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American Fiction Horror

Bobby Lee

“Aren’t you going in?”

Bobby Lee Taggart jerked, frightened by the presence of a voice so suddenly near to him. He turned, saw a hunched old man in the drift of the carnival’s floodlights. A pale, bony figure on bowed legs, with feet that were impossibly small, and a short, hand-carved, twisted pine cane. The face was reedy and pointed. A long, aquiline nose protruded over pale lips and a white, elegantly-curled handlebar moustache. A beard, also white, clung to the man’s chin and dropped down nearly to his starched collar. The man had a large velvet top hat trimmed with green ribbon adorning his head and one of his two, deep welled eye sockets sported a thin gold-rimmed monocle on a chain. The glass, Bobby Lee saw, was smoky; dark enough to nearly hide the icy blue eye behind it. The ancient figure wore a tuxedo that was as black as midnight and looked as soft as the fur on a baby kitten.

“Well?” the man said.

“Sorry,” Bobby Lee said.

“For what?”

“Uh.”

“Succinctly put, my dear boy. Succinctly put.”

Bobby Lee stared at the man. The man stared back, smiling.

“You seem to be heading away from the fair, my boy. Away from that most frivolous of festivals. How is it that a boy of your age is able to avert his eyes and his heart from such a boisterous bonanza?”

Bobby Lee swallowed. Hard. Twice. Once as a reflex to calm his electrically-jangled nerves. And once more to shove the red-hot flames of embarrassment way down deep inside.

*****

Bobby Lee Taggart was two months beyond his ninth birthday when the carnival came to Burdock in the summer of ’52. July it was, that glorious mid-point of the vacation season when school is both a distant memory and a future far enough away that it did not merit serious consideration by anyone. Corn on the local farms was well beyond the knee-high by the Fourth of July measurement quoted in so many trusted almanacs. The weather was pleasingly warm, with none of the brutal heat predicted in all but one of those same sagacious tomes. Even the mid-summer thunderboomers had been tame, a far cry from the rip-roaring, tornado-spewing monstrosities that normally passed through during the hot, mid-year months.

           Bobby Lee had a full schedule, every minute of each day chock packed full of post-chore pleasures. There were pick-up games of baseball to be played at the old, scruffy, weeded-over lots behind Plum Street Elementary. There were bikes trails out at the abandoned Spiceland Pike Quarry which needed trying. Butch’s Pop Shop up on Broad Street had a new cream soda behind the bar and four new kinds of candy on the richly-stained, hardwood shelves available for anyone lucky enough to have a few spare nickels bouncing around inside a litter-filled pocket. There were baseball cards to be traded for down at Jim Barber’s Memorabilia on Main. There were also the nightly games of Ghosts-in-the-Graveyard at the Cherry Street Cemetery which Sheriff Cork would always break up after two hours.

           The kids, and the adults, of Burdock had some good days ahead. Good, long days. Summer days. The best of the year, except for maybe that sweet Fall spot around Halloween.

           But the days ahead were not why the town was buzzing with excitement in the last week of July 1952.

           No, siree.

           That was the carnival. The fair. Only thing that could do something like that to a small, sleepy town like Burdock.

           It was the signs that did it, you see. The signs were what had got everyone’s heart racing. What spiked all the imaginations in town and sent them running hither and thither, all buck wild and free.

           The signs.

           Little ones. On the lampposts and power poles. Big ones. In the shop windows and planted along the sides of State Road 3 going in both directions. Great big ones. Plastered on the side of the main highway away down south and painted on both the north- and the west-facing sides of Phillip’s Pharmacy at the intersection Broad and 15th Street.

           Flashy red signs for Maestro Morbidus and his trained bats. Emerald green for Harlequin Hexblade, the combatant clown capable of clobbering and conquering cons. Sunfire yellow for Mister Jangus Madcap, the lion-tamer. Nuclear orange for Giggles Gargantua, the world’s fattest and funniest clown.

           The list was endless. The promises never-ending.

           Elephants that marched and did tricks. High-flying acrobats in jeweled costume. Bears. Strongmen. Gypsy fortune-tellers. Clowns. Monkeys. Tigers. Even an exotic black-and-white creature called a Panda which did, well, nothing special, really.

