THE LAST RAKOSH
1
"I don’t know about this," Gia said as they stood outside the entrance to the main tent. A faded red-and-yellow banner flapped in the breeze.
THE OZYMANDIAS PRATHER ODDITY EMPORIUM
Jack checked out the sparse queue passing through the entrance: A varied crew running the gamut from middle-class folk who looked like they’d just come from church to Goth types in full black regalia. But nobody looked threatening.
"What’s wrong?"
"It looks like some sort of freak show." She glanced quickly at Vicky, then at Jack. "I just don’t know."
Her meaning was clear.
"Truth is, I’m having second thoughts myself."
"You?" Gia’s faint, pale eyebrows lifted. "If the most politically incorrect man I know is hesitating, we’d better turn around and go home."
Jack had seen a flyer for the show and thought this might be a unique experience for Vicks, an exhibit of weird objects and odd people doing strange tricks—sort of like a bunch of Letterman’s "Stupid People Tricks" under one roof. But he didn’t want to take an eight-year-old girl to a freak show. The very idea of deformed people putting themselves on display repulsed him. It was demeaning, and people who paid to gawk seemed to come off as demeaned as the freaks on display. Maybe more so. He didn’t want to be one of them.
"Go home?" Vicky said. "I thought we came out to see the show."
"I know, Vicky," Gia began, "but it’s just that—"
"You said we were going!" Her voice started pitching toward a whine. She turned to Jack with a hurt look. "Jack, you said! You said we were gonna see neat stuff!"
Vicky was very good with that look. She knew it wielded almost limitless power over Jack.
"You might be scared by some of the things in there," he told her.
"You promised, Jack!"
He hadn’t actually promised, not in so many words, but the implication had been there. He looked to Gia for help, but she seemed to be waiting for him to make a decision.
"Well," he said to Gia, "I think she’ll be all right." When Gia’s eyebrows lifted again, he added, "Hey, I figure after what she went through last summer, nothing in there’s going to scare her."
Gia sighed. "Good point."
Jack led them to the ticket booth where he forked over a twenty.
"One adult, two children, please."
The guy in the booth, a beefy type sporting a straw boater, looked around.
"I see two adults and one kid."
"Yeah, but I’m a kid at heart."
"Funny."
With no hint of a smile, Mr. Ticket slid two adults and one child plus change across the tray.
Inside, the show seemed pretty shabby and Jack wondered if they’d been had. Everything looked so worn, from the signs above the booths to the poles supporting the canvas. Glance up and it was immediately apparent from the sunlight leaking through the canvas that the Oddity Emporium was in dire need of new tents. He wondered what they did when it rained. Thunderstorms were predicted for later. Jack was glad they’d be out of here and on their way back home long before.
As they strolled along, Jack tried to classify the Ozymandias Prather Oddity Emporium. Yeah, a freak show in some ways, but in many ways not.
First off, Jack had never seen freaks like some of these. Sure, they had the World’s Fattest Man, a giant billed as the World’s Tallest Man, two sisters with undersized heads who sang in piercing falsetto harmony—nothing so special about them.
Then they came to the others.
By definition freaks were supposed to be strange, but these folk went beyond strange into the positively alien. The Alligator Boy, the Bird Man with flapping feathered wings . . .
"Did you see the Snake Man back there?" Gia whispered as they trailed behind the utterly enthralled Vicky.
Jack nodded. These "freaks" were so alien they couldn’t be real human beings.
"Got to be a fake," he said. "Make up and prosthetics."
"That’s what I thought, but I couldn’t see where the real him ended and the fake began. And did you see the way he used his tail to wrap around that stuffed rabbit and squeeze it? Almost like a boa constrictor."
"A good fake, but still a fake." Had to be.
One aspect of the show that reinforced his sense of fakery was that there was nothing the least bit sad or pathetic about these "freaks." No matter how bizarre their bodies, they seemed proud of their deformities—almost belligerently so. As if the people strolling the midway were the freaks.
Jack and Gia caught up to Vicky where she’d stopped before a midget standing on a miniature throne. He had a tiny handlebar mustache and slicked-down black hair parted in the middle. A gold-lettered sign hung above him: Little Sir Echo.
"Hi!" Vicky said.
"Hi, yourself," the little man replied in a note-perfect imitation of Vicky’s voice.
"Hey, Mom!" Vicky cried. "He sounds just like me!"
"Hey, Mom!" Little Sir Echo said. "Come on over and listen to this guy!"
Jack noticed a tension in Gia’s smile and thought he knew why. The mimicked voice was too much like Vicky’s—pitch and timbre, all perfect down to the subtlest nuance. If Jack had been facing away, he wouldn’t have had the slightest doubt that Vicky had spoken.
Amazing, but creepy too.
"You’re very good," Gia said.
"I’m not very good," he replied in a perfect imitation of Gia’s voice. "I’m the best. And your voice is as beautiful as you are."
Gia flushed. "Why, thank you."
The midget turned to Jack, still speaking in Gia’s voice: "And you, sir—Mr. Strong Silent Type. Care to say anything?"
"Yoo doorty rat!" Jack said in his best imitation of a bad comic imitating James Cagney. "Yoo killed my brutha!"
Gia burst out laughing. "God, Jack, that’s awful!"
