Chapter 1
The man in the casket had none of the waxy pallor of death. There was color in his cheeks, the color of life, not the falseness of a mortician's rouge. But his eyes were closed, the long-fingered hands were folded peacefully across his chest, and the fluted, beak-like nostrils showed no signs of breathing.
A man and a woman were arguing in low tones nearby and showed no awareness of the man in the casket. It was late, after midnight, and the tent was otherwise empty. Their voices, even in contention, had a hushed, sepulchral sound in the big tent.
The woman was slight, lithe as a whippet, and with the purity of beauty of a madonna. Her eyes were the color of ripe limes, and her tinted curls clung to her head like a snug, blonde helmet. There was nothing madonna-like about her figure. A yellow sweater boldly outlined full breasts and tight gray slacks sketched exciting thighs and a sweep of lovely leg.
She said in a tense whisper, "Cotty, I can't. I simply can't. Basil will have to come out any minute, and he's always angry if I'm not here when he comes out."
"You'd think I was asking you out on a hot date, instead of just up to the cook tent for a lousy cup of coffee."
"But don't you see? Cotty ... to Basil it's the same thing!" She tried to make him understand.
"No, Paula, I don't see," Cotty Starke said. "All I can see is a beautiful girl like you married to a man twice her age!"
In a blur of motion Paula slapped him. "You haven't the right to talk to me like that!"
Cotty's hand went to his cheek, knuckled away the sting of her slap. He said sullenly, "All I had in mind was a sort of celebration. This is our biggest day since I've been the ten-in-one talker. We grossed over a half grand today."
A spark of malice struck the cool green eyes. "Then why don't you wait until Basil's out? I'm sure he'd be happy to celebrate with you. After all, he does own the show."
"That's just what I need ... that cold-blooded, superior bastard along..." Without thinking his glance swung to the man in the casket, and he felt a chill sweep along his spine. "Look, he's watching us!"
Paula glanced around without an outward show of concern.
The grave, if such it could be called, occupied a position of prominence in the tent, isolated by several feet from one end of the platform running down the center of the tent. The area around the pit was chained off; a section of striped canvas hung from the chain, dragging the ground like a woman's old-fashioned skirts. Actually the grave was nothing more than a rectangular pit, dug before the first performance of each carnival date. The bottom two-thirds of the casket was covered with dirt, packed in tightly and mounded on top. The upper third of the casket was clear glass. The casket was set on a slight slant, giving the spectators on the entrance side of the pit an unobstructed view of the man inside. A heavy chain was wrapped around the casket lid, held in place by a large Yale padlock.
The eyes of the man in the casket, deep black and strangely compelling, were wide open, returning the stares of the two people looking down at him. His gaze was baleful, faintly menacing. Otherwise, he hadn't moved; the hands were still crossed over his chest. But now there was a barely perceptible rise and fall of the chest.
Cotty shivered. He whispered, "Christ, he always spooks me when I see him looking up out of that damned coffin. like a dead man come to life."
Paula's laughter was mocking. "That's the name of the exhibit, Cotty. 'Buried Alive!'"
Before Cotty could frame a retort, he heard the scamper of feet behind him. He glanced around, knowing in advance who he would see. He looked down into Juval's face.
Juval was a dwarf, standing just short of four feet, with stubby, powerful arms and legs. His was a gargoyle's face, always fixed in a grin. He was a deaf mute.
Cotty invariably felt uneasy around Juval. But then both Basil Greer and Juval spooked him. And, when Greer was out of the casket, Juval was in almost constant attendance, trotting along after the man in unswerving devotion. Juval had never learned to read and write. The only way he could communicate was through pantomime, and Greer was the only person who could interpret his pantomimicry. Now Juval capered on his short legs, gesticulating. He caught Paula's attention and gestured toward the pit.
She nodded, saying curtly, "Yes, Juval. It's time to dig him up now."
Juval bobbed his head and did a jig, leaping high in the air and hitting his heels together. He was carrying a half-empty pop bottle. He set the bottle on the ground and darted into the shadows at the end of the tent. He was back at once with a short-handled spade. He began shoveling away at the mound of dirt covering the casket. He worked with amazing speed.
Cotty watched, his gaze drawn to the casket in spite of himself. Someone, certainly not Paula since she'd spoken scarcely a dozen words to him before tonight, had once told him that Basil Greer would die of suffocation within minutes of coming out of the trance unless freed from the casket. Cotty was vague about the particulars; it had something to do with only a very few minutes, ten at the most, of oxygen left at the end of an eight-hour trance. During the trance itself, Greer's bodily processes almost ceased and he consumed only a minimal amount of air. But the instant he came out of the trance, his body functions resumed and he needed the normal amount of oxygen.
