C.S.E. Cooney - Bone Swans - Stories

But to creep close to the gray stone arch, where the Flabberghast lived in his cardboard house? Where he lived outside the black iron gates, with nothing keeping him in?

That was like cutting off your finger in shark water.

welcome to chuckle city!!! it’s a laugh a minute!!!

Beatrice stood before a high wall. The stones of the watchtower were as shiny a pink as a piece of watermelon bubblegum all blown up. The billboard that announced the city was lettered in bold yellow, with six orange exclamation points like floating construction cones.

Balloons everywhere.

Balloons tangled in the portcullis. Balloons tied to the barbed wire lining the heights of the walls. Balloons flying like pennants from the watchtower’s parapet, lurid against the uniform sky.

From beyond the balloon-obscured grid of the portcullis came a thin strain of cheerful music. It sounded as if a very small person in a very large coffee can played it, just for laughs.

If she ever felt less like laughing, Beatrice couldn’t remember. Her mouth pulled down at the edges as if weights hung from her lips. She could feel the hard pinch of her brows drawn tightly together. Dad had always called that look “Nana Larsson’s Evil Eye,” and said he knew what side of the family Beatrice favored that day, and for Durga’s sake, might he be spared?

Today, Beatrice didn’t feel like sparing anyone her Evil Eye. Not the billboard, not the city, not the gray groove, or the gray sky, or the large gray ravens circling above.

She just wanted Dad. That was all. And Dad was not here, though she had been walking forever.

A silky, silly breeze danced over her brow. It was not sunshine, but it was the closest thing to it Beatrice had known since her arrival in these deadlands. The breeze seemed to chime, seemed to tickle and tingle and ring. Beatrice almost smiled. But before she could make up her mind, the breeze went away again, and so did her inclination.

About that time, a jolly shout echoed down from the pink watchtower:

“Ho there, girlington! Are you new to the Big Bah-Ha?”

“Is that where I am?” Beatrice asked, looking up but not raising her voice.

“Why, of course you are here! Where did you think you were?”

Beatrice shrugged. “Been walkin’ alone since I got here. Except for the—the critterbirds.”

“The which?”

Beatrice pointed at the sky, toward the gray ravens. From a window in the watchtower, out popped a small, round face with round, pink-painted cheeks, glittering tinsel-green eyelashes, and a head of hair as blue as radioactive violets. Owl-like, the head twisted nearly full circle to stare up into the sky. Seeing the gray ravens for herself, she gasped.

“Gacy Boys!” squeaked the little clown. “And you still all in one piece! Bless my soul!”

“I threw my shoe at one when it got too close,” Beatrice said. Her socks she had stripped a while back, tossing them over her shoulder like salt to ward off ghosts. After a lot of walking and squinting at the sky, she couldn’t help but notice that the ravens only looked like ravens when you expected them to be ravens. But if you stared through your lashes and a little sideways-like, weren’t they something else again?

Something with heads that might be human, hooded like hangmen.

But Beatrice did not tell the little clown any of that. She already seemed upset enough. Even her pink paint seemed to blanch. She whimpered what sounded like, “Oh, the poor tidbit! The poor cutlet!”

“I’m Beatrice,” said Beatrice.

“Oh! How rude I am!” The little clown’s body followed her face right out of the tower window. She crawled in all her crinoline and sequins down the pink stones, face first and feet clinging to the plastic ivy. Her frills fell over her shoulders, revealing big polka-dot bloomers and spangled green tights. She did a neat flip near the bottom of the tower, and landed on her tiptoes on the ground.

Diodiance would die, Beatrice thought, almost grinning.

But the idea of Diodiance dying and waking up here made her feel oh, so very sick, so she frowned all the more blackly. The little clown, who looked as if she’d wanted to do a “Ta-da!” decided against it.

“I’m Rosie Rightly,” she blatted instead. “Hello! Hi! Hello! Oh, Beatrice, it’s so good to see you! Welcome to Chuckle City! It’s a laugh a minute! All laughs, all the time! Come in! Come in!”

“How?” asked Beatrice. “Gate’s closed.”

“Oh. Um.” Rosie Rightly stared at the portcullis as if she’d never seen one before. Then she shrugged and banged a fist on the balloon-festooned grid. The grate creaked up slowly. Several balloons popped with the sound of bullets, reminding Beatrice of home, of the end of the olden days, back when the grown-ups had tried to contain the slaprash to one area. It hadn’t worked. The slaprash took all the grown-ups first. Even the ones with masks and guns.

“Easy-peasy,” said Rosie Rightly, trying to usher Beatrice through the gate. Beatrice dug her feet in a little. “Only, you forget it’s there sometimes. Silly to have a gate here anyway. There’s only one city in all the whole Big Bah-Ha, and nothing beyond it. Nothing. Nothing. So why keep anyone out? Everyone wants in, don’t they? Why shouldn’t they?”

When Beatrice glanced uneasily at the sky, Rosie Rightly patted her hand. “They’re okay. The Gacy Boys live here. They belong to the Gray Harlequin. But sometime he lets them out to eat.”

“What do they eat? If there’s nothin’ outside Chuckle City.”

Rosie Rightly’s pink mouth formed a great big O. Then she stretched her lips over a toothy grimace and said, “Haven’t had one like you in a while. You’re one of those sparky-smarts, ain’t you?! That’s great! Only maybe it’d be better if you wasn’t. Not that you can help it. But come on!”

She slipped her little hand, gloved in pink net, her fingernails painted with sparkly green glitter, through Beatrice’s arm and tugged her through the open gate. Beatrice almost backed out again as the first wave of heat licked her face.

What she saw stopped her deader in her tracks.

Every building in Chuckle City was on fire.

Diodiance combat-crawled through the weeds for a better look. Seemed all clear, so she signaled the A-Okay to Tex, who slouched into a squat in the overgrown hydrangea behind her. Further down the road, Granny Two-Shoes lay in the gutter with Sheepdog Sal sitting “guard” nearby. Granny had her binoculars, so she saw what was about to happen, but it was too late to warn them, and besides—wasn’t it what they all wanted? So she watched, but did not set Sal to barking.

Diodiance strained her senses and took stock of the scene. Cardboard house—empty. Blue lawn chair—vacant. Emissary at the eastern gates—defected.

A worm of a scant of an inch closer. Adjust the thornstick sheathed in her belt loop. Squint. Sniff. Wipe nose on sleeve. Glance again.

The Flabberghast’s hut was an old refrigerator box with a green-and-gold silk sari thrown over it. Icicle lights all the colors of a crayon box dripped from its edges, the unplugged prongs dangling in the wind. Come dusk they’d light up. No one knew why.

Sometimes a frayed edge of the sari flapped aside, showing a palatial foyer just beyond the front flap. Marble halls. Portraits. Tapestries. Vases. The Tall Ones lived in two worlds at once, Beatrice used to say. Or more.

Pounding fist to dirt, Diodiance whispered, “It’s a wash.” Then, louder, so Tex could tell the others, “Ain’t even a left-handed shadow to wave us hello! Granny? Sal? Tex, come on out here. No need to sneak. Flabby ain’t home.”