           And if that was not enough, if those attractions had not been sufficient to entice the masses of a tiny, rural Maryland burg, there was the promise of the Midway.

Yes! The Midway. That pulsing, pumping, heated heartbeat of any carnival or fair. A wide, trampled avenue jam-packed with every manner of food and game imaginable. All fried and sugared and cacophonous and ready.

           Bobby Lee Taggart had not just read the posters. No. He had devoured them. He’d fed on them, eaten them up with his eyes, memorized every word, every single splash of color. Each promise, nick, tear, fold, and push-pin hole.

           The imminent arrival of the fair became all consuming to the people of Burdock. It was not just a topic of conversation in every barber shop, beauty parlor, or candy shop, it was the topic of conversation. Everyone talked about it.

           Rich kids.

           Poor kids.

           Kids with parents. Orphaned kids.

           Kids with two front teeth. Kids with none.

           Kids just like Bobby Lee Taggart.

           And now it was here. Live and in color and alive, just one hundred yards from where Bobby Lee was standing, being peered at by a strange old man he’d never seen before.

*****

“Well?” the man said.

“Sorry,” Bobby Lee said.

“For what?”

“Uh,” Bobby Lee muttered.

“Succinctly put, my dear boy. Succinctly put.”

*****

The fair had finally opened its gates at eight that evening and nearly everyone in town had been there to witness the event and partake in the much-anticipated and oft-promised joys.

           Bobby Lee Taggart had been there too, standing near his friends. George Black, the skinny farm kid in the dirty overalls had been to his left, near on exploding with excitement. Ira Milward had stood to his right, bouncing up and down on her toes just like George and reaching out to grab Bobby by the arm, an act which had conflicted Bobby Lee. It had been a nice touch, kind of warm and firm and it had made his tummy feel all kind of wriggly inside.

           It had been pitch-black dark in the field out beyond Legion Park where Bobby Lee stood contemplating a possible cootie infestation acquired from Ira.

           And it had been silent.

           Had just gone that way. One second, there’d been the raucous chatter of nearly two-thousand people. Then, nothing. Not even the sounds of crickets or frogs. Just a thick, syrupy quiet and the warm, sweet, earthy scent of alfalfa wafting through the air.

           That’s when the booming voice had shattered the night, echoing and bouncing and enormous.

           “Laaaaaadies aaaaaand Geeeeentlemen! Weeeeeelcome! Come one, come all, big, short, wide or tall, step right up and have a ball. Its Mortimer and Ashburn’s Requiem of Reverie, a Velvet Void in the Guilded Abyss, the wildest show in the North, East, South, or West…”

           The voice had trailed off.

           Bobby Lee had felt the crowd lean forward. Had felt George lean. Had felt Ira lean. Had felt himself lean.

           Then it had come, over speakers hidden off somewhere in the black void, a voice, emitting a low, soft chuckle.

           “Welcome to The Calamity Brother’s Carnival and Fair.” Another faint laugh. “The gates open…NOW!”

           Showers of white-hot sparks had erupted from thirty locations in front of Bobby Lee, pouring twenty feet into the air. Fifty floodlights had blasted the enveloping night, shoving it violently away. Two-hundred flickering signs had burst into sudden life, flashing and sparkling and offering and enticing in every color imaginable.

           The crowd had surged forward then, moving, jostling, pushing, and practically dancing towards the single ticket booth, above which a series of golden lights arranged in an invisible archway spelled the word ENTRANCE.

           Bobby Lee had not joined the herd, hadn’t traveled with them, had not put himself in the back of the mass that was, rather magically, somehow forming a line at the booth. 

           It’s two-bits admission, a quarter for a ticket.

           Bobby Lee had watched as fireworks exploded above the blue and white and yellow-striped main tent, had seen George and Ira moving off with the crowd.

           They had quarters. They had the money to get in, at least. Probably enough to play two or three games and buy a popcorn. Maybe even a funnel cake.

           Bobby Lee did not.