Cotty was baffled by the whole business. The casket was airtight; that much he knew. He had seen it examined by townies, reputable citizens who had no reason to lie. The casket wasn't gaffed; there was no gimmick. And that was what confounded him. He couldn't understand why Greer worked without a gimmick, especially in an act as potentially dangerous as this one. To Cotty the very word carnie implied a gimmick.
He glanced around at the sound of Paula's voice. "Aren't you going to help Juval dig Basil out, Cotty?" Her full, red lips twitched with amusement. "You do work for him now."
Cotty said tautly, "I didn't hire out to use a shovel."
"Why not? It won't hurt that golden throat of yours."
Cotty glared at her. The sweater had slipped down to show one golden-brown shoulder. During the evening's performances, she always wore brightly colored dresses that swept the ground in a gypsy-like effect, leaving her shoulders bare. She spent the warm summer mornings sunning herself behind the side show tent, attired in a brief sun suit that shortened Cotty's breath and speeded his pulse each time he came across her there. And during the past two weeks, that was as often as he calculated he could without arousing Greer's suspicions.
Paula shrugged. "Suit yourself." She took a pack of cigarettes from her slacks pocket and put one in her mouth.
With a glance at Juval to make sure the dwarf wasn't watching, Cotty asked, "Then you won't go up with me for a cup of coffee?"
Her glance was indifferent. "I thought we'd settled that."
"We settled nothing! What makes you so high and mighty? A cup of coffee, for God's sake!" he said savagely. "You know your trouble? You're cold. You're like ice. You look like a real hot number, but I think not. I think it suits you being married to an old man. What does it feel like being in his arms? like being pawed by a corpse? Which is about what he is!"
This time she didn't take offense. She simply gazed at him as though he were a spoiled brat whose petulant antics amused her. The look galled Cotty. He felt a rise of fury. Then a clod of dirt slipped off Juval's spade and thudded hollowly onto the half-uncovered casket. The dirge-like sound scraped Cotty's nerves like a saw, and he shivered convulsively. He whirled about and plunged from the tent. Paula's taunting laughter followed him.
Outside, he paused beside the bally platform to stab a cigarette into his mouth. In the flare of match his dark, handsome face had a lean, hungry look. This was not so much a look of the features as from something within him. Cotty Starke had known hunger; he had known the grinding hunger that comes from going days without food. Nowadays he ate well but the hunger was still there, gnawing at the edges of his mind. He was twenty-five, give or take a year or two. He had never known the exact year of his birth. Different people had given him different dates.
He stood smoking, gazing along the deserted midway, fighting back his smoldering resentment of Paula. He reviewed what little he knew of Basil Greer.
When he'd first gone to work for the ten-in-one as a ticket seller, he'd naturally been curious about Greer's act, the star attraction. Cotty's curiosity had mounted once he'd learned to his own satisfaction that the act wasn't gimmicked. It had taken some time to convince him of that. But he'd seen the casket opened during Greer's trance. He'd seen it examined carefully and pronounced airtight. Magnets in the lid and the casket itself sealed it off when closed, much as a refrigerator door operates. He'd seen needles poked into the man's skin without Greer flinching; he'd seen a mirror held to Greer's mouth without a trace of moisture showing. Once, Cotty himself had searched for a pulse and found none. It always took a qualified doctor to detect signs of life.
These examinations were usually conducted on the first night of a new carnival date and representatives of the local press were always present, resulting in a flood of publicity, followed by a sellout business for the sideshow.
And once, just two weeks ago, Cotty had watched through the trailer window as Greer hypnotized himself into the trance. It had been an eerie few minutes. Greer had stretched out on his back on the couch in the trailer with his hands crossed over his chest. At the foot of the couch had been a metronome fixed in the beam of a flashlight. As Cotty had watched without comprehension, Greer had slipped silently into the coma. Two canvas men had entered the trailer and carried Greer, stiff as a board, into the tent and placed him in the casket. Then Paula had locked the chain around the glass lid, and Juval had shoveled the dirt in.
Cotty didn't understand it. He didn't understand it in the same way he didn't understand Paula Greer. Married to an old man like that, a man who spent almost half of his life in a casket, you'd think she would be happy to live a little! With a snarl Cotty ground the cigarette out under his toe. From his pocket he took a small atomizer and sprayed his throat, then started down the midway, his footsteps making a rustling sound in the dry wood shavings spread on the ground. He headed toward the front of the midway where a smear of light located the cook tent in the carnie night. The rest of the carnival was dark except for the few bulbs on a light stringer circling the midway. The rides down the center crouched under their night hoods like sleeping animals of fantastic shapes. On each side the show tents hulked dark and still, their banners rolled up for the night.
