In the House of Mirrors (21 page)

I stared at him blankly.

He erupted into a fit of laughter and started slapping his hands on the table as if he were playing the bongos. “Really? Come on, man. You don't even know who
he
is?” he asked, wiping tears away from his eyes. Over his shoulder, I saw one of the security guards peeking through the door's window. I waved to him, telling him I'm having a grand old time. He disappeared a second later. “I can at least assume you've seen him—the old man from the photograph—or at least you wouldn't be here. Right?”

“
I've seen him.”

“
The woman too?”

I said I had.

“The old man in the photograph. His name is Arthur.”

“
Arthur?” I said.

“
Arthur,” he confirmed. “Arthur Denlax.”

“
Denlax,” I repeated.

“
That's right. And you happen to be the next poor bastard to get caught up in his...
big plan.”

“
And what big plan might that be?” I asked.

“
Well... to break free, of course,” he said, as if I should have known this. “To bring his act back home, if you will. Back to
our world
.”

7

I looked at him much like an infant being explained the intricacies of quantum mechanics would. The smile stretched across his face once again. I could see he was enjoying this position of power. He knew things I didn't and he was temporarily proud of this fact. “Look,” I told him. “I really don't know anything. All I know is that my camera is taking pictures of some pretty weird shit. Things I cannot explain. I just want to know what the hell is going on. Simple as that.”

He grimaced. “Okay. I'll tell you what someone once told me. But it will have to be quick, because you're running out of time.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“
I mean as we speak, our good friend Geoffrey Boone is probably constructing an escape plan. If you're here talking to me, that means he's close to opening the portal.”

I continued to stare at him, swallowing this nonsense for the first time.

“Right. Basically, you're gonna have to be the one to stop him, because, as you can see, I'm a little bit busy.” He illustrated his point by spreading his confined wrists apart. “So, it's gonna have to be you.”

“
Why? I mean, what's the big deal? Honestly, I think this world could do without Geoffrey Boone.”

“
Idiot, don't you understand? If Geoffrey holds open the portal and he gets in, who knows what he'll let out.”

I understood. Sort of. I had many questions. How many of them would actually get answered was still up for debate. I leaned toward
not many
considering the way this conversation was going. He was speaking to me as if I already knew things. I tried to keep up, but I had to stop him.

“
Why don't you tell me what you know, and start from the beginning. Tell me about Arthur Denlax.”

The madman smiled, a guttural growl escaping between his lips which I understood to be laughter.

“Once upon a time...” he began, and I listened attentively.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Upon a time ago, there was a man named Arthur Denlax. He was born in 1929, on the same day his mother died, in either Mobile, Alabama, or a town near Jackson, Mississippi. Nobody knows, not even Arthur himself, because his parents traveled a lot during those days. His father, also an Arthur, owned a traveling carnival, passed down from his father. They were always on the road, and many of the workers and performers never knew a real home. The road had become their home. The Great Denlax Carnival was their livelihood, one of seventeen popular traveling carnivals that toured the United States during the thirties and forties.

They traveled all over the States. They saw many things. When he was younger, Arthur got to experience more than most children his age.

The world was constantly changing, but Arthur Denlax Sr. refused to change with it. Arthur Jr. promised his father that he'd never change either, no matter how much the world did. It was a promise he intended to keep.

Arthur Denlax Sr. passed away in 1941, exactly two years after Germany invaded Poland, from Tuberculous. Arthur Sr. and many of the carnival performers, were lucky enough to be left out of world warfare. This was because the United States government was unaware of their existence. They had no numbers attached to their names; they had no identities whatsoever. They had no homes. The road was their home, and it kept them free from the stern eyes and inviting finger of Uncle Sam.

They simply did not exist.

