Lisa was there, crying, suddenly. A siren was just dying. She grabbed hold of him.
“Steve, Steve, you’re all right.”
“Sure, sure, Lisa sweets. You’ll get yourself wet.”
“Oh, Steve…”
He let her shake against him, so warm, so sweet, and over her shoulder he closed his eyes, felt the water running from his dark hair, running, running. He thought, it’s raining in my brain. This’ll help wash away part of Charlie’s blood. Yeah. Wash away.
His teeth chattering, holding onto Lisa like she was a warm buoy in a sea of fog, he forced the words out of himself:
“Call the wagon. Get the hooks. There’s a new kind of animal down in one of those cages. I think I got him tamed. Yeah—”
The lights turned down, burning the cold water through in slashes. Bars. Rusted Bars. And a white animal drifting sluggish behind the bars. Behind the bars. Behind the bars.
Steve laughed crazy and held Lisa close.
“Don’t go away.”
Corpse Carnival
It was unthinkable! Raoul recoiled from it, but was forced to face its reality because convulsions were surging sympathetically through his nervous system. Over him the tall circus banners in red, blue, and yellow fluttered somber and high in the night wind; the fat woman, the skeleton man, the armless, legless horrors, staring down at him with the same fierce hatred and violence they expressed in real life. Raoul heard Roger tugging at the knife in his chest.
“Roger, don’t die! Hold on, Roger!” Raoul screamed.
They lay side by side on the warm grass, a sprinkle of odorous sawdust under them. Through the wide flaps of the main tent, which flipped like the leathery wings of some prehistoric monster, Raoul could see the empty apparatus at the tent top where Deirdre, like a lovely bird, soared each night. Her name flashed in his mind. He didn’t want to die. He only wanted Deirdre.
“Roger, can you hear me, Roger?”
Roger managed to nod, his face clenched into a shapeless ball by pain. Raoul looked at that face: the thin, sharp lines; the pallor; the arrogant handsomeness; the dark, deep-set eyes; the cynical lip; the high forehead; the long black hair—and seeing Roger was like gazing into a mirror at one’s own death.
“Who did it?” Raoul struggled, got his frantically working lips to Roger’s ear. “One of the other freaks? The Cyclops? Lal?”
“I—I—” sobbed Roger. “Didn’t see. Dark. Dark. Something white, quick. Dark.” He sucked in a rattling breath.
“Don’t die, Roger!”
“Selfish!” hissed Roger. “Selfish!”
“How can I be any other way; you know how I feel! Selfish! How would any man feel with half his body, soul, and life cast off, a leg amputated, an arm yanked away! Selfish, Roger. Oh, God!”
The calliope ceased, the steam of it went on hissing, and Tiny Mathews, who had been practicing, came running through the summer grass, around the side of the tent.
“Roger, Raoul, what happened!”
“Get the doctor, quick, get the doctor!” gibbered Raoul. “Roger’s hurt badly. He’s been stabbed!”
The midget darted off, mouselike, shrilling. It seemed like an hour before he returned with the doctor, who bent down and ripped Roger’s sequined blue shirt from his thin, wet chest.
Raoul shut his eyes tight. “Doctor! Is he dead?”
“Almost,” said the doctor. “Nothing I can do.”
“There is,” whispered Raoul, reaching out, seizing the doctor’s coat, clenching it as if to crush away his fear. “Use your scalpel!”
“No,” replied the doctor. “There are no antiseptic conditions.”
“Yes, yes, I beg of you, cut us apart! Cut us apart before it’s too late! I’ve got to be free! I want to live! Please!”