Carousel Safari
by Paul Melko

The man in the trench coat offered Scotty one hundred dollars and a copy of Neutrino Kid number six for the painted horses that haunted his sleep and nipped at his soul. Scotty hadn't known there was a way to get rid of them, except time, the medicine, or the psychotherapy which his parents whispered about when they thought he was asleep. How could he sleep when the painted horses galloped through his room, night after night?

It always started the same way, he and his mother and father walking down the midway of the carnival, only it was no fair he's ever been to, but an idealized one, with colors softly faded, the sounds muted. And the mother and father aren't his own; they are dressed like Eisenhower parents. His father wears a hat, his mother sensible shoes.

"Come ride the carousel," they say, and in his dream he wants nothing more than to ride the purple horse, though his real self screams at him to not do it, to not go near it. In the distance he hears a whinny.

There is no line to ride the carousel. His father hands him a gold coin; on one side is the head of elephant, on the other a clown. The clown winks at him as he twists the coin in his fingers and Scotty thinks he knows who the clown is.

There is a carnie there, dressed in an old morning coat and top hat, who takes his coin and ushers him forward with a bow. Scotty runs to his purple horse, places a foot in its worn metal stirrup, and slides across its back. It shifts under him as he climbs over the cold ceramic. It shudders. It seems to turn and look at him, and he has a moment of fear. He searches for his mother and father, but then the calliope starts and the music is too loud, too happy. It screams at him, and he would cover his ears, but he is holding the reins tight.

The horse rises, the horse falls, and the carousel spins.

"Daddy?"

The horse turns its head toward him and grins around the metal bit.

And then it leaps from the carousel, and the rest of the horses thunder after it. They have left the carousel behind, but still the calliope music howls in his ears. Scotty latches onto the swirled pole, but it crumbles under his fingers, and he fights to hold onto the reins and the pommel, or else he'll be thrown under the hooves of the other horses. Where the pole had been mounted in the horse's back is a beaconing blackness.

They are galloping across a broken scrub desert, where the sand rises up behind them, then through a forest, where the branches of trees whip at his face, then across a frozen tundra, where the heat is sucked from his body into the crystal night sky.

There is no exhilaration, just pain in his rigid muscles, pain as he tries to keep himself atop the horse, though he feels himself slowly sinking into it. He knows that if he sleeps too long, if he does not awake in time he will fall within the chest of the horse and be trapped between its ribs. If the sun does not rise, if he does not awaken.

And then as his knees or his waist or his shoulders sink into the hammering torso of the ceramic horse, he awakens in his bed, with the horses thundering around him, and then silence, though sometimes the Bever is laughing.

Every night it was the same. Every night he fell asleep he rode the carousel horse until light reached his window. Every night he slowly sunk into the purple horse's chest. And he knew one night he would sink all the way, and he would never awaken.

The Bever on his wall was no help, even when he untaped its mouth and waited for its obscenities to stall out.

"Painted horses! Have a bad whirl on a merry-go-round, did you? Lose your momma at the county fair? Spend the day with the carnies? Did they bugger you with a corn dog? And now it's come back to haunt you? Serves you right, you little brat! Serves you right."

Sometimes, for a half-eaten chicken leg or for a clipping of hair, the Bever would help him, but this time it would give Scotty nothing. He started to put the tape back over the clown's mouth, but the Bever said, "Hold on! I'll tell you how to get rid of them." The Bever licked its lips and eyed the tape. "Once you've gone mad, and the horses have dragged your body across the Earth, and I've licked your soul from the marrow of your bones, then you'll be free of them, you gibbering boy! You're almost there now! Why do you think your parents—"

Scotty put the tape back over the clown's mouth, so that only the white cheeks and mournful eyes were visible. Those he could deal with, but the Bever's red lips and too-large teeth were too much for him. The Bever sometimes knew things, and Scotty could horse-trade for its knowledge, but apparently not this time.

The man in the trench coat walked up to where Scotty half-dozed in a study carrel at the public library. Scotty could manage some sleep there, but not in his room. At the library, in fact anywhere but his own room, he could rest his eyes and not be assaulted by the painted horses.