           He’d looked down at his feet and he’d felt the soft grass and soil beneath them. He’d seen, barely, the rough cuffs of his pants, the left side worn higher than the right and fraying faster.

           He’d kicked at the dirt and he’d felt a twinge in his stomach.

           That twinge.

That weird, lurching, dropping feeling. As if his stomach had been thrown from the top of a tall building and squeezed violently on the way down.

           Bobby Lee knew what the feeling was. Knew it as sure as he knew his own name. Didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

           That was how it felt when hope died.

           A tear had started to form at the corner of one eye and Bobby Lee had swiped at it savagely with the filthy cuff of his shirt.

           “Stupid fair.”

           He’d lifted his head, gave the carnival entrance a last look, and he’d turned away, the scent of fresh-popped and buttered corn and the crazily-happy sounds of a Wurlitzer Carousel Organ following him into the dark as he headed back into town, back to the little orphanage on New York Avenue where Ms. Marconi would be waiting on the porch.

           Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime, summertime gal…

*****

“Well?” the man said.

“Sorry,” Bobby Lee said.

“For what?”

“Uh,” Bobby Lee muttered.

“Succinctly put, my dear boy. Succinctly put.”

Bobby Lee stared at the man. The man stared back, smiling.

“You seem to be heading away from the fair, my boy. Away from that most frivolous of festivals. Why is that? How is it that a boy of your age is able to avert his eyes and his heart from such a boisterous bonanza?”

“Pardon?” Bobby Lee said.

The man moved closer, his eyes peering down into Bobby Lee’s. “No, boy, I don’t think I will.”

Bobby cocked his head to the side. “Won’t what?”

“Pardon you, of course,” the man grinned. He pointed at Bobby Lee with the end of his cane, swung it about as if it were a sword or a cutlass. “Nothing to pardon. You’ve done me no wrong. Except to avoid answering my query, that is.”

“Your what?”

“My query, boy. My question, which I will restate now,” the man replied softly. “Aren’t you going in?” He twirled around with a speed Bobby Lee would have thought impossible forty seconds earlier and stopped, standing fully upright, his eyes on Bobby Lee and his cane held dead level straight in his right hand, pointing at the carnival entrance.

Bobby Lee’s eyes followed the cane, saw the lights. He heard a calliope playing Grand Ole Flag. He imagined he could taste the food. The pretzels. The popped corn. The cotton candy.

His stomach gave another brief lurch and he dropped his eyes to the ground. He kicked at a clod of dirt and grass at his feet.

“Oh,” said the man.

Bobby Lee did not raise his head. He felt the tears coming back. He didn’t dare wipe at them. He couldn’t. Not in front of a strange man.

“My apologies, Bobby Lee,” the man said, his voice low and soft and friendly and warm.

Bobby Lee looked up. “How…”

“How did I know your name?” The man smiled again. “That’s simple.” He paused. “I asked.”

“You asked?”

“I asked,” the man repeated. “Around town, you know. Asked which boys and girls would be left out.”

Bobby Lee did wipe at his eyes now, felt the harsh drag of the rough cloth against angry skin and ignored it. “You did?”

“I always do,” the man said as the calliope shifted into a medley of Dixie, Oh! Susanna, and Yankee Doodle. “You see, Bobby Lee, every town has a kid or two who can’t scrape together the cash to get into the fair. Every town. Every single one.”

“Really?”

“Cross my heart, it’s so, Bobby Lee. Every town.” The man sighed. “This town only gave me one name. Bobby Lee Taggart.” He paused again and seemed to consider Bobby Lee very carefully. “That is your full name, yes?”

Bobby Lee nodded.

“Named for your grandfather and not that upstart confederate officer, yes?”

Bobby Lee nodded so vigorously that he felt his head might roll right off his shoulders.

“Father died in France, August 1944 and mother passed not long after that?”

Bobby Lee nodded again, not so vigorously this time.

“Bless their hearts, boy. Bless them both.” He made a great show of producing a bright silver pocket watch from somewhere under his topcoat, eyed it for a few moments and restowed it out of sight. “Well then, Mr. Bobby Lee Taggart, are you ready to go to the fair?”