Now Cotty approached the line of concession tents: the hanky-panks, the honest percentage games, and the two-way joints, the gimmicked games. The two-ways joints, sometimes called flat joints, were all fixed with the odds a hundred percent in favor of the carnie whenever the operator felt inclined to use the gaff. The flat joints were so named, according to Gil Meeks, "because they leave the marks flat broke when they walk away."
The front flaps of all the concession tents were down, like greedy mouths satiated and closed for the night. All but one. The flap to Gil Meeks' wheel joint was still up. Cotty paused to peer in. The interior of the tent was dark, but Cotty saw the glow of Gil's cigar.
"Gil?"
"Hi, kid," said a raspy voice from the darkness.
"What the hell are you doing sitting in the dark like that?"
"Having a couple of belts, what else? Hop in, kid."
Cotty placed both hands flat on the counter top and vaulted over. The reek of whiskey and cigar was powerful. A camp chair was shoved against his legs and Cotty sat down. He took out a cigarette. In the spurt of match flame, Gil Meek's narrow, swarthy face grinned at him. He held out a pint bottle. "A short snort, kid?"
"You know better than that, Gil," Cotty said.
"Yeah, I forgot. I find it hard to understand, a carnie teetotaler." There was a gurgling sound in the dark and Meeks drank from the bottle. "You take those Billboard ads too seriously. 'No boozers wanted.'"
"That's not it," Cotty said testily. "I saw enough boozing when I was a punk kid."
"Spare me the details, kid." Meeks sighed. "I've heard the sad story, remember? Orphan child farmed out to drunken foster parents, so forth and so forth."
"Well, that happens to be the way, it was, Gil. I don't know how many times some goon I was farmed out to came home stinking drunk and whacked me around."
"Nobody'd ever do that to me," Meeks said softly. "If they had, I'd've laid the bastard's head open with an axe!"
"But I..." Cotty hesitated, a wind of caution sweeping his brain. He had done just that once. At fifteen he had opened a foster father's head with a chopping axe. To this day Cotty didn't know if the blow had killed the man. He had fled before finding out. He'd been running ever since. He had never related the incident to anyone. Even now he couldn't bring himself to tell this man; not even to Gil Meeks who was his best friend on the carnie.
Meeks was speaking. "But what, kid?"
"Nothing. Nothing important."
Cotty felt rather than saw the man shrug. He heard him drink from the bottle again. Then Meeks said, "Where've you been anyway? I've been watching for you. The freak show closed two hours ago. What were you doing?"
"I was trying to get Paula to have a cup of coffee with me. I thought some sort of celebration was in order. You know what, Gil?" In his excitement Cotty leaned forward. "I really pulled 'em in tonight. We grossed over half a grand!"
"That so? Yeah, I was in the tip during my break, watching you. You're good, kid. I already told you that. But that Paula broad now..." The man whistled softly through his teeth. "I'd go easy there, if it was me. Greer's no man to fool with. I think he'd kill a man who laid a hand on her."
"Ah, that son of a bitch! If he ever...." Cotty's fists knotted on his knees. "What does she see in him, anyway?"
Meeks whistled again. "Say, you have got hot pants for her, ain't you?" After a moment he went on thoughtfully, "But how do you figure a woman? Remember, Basil Greer was once big time with that escape act of his. The Carnie's a big step down for him, sure, but he's still pulling in the loot. If you ask me, that's what she sees in him."
"You just wait," Cotty said tensely. "I'll have a show of my own one of these days and then I'll be pulling in the loot."
"Sure, kid, sure. And when you do, maybe Paula'll let you buy her that coffee. Or something a little more expensive. She doesn't strike me as the coffee kind." Meeks chuckled. Then his voice changed. "Speaking of hot pants, how about that little cashier in the cook tent? How would she take to you strutting in with Paula in your hip pocket?"
"To hell with her," Cotty muttered. "Debra doesn't mean that much to me. She's just another...."
They both fell silent as footsteps crunched along the midway outside. Then a man wearing a loose-fitting suit loomed tall in front of the tent.
"Hi, Patch," Meeks called out cheerfully.
"Is that you, Meeks?" Dan Fields asked in his deep voice.
"Sure is, Patch. Anything wrong?"
"No, nothing wrong. I was just wondering why your tent fly was still up."
"We were just having a couple of belts, Patch. Have one?"
"No, thanks. Not right now. Who's that in there with you?"
Cotty raised his voice. "It's me, Patch. Cotty Starke."
Dan Fields grunted. "Oh...." With a nod of his head the man moved away in his deliberate walk.
Meeks and Cotty didn't speak until the footsteps had receded. Then Meeks said musingly, "Speaking of boozing, there's a booze fighter if I ever saw one."
"That's the way he always struck me. And I've never cared much for him, either. He's too damned nosy for my taste."