The man in the trench coat set an ovoid piece of quartz on the desktop. As Scotty opened his eyes, suddenly awake, the ovoid spun once then turned its pink, bulbous end—the fatter of the two—toward him.

The man picked it back up and said, "You having bad dreams, kid?"

Scotty, his mouth sour, said nothing.

"Elephants, giraffes, horses? Carnival animals? Something like that?"

Scotty studied the man. He wore a dark trench coat, but he seemed to have pants underneath it. His face was pale, his eyes blue. He didn't look dangerous.

Scotty said, "So?"

"I can help."

"How?"

"Take them off your hands."

"'How?' I said."

The man shrugged. "I'm just a lackey. The Professor sends me someplace to pick up animals, I go. He's always right. The Professor's got a thing for the animals."

Scotty gathered up his books, certain the man was nuts.

"I got a hundred dollars and this comic book for you." He laid Neutrino Kid number six on the desk.

Scotty, an avid reader of Neutrino Kid, knew the value of the book. But it wasn't the most important part of the offer.

"You'll get rid of all the horses?"

"Well, the Professor says I can't harvest more than one—"

"I want you to take them all."

"—but if you offer, I can take them all."

"How?"

The man smiled and handed over the one hundred dollar bill.

That night, Scotty read the comic book carefully, placed it in mylar and then inside his cardboard box. In number six, Neutrino Kid drinks a test-tube full of gastric quarks, which make him manifest into the real world. The solar flare which had killed his parents in Number One, had given him the power of transluminal speed, while at the same time making it impossible for him to interact with anything physical. He was doomed to watch the world, pass through it, but never touch it. But the quarks materialized him, though his speed remained transluminal. By remaining super-still he was able to make himself seen by his uncle, warning him of the gang that was about to burn down his diamond mine. He saved his uncle, but when he went to hug him at the end, he couldn't control his speed. His uncle disintegrated. It was then that Neutrino Kid knew he could never again interact with another human.

The Bever smirked at Scotty's tears. Number six never failed to move him. He tucked the comic in front of Neutrino Kid number seventy-five. He had already deposited the one-hundred dollars in his bank account that afternoon.

After his parents had tucked him in, Scotty waited a few minutes for them to go back downstairs, then he turned his light back on and placed the medallion, the elephant side up, around his neck.

The Bever's eyes snapped open and it began to shout through its duct tape gag. Scotty ignored it, ignored the tapping of its frame against the wall.

The man in the trench coat had said he only needed to sleep a night with the medallion around his neck and then the horses would be gone.

He slid the metal circle inside his pajamas. It was cold.

Turning off his light, he closed his eye and wished for sound sleep. For the first time in months, the horses did not come.

The man in the trench coat met him again at the library the next day. Scotty handed the medallion to him, and he seemed shocked at the weight of it.

"This isn't...," he said, then bounced the medallion in his hand. "Well, the Professor will be happy with this. Thanks, kid."

Scotty watched him go, waiting for the relief that he should have felt, but feeling nothing.

He looked down at the two books on the table in front of him. Trey's Pyrotechnics with Household Supplies and Nazarian's Fauna and Flora of Atlantis. The librarian had greeted him as he'd entered and handed the two books to him.

"These just came in for you, Scott, via interlibrary loan," she'd said.

He couldn't remember why he'd ordered them, and the titles had no appeal. He put them back onto the return cart and headed home.

Mr. Pelagusi's pine trees were quiet, and at first he didn't realize that he was walking past them. They used to chase him, pulling up their roots and jogging after him as he went by, until he'd come at midnight with a dozen two foot long spikes and wire and tied the five trees down while they slumbered.

Usually he crossed the road to avoid them, even though he had spiked them down. Today their usual rattle of limbs didn't come. They were silent. He stood for a moment on the alien sidewalk, then walked on.

In his room, the Bever regarded him with drooping eyes.

Scotty began to shake. What was happening?

He peeled the tape away from its mouth.

"...Sleeping...," it said.

"Wake up." Scotty had never seen the Bever sleep, not in all the time since his mother had brought the picture home "to brighten up this drab cave." She'd gotten it at a garage sale, she'd said.

The Bever turned to the side as if it was adjusting itself on a pillow.