Bobby Lee started to say that he was, that he’d never been as ready for anything in his life, but another thought popped into his mind.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Who are you?”

The man looked surprised, but only for a second. He recovered quickly, pulled himself fully upright and proper, and swept forward in an impossibly low bow which nearly dumped the top hat from his thin head.

“I am,” he said, regally and importantly, “Houndstooth, my boy. Woodrow Pennington Houndstooth. And I am at your service.”

He pulled himself back up, hooked the cane over one forearm, and used a pair of long, thin hands to flatten his lapels.

“I am,” Houndstooth said, “here to ensure you get to enjoy the carnival.”

Bobby Lee started to jump, but stopped himself. A thought popped into his head and he began to voice it.

Houndstooth held up a hand. “I have already spoken to Ms. Marconi on this matter. You have her permission to go with me, if you so desire.”

Bobby Lee could not stop himself. He lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Houndstooth’s legs and nearly knocking the gentleman to the ground. Houndstooth, for his part, patted Bobby Lee on the top of his head.

“Now, now, young man,” he said. “We really should get going.”

Bobby Lee separated himself from Houndstooth’s legs and offered an apology. Houndstooth waved it off.

“Think nothing of it, Mr. Taggart. It’s my pleasure.” He pulled a sparkling gold watch from his waistcoat, checked it, and tucked it away. “Are you ready?”

Bobby Lee swiped at the tears one last time and nodded vigorously.

“Well then,” said Houndstooth, “follow me!”

Houndstooth spun on his heels and headed off, veering away from the main entrance. Bobby Lee trotted after the old man, struggling to keep up with the oddly long, striding gait, tripping over deep furrows and thick tangles of dead stalks and husks while the man moved effortlessly, gliding as if he was meandering down a paved thoroughfare.

“Sir? The entrance…” Bobby Lee wheezed.

“We’re using my entrance,” Houndstooth called without breaking stride. “Come on! It’s just ahead there! Can you see it?”

Bobby Lee could see it. A small, arched side entrance, away from the floodlights and nearly hidden behind a line of trees.

“Race you there, Mr. Taggart!”

Bobby Lee saw Houndstooth pour on speed and he did the same, struggling to keep pace with the man’s impossible pace until, quite suddenly, they were there, standing before a small, simple opening in the pseudo-fence built around the fair. Just, Bobby saw, a single, arched piece of wrought iron with a shimmering purple curtain blocking the way. No lock or gate or door.

Just the curtain.

“Are you ready, Mr. Taggart?” Houndstooth smiled down at him.

Bobby Lee grinned back.

Houndstooth swept the curtain aside.

“In you go!”

Bobby Lee’s feet were already moving, shuffling forward.

Until he was even with the gate.

And past it.

Off into nothing. No night. No fair. Just a translucent, glowing fog.

Only it wasn’t fog.

He kept moving, not stopping as tendrils of color dissipated to his left and right, stringing off like the ancient, ragged edges of an unfinished rug. He looked down, slowing but not daring to stop. His feet were treading along, supported by…

Nothing.

Nothing he could feel. Nothing he could see.

He moved faster. His heart beat erratically. He tried to call out, to yell. For George or Ira or Ms. Marconi. Or Mr. Houndstooth, even, but no sound came slipping out past his wiggling vocal cords. No vibration of air reached into his ears to shake his eardrums.

He broke into a sprint, could see his knees pumping and knew that his arms were flailing, but nothing passed by. Nothing flitted along his sides or over him or beneath his feet. He was not moving along the ground because there was no ground.

He pumped harder. His mind screaming and his heart thundered madly.

He tripped then, and tumbled and went sprawling.

And then he was falling, slipping over the non-existent edge of a non-existent world. Tumbling off into nothingness and screaming silent screams.

At the gate, Woodrow Pennington Houndstooth watched it all. He shook his head with a disapproving tsk-tsk of the tongue, pulled out a small, leatherbound notebook, and annotated the event.

“That’s one.”

February 09, 2025 15:12

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1 comment

Rebecca Hurst
15:43 Feb 12, 2025

Great story, Oliver. So hugely evocative of bygone America.

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