Before Arthur Sr. drew his last breath, he left control of the traveling carnival to a man named Donald Wilko, a close friend and trusted ally. Donald had great stage presence, much better than his good friend Arthur. Donald led the carnival, taking over as the act's ringleader. However, Arthur Jr. knew his uncle would not be the man his father hoped he would be, and this became a huge disappointment to Arthur, and the other performers. Uncle Donald was considered a cruel man, but not until after the untimely death of the very respected Arthur Denlax. It was as if a switch had flipped following his friend's expiration, instantaneously becoming an evil, grumpy bastard. Alcoholic beverages replaced the friendship he once had in Denlax, consuming way more than the recommended daily amount, which caused him to wake up most mornings in a pool of his own vomit. Drinking often made him do things very few men were capable of. Ted Wood (or the ever-so popular Lobster-Boy! if you so prefer it) felt the wrath of Uncle Donald's alcohol-fueled fury. The two argued one night about which direction the carnival should head in (North to New York, or South to Jacksonville), about which one made more sense financially. Arthur was fifteen at the time, and he had spied on their secret conversation. He watched from a nearby tree as his uncle went on—practically incoherent—about how Florida had more promise than New York, and Lobster Boy rebutted, telling the drunkard that the only reason Jacksonville had become a priority was because his friend owned a whorehouse there, and none of the women on the traveling carnival's roster would ever dream of sleeping with him. Lobster Boy's cheeky comments would cost him a broken bottle upside his head, and sixteen stitches which Evelyn Morse (the Six-Eyed Beauty Queen!) would apply using her sewing abilities. Evelyn would eventually feel Uncle Donald's wrath too, when Arthur was about seventeen. The son of a bitch would rape her in the late hours of the night, deep within the woods, somewhere not too far from their camp, but a place far enough where no one would hear her screams and cries for help. It happened several times before she finally ended up slitting both of her wrists hours before a big show outside Memphis, Tennessee, a few months after the first incident. Lobster Boy would eventually quit the show, leaving behind a note stating that he was retiring at the tender age of thirty-two. No one believed this, of course, mostly because Ted Wood's resignation had been in Uncle Donald's handwriting.

A week later, a man and his six-year old son were fishing down by a river near Slidell, Louisiana, when the dead body of Ted Wood washed up on an adjacent bank. He had a knife lodged in his back, with the initials D.W. carved into the handle.

These sort of incidents happened frequently since Arthur's father passed away. Arthur equated the years when his father was alive to be like Heaven. The carnival was profitable. They put on quality shows and people came in droves to see them. Things felt safe, secure. When Donald Wilko took over, everything went to Hell. Shows ran, whether Donald was in shape to perform or not. They made piss for money. The audience was thin, when there was one. Donald would drop the same old line “the times are changing,” and mutter nonsense about people being more interested in moving picture shows than they were about seeing live entertainment, but Arthur knew that was total horse manure. People still believed in live entertainment, and he became hellbent to prove The Great Donald Wilco wrong.

That was when Arthur was eighteen, and a year later nothing much had changed. A few more of the group's talented performers, folks who had been around since Arthur's father ran things “dropped out” for one reason or another. Andrew Burkits (the One-Armed Wonder!) who'd been in the business since he was six-years old, suddenly quit because his mother back home in Arkansas had suddenly become very ill and needed his attention. Arthur knew that Andrew was not from Arkansas, but from Georgia. He knew this because Andrew frequently wrote his mother in Georgia, and often had Arthur read over his letters, to proofread them. Arthur was much better at writing than Andrew, or so Andrew used to tell him.

Everybody knew what Uncle Donald had been doing. It was no secret. The problem was no one had the gonads to stand up to him, not even Arthur. The last person who tried to stand up to Donald was a man named Evan Urie, the guy who cleaned horseshit out of the trailers. Evan approached Donald late one night, near a large body of water. With the moral support of many other performers, Evan schemed to kill him, cut his throat and toss him in the lake like some common thug. Arthur had been left out of the attempted coup. The group decided it was best not to tell him, but when it happened, when the time came to appoint a new leader, it had been agreed upon that Arthur would become the new face of the Great Denlax Carnival. Unfortunately, those plans were squashed when it was Donald who returned from their midnight palaver rather than Evan. One of the conspirators—Judy Willow—went out to look for Evan the following morning, only finding his hand lying in the dirt near the body of water Evan said he was going to leave Donald in. Just a hand. The rest of Evan would not be discovered because an alligator came along hours before Judy did, and devoured Evan's body quite easily.

Judy Willow died later that week, her naked body found by hunters deep within a Kentucky forest.

Arthur Denlax prayed that things would get better and people would stop dying and leaving him.

He never thought much of God, for He was never much a big deal to those who called the road home. But he wanted answers; he wanted things to go back to normal; he wanted justice for those taken from him.

Luckily for him, a man named Quincy Black, would be along to help him with all of those things.

2

It was Arthur Denlax's nineteen and a half birthday when he woke up one morning to the smell of something burning. It smelled like meat, sausages perhaps. It was too early for any of the other performers to be up and about, most of them slept until the mid-afternoon. Arthur sat up from his makeshift bed comprised of mostly hay, and glanced over at last night's lover; the girl with webbed feet and hands (THE HUMAN FROG! a big poster exclaimed). Some found it repulsive, but Arthur found he was attracted to things that most people were disgusted by.

