Nightmare Carnival

The next night she cries out in pain, and he lights a candle and kneels hunched by her side. She speaks to him at last, weakly, as she kneads at her belly. “Help me,” she says. “Help me.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he says.

He boils the kettle. He knows there should be hot water, but he’s not sure what for. Maybe its use will become apparent. He fetches more towels too. He strokes her forehead, it’s running with sweat, she doesn’t seem to notice. She lies out on the bunk, legs splayed, and she’s screaming now, it’s more than he can bear, she’s thumping down on her stomach with her fists as if that’ll help push the baby out, and he’s watching to see whether a tiny human might emerge, a head, an arm, some legs, anything.

“Help me!” she roars.

He prays to God. He stops. God hasn’t helped him in all these years, and he’s not going to help him now. He prays to the Popping Fields.

“For all that I’ve done for you,” he cries out. “For all the mercy I’ve shown! Save my daughter now. Save her. I love her. Save her. Take the baby if you want it, that’s no matter. But spare my daughter’s life!”

One last terrible shriek, and Shelton thinks it’s all over, that Ruth is dead — and he turns back to her in slow dread. But she’s alive, he sees her blinking and gaping with astonishment and panicking too — the pregnancy has passed, her stomach looks curiously deflated now — and from between her legs something is seeping out. Red, blood red — but it is not blood, it is too thick for that, it oozes over the sheets, thick and rubbery and stretching taut. Shelton dares reach his hand out to it. Shelton dares touch it. He grabs hold, he tugs, and out it comes, there’s so much of it, it’s as if his poor daughter has had her insides stuffed with a giant balloon. But it’s popped now, it’s all right. Out it comes, and you can see the nozzle you blow into, lying there limp like a shrunken penis, you can see the little swelling at the top where the head might have grown.

“Well,” says Joshua Shelton. “That’s that all over, then.”

Ruth says nothing to her father. Ruth says nothing to him ever again. She glares at him with pure hatred, and he flinches. Then she turns on to her side against the wall.

Shelton goes outside, and, as dark as it is, he digs a hole, and buries the useless burst balloon skin within it.

Ruth refuses more soup, she’ll recover without it. It takes a week before she’s strong enough to stand. As soon as she does, she gets into her clothes, she makes for the door and leaves. This time she doesn’t leave a note.

He waits for her to come back, although he’s sure she never will.

He never regrets sacrificing her baby, and he knows he would do it again.

He waits for her.

He looks in the mirror and he seems so very old. His whole beard is grey. He thought it would make him look like his father. But he isn’t grand and he isn’t mysterious. His cheeks hang limp and thin like empty bags. He traces his fingers across the wrinkles. He puts the tip of his knife into the deepest of the grooves, presses the blade downward, and a trickle of blood lazily drips out. It’s strangely satisfying. But the cheek doesn’t pop the way it should.

He waits.

And when the knock at the door comes Shelton knows it isn’t Ruth. He knows it won’t even be the balloon animals. Ed stands there, and of course he has brought a stick. He hits Shelton with it; Shelton staggers back. Calmly Ed climbs into the caravan and closes the door behind him.

“I don’t know where Ruth is,” says Shelton. “She left me.”

“I’m not looking for the bitch,” says Ed. “I’m looking for my child. Where is my child?”

Shelton runs to the bunk bed, feels under the pillow. But he fumbles, or he’s too slow, he turns around to face Ed with the knife but Ed swipes his stick down and now the knife is on the floor and Shelton is weeping in pain.

“You’re a father too,” says Ed, pleasantly. “You must know I was never going to give up on my own child. Tell me. Is it a boy or a girl?”

Shelton hears himself say it’s a boy.

“Ah!” And Ed grins, and for a moment looks charming. “A boy, of course he is! My son.” Shelton stares at Ed, he stares at Ed’s knuckles, and the star tattoo beneath them, he wonders how often that star tattoo came into contact with his daughter’s face — and then the knuckles pummel into his own. Shelton slumps to the floor. He reaches around blindly for the knife, but when he looks up he sees that Ed has got it.

“Where’s my son?”

“Ruth took him with her.”

“No,” says Ed. “She didn’t.” And at that Shelton’s blood runs a little colder.