"What's happening to me?" Scotty said. He listened to his own flat voice, and then he was angry, and then the anger flowed out of him. He knew he should be angry, but it was easier just to stand there, empty.

"You made your bed," the Bever muttered. "You gave them all away."

Scotty forced himself to step up to the frame and shake it. "What is going on?" he said. He tried to yell, to scream, but he couldn't. "Tell me, or I'll... I'll throw you in a bonfire."

The Bever's head bounced as Scotty shook the frame. His eyes settled into a glare. "You weren't supposed to give them all away!"

Panic welled up inside Scotty. He'd made a mistake somehow.

"How do I get the horses back?" he cried, but the Bever was asleep now.

Scotty sat on the edge of his bed, paging through Neutrino Kid number six, but unable to care.

A week passed, and soon Scotty had forgotten the horses. He went to school, sat patiently through class, as his teachers eyed him, expecting an outburst, a comment, a complaint. He found he had nothing to say. He listened, answered when asked, but felt nothing. He slept peacefully, as did the Bever, as did the trees, and that would have been the end of it if the man in the trench coat hadn't come back.

"What was in that medallion, kid?" he said. He'd caught up to Scotty on his walk home.

"Horses. Painted horses."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever it was, he's in trouble."

Scotty walked past Mr. Pelagusi's pines, silent.

"I tried to catch you at the library."

"I don't go to the library anymore," Scotty said.

"I know!" the man snapped. "That's why I couldn't find you for two days."

They walked on.

"Listen. I left the Professor a week ago. I stopped by two days later and he's passed out with the medallion around his neck. I can't get it off."

"Call an ambulance."

"I can't do that."

Something inside Scotty was screaming; he shrugged and continued walking toward home.

"Kid, one last time, what was in that medallion?" The man's voice was shaking, but Scotty walked on.

"Horses."

A wire holding one of Mr. Peligusi's pines twanged. He looked at the pines, alive, but lifeless.

Scotty reached down and slid his hand across the wire holding down the nearest tree, felt the sting as it cut his hand. He felt the pain as if sifted through muslin.

"I'll come," he heard himself say.

The man in the overcoat glanced once at his dripping hand, then nodded.

They drove to Hellespointe, an affluent section of town, featuring high-fenced houses with carefully manicured shrubs. Scotty stared out the window.

"The name's Rhineheart. Thanks for coming. I can't go to the police. You'll see. And he won't tell me what he's doing. Just sends me out to find kids with dreams of animals. Has me take the medallion. I don't know what he does with it. But he's been doing it for years."

They pulled into the drive of a wooded lot, pausing at the gate as the man tapped in a code.

"I just do odd jobs. He pays well. This is the first time anything like this has happened. I don't know what to do."

The drive plied through a copse of oaks. As they passed under their newly budding limbs, Scotty wondered if they roamed ponderously around the estate when no one was around. Beyond the three story Edwardian house they came to a sheet-metal hanger, a workshop.

"He's in here," the man said. He led Scotty through the man-sized door, next to the car-sized one. Rhineheart fell silent as they passed inside.

The room smelled of machine oil. Large piles of junk—boxes, mechanical parts, cloth, and paint cans—formed a maze from the door into the darkness. Beyond, somewhere, calliope music hummed. Scotty felt it in his toes. He remembered his nightmare.

The man led him through the maze, and as they passed further in, the sound grew, a rousing tune that had no place in the hanger. Their path opened into an area furnished with a lab table, stools, and a recliner. Beyond the area was a slowly spinning carousel. In the recliner was a tuxedoed man with a horse's head, the medallion around his neck.

Scotty walked slowly up to the man. A calliope animal—a tiger—lay upon the lab table, its pole removed, its stirrups detached. A half-sized giraffe, partially painted in oranges and yellows, turned its unpainted head toward Scotty.

The man breathed, and as he did so, the medallion, with clown side up, caught the light of the tiffany lamp on the end table next to him.

Rhineheart came to his other side and tried to lift the medallion off the horse-man's chest. His fingers turned white as he gripped it, but the medallion would not move. He looked at Scotty and shrugged.

