Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

— Jane Ellen Harrison

COOCH’S THE ONE thing always plays , Miz Forza told me, right from the start. And damn if I didn’t come pretty quick to believe her ’bout that, just like I did ’bout so much else: Better than freaks, better than tricks, safer and more sure by far than creatures that required twice the feed of a grown man, not to mention a whole heap of mother-lorn care lest they catch ill and shit ’emselves to death, run wild and kill the rubes, or just bite at their own bellies ’til their guts fell out on the road.

Not that anything was really safe back then, in them dustbowl days of endless dirt and roaming; it was our stock in trade to hook folks in and get ’em riled up, after all, then see how much money we could pull from between their starving teeth before the inevitable backlash. The whole damn world was a half-stuffed firecracker, just as like to fizzle as it was to take your face off, and waiting on the spark — or maybe a mine dug deep in the mud of La Belle France of the kind Half-Face Joe used to tell tales on, a-whistling into Skinless Jenny’s ear and flapping his flippered hands along for accompaniment, as though he was making shadow-dogs bark on Hell’s own wall. After which Jenny would translate, her own uncertain voice sweet and slow as stoppered honey, while the lamplight flickered so bad it looked like every one of her Thousand and Ten Tattoos was dancing the low-down shimmy with each other.

Joe’d been a handsome young man once, ’fore them Europe kings and such got to squabbling with each other. Now he took tickets with a bag over his head ’til it was time to stump up on-stage and exhibit himself, making women and kids squeal and grown-ass men half-faint with his flesh’s horrid ruin. In an odd way, he made a perfect palate-cleanser for the cooch show, too. always boiled the crowd off a bit, sent the ladies scurrying, leaving their menfolk ready to pay big for a bit of sweet after all that sour.

Them gaiety-gals was the real stars of the show, though, for all they came and went right quick — got picked up in one shit-hole town, dropped off again three more over, and never seen since. I didn’t ever tend to look too hard at their faces, myself — why bother? Be it on-stage or off-, wasn’t a one of us didn’t know how with them, all true interest began to build strictly beneath the neck.

Five gals on either side, one in the middle. Ones on either side did their Little Egypt harem dance, the classic shake and grind, in outfits that flashed their hips, thighs, the fake jewels in their belly-cups, ’fore popping their front-closed brassieres apart to let their boobies sway free. One in the middle, though, whoever she might be that week — she was the real deal, the star attraction. The one who risked the full blow-off and lifted her split skirt high, let the rubes gape at the hidden-most part of herself while up above the Mask of Fear nodded and grinned, all pallid skin and bruisy eyes and dead snake hair hung in clusters like poison vine, adding a very particular sting indeed to her all-too-naked tail.

“I don’t suppose you even know what this is,” Miz Forza said to me, the first night I turned up shivering at their campfire with my hand half-out, half-not, just in case they took a notion to whip me for it. She had it hung up on a stand, like for wigs, and was stroking it all over with some foul-smelling stuff meant to keep it supple; the other gals all just sort of looked ’round it, shoving Miz Farwander’s stew inside as fast as it’d go, like they was trying to forget how one of ’em would have to stick her head inside ’fore the next work-a-day was done.

What the Mask was made of I didn’t know then, and didn’t want to — but I sure did want me some of what else they had. So I squinted hard, then back up at the caravan’s walls, which were covered in similar figures, their paint weather-worn yet still somehow bright, like fever.

“Looks like the Medusa, to me,” I said, finally. “That old hag-lady with hissers for locks, who could turn men t’stone with one look-over. Some Greek fella cut her head off for her, hung it on his shield, an’ used it to get him a princess t’marry. And then a horse with wings come out her neck, if I don’t misremember.”

The Mizes exchanged a glance at that, near to surprised as I’d ever seen ’em come. From the start, they read like sisters to me, though their names was different: Miz Forza was the smaller, dressed like a fortune-teller in a hundred trailing skirts and scarves, all a-riot with colour; Miz Farwander was tall as some men and tougher than most, never wore nothing more elaborate than a pair of bib overalls and a greasy pair of cowboy boots, with her hair crammed down inside an old newsboy’s cap so tight she might as well be bald. Come to think, they neither of ’em liked to show their hair none — Miz Forza’s was wrapped like rest of her in a scarf the colour of money, wound ’round with a string of old pewter coins. And she wore gloves, too, right up to her elbows, while Miz Farwander’s hands were covered so deep in grime and such it was like they’d been dyed — black and grey, with no easy way to tell their fronts from their backs, except by what she was doing at the time.

And: “That’s good,” she said, approvingly, and grinned at me wide, so’s I could see her teeth were all capped and shod in metal from east to west — metal of every sort: Silver, tin, steel, bronze, and even a hint or two of gold. “Ain’t it, sister? Most don’t know the old tales, not anymore.”

Miz Forza nodded back. “That’s right, that’s right; they do not , sad to say.” To me: “And who was it taught you the right way of things, dear? Your mother, maybe? Grandmother?”

“That’d be my Ma. She loved all that old stuff.”

“But you don’t have no true Greek in you, do you, even so? Not by the shape of your face, or the colour of your eyes. ”

I blushed a bit at that, though I tried not to, for I’d been twitted over these things often enough, in previous days.

“Don’t rightly know,” I said, shortly. “Don’t rightly care too much, either. not ’less it’ll get me a job, or some of that stew you’re ladlin’ out there. ’Cause if it will—”

Miz Farwander laughed. “If it will , then you’re Greek through and through, ain’t you — both sides for a hundred generations, all the way back to Deucalion’s mother’s bones? Aw, you don’t have to answer, child; I can see you need feedin’, sure as sin. And the storm-bringer Himself knows we got enough to go ’round.”

Miz Forza cast eyes at her, sidelong, as though to warn her not to speak so free. But Miz Farwander just shrugged, so she turned back to me instead, asking—

“And what might your name be, gal? If you don’t mind me askin’.”

“Persia,” I said. “Persia Leitner.”

“That German?”

“For all’s I know.”

“Your Ma might be able to tell us.”

“Might, if she was here,” I allowed, the pain of that old wound seeping up through me once more. “But. ”

Miz Forza nodded as though she’d heard all this before, which she probably had. “And you don’t know your Pa either, I s’pose,” she suggested, without any malice.

I grit my teeth. “S’pose not,” I answered. “But I sure ain’t the only one like that, ’round these parts.”

“Oh, no, no, no. No, Persia. you surely ain’t.” A pause. “Sounds a bit like ‘lightning’, though, that name. Don’t it?”

I’d never thought so, but that smell was making my mouth water hard, so I nodded. The gals all murmured amongst ’emselves, like a flock of cooing doves. And:

“It does , yes, now you mention,” Miz Farwander told Miz Forza, musingly, as she passed the last cup they had on over — and even as I sunk my face in it, through one more glance back and forth again right overtop me, like I wasn’t even there. “It certainly does, at that.”