-blank cards in small envelopes-and stood by the window where Hoately would pass behind the curtains.

They parted at the side of the stage; Hoately’s hand appeared. Quickly Stan took the collected questions and placed the dummy batch in the hand which vanished upward. Stan heard the creak of feet on the boards above him. He sat down at the table, switched on the shaded flashlight bulb, squared up the pack of envelopes and cut the ends from them with one snip of the scissors. Moving quickly, he shook out the cards and arranged them before him on the table.

Question: “Where is my son?” Handwriting old-fashioned. Woman over sixty, he judged. A good one to open with-the signature was clear and spelled out in full-Mrs. Anna Briggs Sharpley. Stan looked for two more complete names. One was signed to a wiseacre question which he put aside. He reached for the black crayon and the pad, wrote, “Where son?” printed the name swiftly but plainly, and held the pad up to the hole in the stage at Zeena’s feet.

“I get the impression of the initial S . Is there a Mrs. Sharpley?”

Stan found himself listening to the answers as if they held a revelation.

“You think of your boy as still a little fellow, the way you knew him when he used to come asking you for a piece of bread with sugar on it…”

Where the hell did Zeena get all that stuff from? She was no more telepathic than that kid, Molly, was electricity proof. The Electric Chair act was gaffed like everything in the carny. But Zeena-