Scotty took the medallion in his hand. It was stuck fast to the flesh of the Professor's chest. Just above it the grey fur of his horse's head formed a window's peak below his adam's apple. His nostrils flared as he slept, and his chest rose gently.

"I tried soaking it," Rhineheart said. "I thought it might be glued."

Scotty knew it wasn't glued.

The Professor was drinking dreams.

If he were Neutrino Kid he could bend over and peer into the Professor's body and see what was holding the medallion there. But he wouldn't be able to interact. He wouldn't feel. No, he needed to be substantial to solve this.

Scotty watched the Professor's chest rise slightly. He remembered the thermometer that hung on the outside of his bedroom window. It hung on a suction cup, and to get it off the window he had to lift up the edge of the suction cup with his fingernail. Otherwise the vacuum was too strong.

He couldn't bend the edge of the medallion; it was solid metal. But the Professor's chest wasn't solid.

Scotty reached up to his muzzle and squeezed the nostrils shut. The Professor shook his snout, trying to toss Scotty's hand loose, but Scotty held tight. Finally the Professor broke free and his chest rose in a gasp.

The medallion rose too, and Scotty lifted it off the Professor's chest with a soft pop.

The Professor's eyes flashed open and he screamed, a neighing-yell. His muzzle swung back and forth, catching Rhineheart as he tried to calm the horse-man.

The medallion was rubbery in Scotty's hands, like calamari. He held it firmly in both hands, and began to squeeze, his thumbs on the clown's face. The medallion deflated slowly, as if air was passing out of it through a small hole. The air swirled around him, seemed to buoy him up. For a moment his feet didn't touch the ground. Colors—painted horses, elephants, buffalo—flashed in front of him, touched his cheeks. Some entered him through his eyes, through his nostrils. Others flew into the air, away. He breathed deeply, swallowed the animals.

The horse-man's tossing slowed, and he grew still, his dark eyes watching Scotty. His chest rolled, and spittle trailed out of his mouth.

Finally, he said, "Those weren't your horses." The Professor's voice was deep.

Scotty nodded. "No." His muddled brain was clearer than before, clearer than it had been in a week.

No, he'd never dreamed of horses until a few months earlier. Then he knew where the horses had come from. He knew who they belonged to. That wasn't his dream; the carousel wasn't his fear.

"Some of them belonged to the Bevers. You know who they are?"

"I know."

The horse-man eyed Scotty. "You know too much for a little boy." To the other man, he said, "Rhineheart, take the boy home!"

"May I keep this?"

The horse-man glanced at the medallion then shrugged. Then he seemed to reconsider. "No!" he said, swiping at it and missing. He glared at Scotty and tossed his head. Then he sighed, a whinny. "Fine. I won't use it again. I don't even want it near me." He tossed his arm. "Take it. Rhineheart, take the boy away!" He covered his too-large face with human hands.

Rhineheart whispered, "Thank you," as they slipped through the maze.

As they drove past Mr. Peligusi's house, the pine trees leaned against the wind in mock salute.

The Bever smiled at him as he entered his room.

"Think you've won, have you? Think you've figured it all out."

"Yes. I have." Scotty squeezed the medallion in his hand. It purred.

The Bever reached up and grabbed the edge of its frame with its hands. Scotty had never seen its hands before.

"No, you haven't, you little brat. I'll have your soul. I'll feast on your heart. Your sweetmeats will be my slop." It began to pull itself out of the picture; its left hand, painted white below the frilled cuff, reached out to steady itself on Scotty's bookshelf. The nails were blood red. "You've let all the horses go. They've come back to me. All of the ones that fool had collected."

The Bever reached for him and teetered on the edge, off balance. It pulled its chest over the sill of the frame, came a half-foot closer. As it leaned forward precariously, half-in and half-out of the frame, Scotty slid the medallion's loop around the Bever's neck.

Like a spill of paint slurping back into its can, the Bever flattened against the wall, wailing, cursing, trapped again.

Scotty straightened the medallion between the row of blue buttons on the Bever's chest. The Bever tried to lunge at him with its teeth, but it was harmless now. Scotty didn't even bother to tape its mouth.

That night the painted horses came, and Scotty rode the stallion bareback.

The End

Story copyright Paul Melko, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com