He moved away from his hay-filled mattress, toward the smell of smoked sausage. He crossed the campgrounds and walked over the unconscious body of Donald Wilko. Had he the stones to do it, he could've easily cut the bastard's throat out. Arthur could have gotten his blade deep within the sinister man's flesh and halfway across his neck before the son of a bitch even knew what was happening. Instead of doing that, Arthur moved in dream-like fashion toward the savory smell of delicious meats. His feet moved with little effort. Before he knew it, the campsite was far behind him, and he was walking down a small hill, toward a much smaller campsite where a single man was sitting down holding a string of sausages over an open fire. He wore a brimmed hat, slightly cocked to the side, a red feather sticking out of the black band wrapped around it. Long black hair flowed from underneath it, past his shoulders. He wore a white shirt with buttons, and green suspenders to hold up his trousers. He smiled and gave a subtle wave as Arthur approached his quaint assembly.

“
Good morning, fellow traveler,” the mysterious man welcomed him. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

“
Very much so,” Arthur agreed. “What brings you all the way out here?” Arthur surveyed the man's carriage, which had been pulled by two mares. The horses grazed yonder their meeting place.

“
Oh, a little of this, a little of that,” the man responded. “I'm a traveling salesman. Much of my time is spent on the road.”

“
Traveling salesman, huh? Wouldn't your business be better off in a shop in some town or city? I mean, aren't the days of a traveling salesman numbered?”

“
I guess I could say the same of a traveling carnival,” the man said. He lit his pipe and withdrew smoke from it. “Tell me, Arthur, are you happy?”

Arthur took a step back, as if the man had meant to harm him. “How do you know my name?” he asked, somewhat frightful.

“Oh, when you're on the road as much as I am, you pick up on a few things.” The man looked as if he remembered something. “How rude of me. I never introduced myself. My name is Quincy Black, seller of all sorts of magical items. You must be interested in something I have, oh yes, I think you will be. But first...” He pulled the sausages away from the flames, and swung the long string of meat toward Arthur . “Won't you try some of my sausage?”

3

Arthur politely declined the man's offer. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry. Quite the contrary—he was indeed famished. It had been a good long while since he had something that provided nourishment such as cooked sausage. Loafs of bread and trapped rainfall water were just not filling him up. He kicked himself all the way back to his trailer for not taking just one measly sausage. He imagined what it would have tasted like, and his mouth filled with water. The man had been a little strange, yes. His queer antics made Arthur doubt whether the sausage would have satisfied him at all, that maybe the sausage was nothing more than poison. In any case, Arthur put the peculiar wanderer in the back of his mind, for when he returned to the campgrounds, something was missing.

The rest of the crew.

The spot where Donald Wilko lay waiting for someone to come along and end his life was now vacant. Arthur called out various names, but no one answered. He checked the trailers, places he knew where the performers liked to sleep and take naps, only to find them as empty as the rest of the campgrounds. Even the mobile stable where they kept the horses were unoccupied. Sylvester, the crowd-pleasing monkey, was missing from his cage. The cage had still been locked. The trickster monkey had not escaped; he vanished into thin air, along with everyone else.

Arthur, confused and slightly scared, walked to the middle of the campground, close to where he saw Donald Wilko passed out on the grass not more than an hour ago. He screamed. He yelled the names of his friends; his companions; his cohorts; people who had comforted him when his father died and left him all alone. No one answered, for they had all left him too, just like his mother had on the day he was born, just as his father had twelve years later. He screamed the names of his mother and father, and still no one replied. After, he simply screamed.

Finally, someone answered.

“
No one is here, Arthur,” a voice said. “Except for you, and I.”

Arthur turned and saw the traveling salesman standing on the outskirts of the camp ground. His attire had changed since their last encounter. He was no longer wearing a fedora, instead his long dark hair flowed unrestrained. His shirt had been white—now black and a black leather jacket over it. A crow perched on his shoulder, and Quincy was feeding it little bits of sausage out of his hand. The bird pecked carefully, unwilling to risk tearing into the man's skin. “And my little friend here.”

“Who are you?” Arthur snapped. “Where did my friends go? What is happening here?” Struggling for breath and on the verge of soiling himself, Arthur darted his eyes spastically.

“
Relax, kiddo. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm only here to help.”

Arthur stepped away from the man garbed in black, just as he advanced forward. Arthur had heard words like that before, from the mouth of Donald Wilko.

“What is happening here?” Arthur repeated.

“
This?” Quincy Black asked, looking around the world, which was surely his doing. “Think of this as a dream. You've had dreams before?” Arthur nodded, cautiously. “Good. Well, this is no different, I assure you. This dream is my creation. I've brought you here.”

“
Why?” Arthur asked.

“
Because. I want to make a deal with you, Arthur. I want to help you take back what is rightfully yours.” Quincy Black smiled. “I want to give you back your father's legacy.”