"A W. C. Fields fan!" the little man cried with a mischievous wink. "I have an old recording of one of his stage acts! Want to hear?"
Without waiting for a reply, Sir Echo began to mimic the record, and a chill ran through Jack as he realized that the little man was faithfully reproducing not only the voice, but the pops and cracks of the scratched vinyl as well.
"Marvelous, my good man!" Jack said in a W.C. Fields imitation as bad as his Cagney. "But now we must take or leave. We’re off to Philadelphia, you know."
"You should stick to your own voice," Gia said as Jack guided her away from the booth.
Jack didn’t tell her that something in a pre-rational corner of his brain had been afraid to let the midget hear his natural voice. Probably the same something that made jungle tribal folk shun a camera for fear it would steal their souls.
"Look!" Vicky said, pointing to the far end of the midway. "Cotton candy! Can I have some?"
"Sure," Gia said. "You go ahead and pick the color and we’ll be right there."
Jack smiled as he watched her go. Always good to give Vicky a head start if a decisions such as shape and color were involved. She agonized over those sorts of minutiae.
As they passed a booth with a green-skinned fellow billed as "The Man from Mars," Gia took Jack’s hand.
"Vicky seems to be having a great time." She leaned against him. "And to tell the truth, I’m kind of enjoying this myself."
Jack was about to reply when a child’s scream pierced them, froze them.
Jack looked at Gia and saw the panic in her eyes. It came again, unquestionably Vicky's voice, high-pitched, quavering with terror.
Jack was already moving toward the sound, traveling as fast as the crowd would permit, bumping and pushing those he couldn't slide past. But where was she? She'd been moving ahead of them down the midway only a moment ago. How far could she have gone
in less than a minute?
Then he spotted her skinny eight-year-old form darting toward him, her face a strained mask of white, her blue eyes wide with fear. When she saw him she burst into tears and held out her arms as she stumbled toward him. Her voice was a shriek.
"Jack! Jack! It's back! It's gonna get me again!"
She leaped and he caught her, holding her tight as she quaked with fear.
"What is it, Vicks? What's the matter?"
"The monster! The monster that took me to the boat! It's here! Don't let it get me!"
"It's okay, it's okay," he said soothingly in her ear. "No one can hurt you when I'm around."
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gia hurrying toward them. He gently peeled Vicky off and transferred her to her mother. Vicky immediately wrapped her arms and legs around Gia.
Gia’s expression fluctuated between fear and anger. "My God, what happened?"
"I think she believes she saw a rakosh."
Gia's eyes widened. "But that's—"
"Impossible. Right. But maybe she saw something that looks like one."
"No!" Vicky cried from where her face was buried against her mother's neck. "It's the one that took me! I know it is!"
"Okay, Vicks." Jack gave her trembling back a gentle rub. "I'll check it out." He nodded to Gia. "Why don't you take her outside."
"We're on our way. After what I've seen here, I wouldn't be half surprised if she was right."
Jack watched Gia slip through the crowd, holding her daughter tight against her. When they were out of sight he turned and headed in the direction Vicky had come.
Wouldn't be half surprised myself, he thought.
Not that there was a single chance in hell of one of Kusum's rakoshi being alive. They'd all died last summer in the water between Governor's Island and the Battery. He'd seen to that. His incendiary bombs had crisped them in the hold of the ship that housed them. One of them did make it to shore, the one he'd dubbed Scar-lip, but it had swum back out into the burning water and never returned.
The rakoshi were dead. All of them. The species was extinct.
Next to a stall containing a woman with a third eye in the center of her forehead that supposedly "Sees ALL!" sat an old circus cart with iron bars on its open side, one of the old cages-on-wheels once used to transport and display lions and tigers and such. The sign above it said "The Amazing Sharkman!" Jack noticed people leaning across the rope border; they'd peer into the cage, then back off with uneasy shrugs.
This deserved a look.
Jack pushed to the front and squinted into the dimly lit cage. Something slumped in the left rear corner, head down, chin on chest, immobile. Something huge, a seven-footer at least. Dark-skinned, manlike and yet . . . undeniably alien.
Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort, or a guy in a costume. A damn good costume. No wonder Vicky had been terrified.
But it couldn't be the real thing. Couldn't be . . .
Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. One of the things he remembered about the rakoshi was their reek, like rotting meat. He caught a trace of it here, but that could have been from spilled garbage. Nothing like the breath-clogging stench he remembered.
He moved close enough to touch the bars but didn't. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing.
Jack whistled and said, "Hey you in there!"
The thing didn't budge, so he rapped on one of the iron bars.
"Hey—!"
Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that almost seemed to glow in the shadows.
Imagine the offspring of a tryst between a giant hairless gorilla and a mako shark: cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose.
Spike-like talons, curved for tearing, emerged from the tips of the three thick fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge shark-like head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered across the metal flooring toward the front of the cage.
Along with the instinctive revulsion, memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant, the disappearances, the deaths . . .
Jack backed up a step. Two. Behind him he heard the crowd "Oooh!" and "Aaah!" as it pressed forward for a better look. He took still another step back until he could feel their excited breaths on his neck. These people didn't know what one of these things could do, didn't know their power, their near indestructibility. Otherwise they'd be running the other way.
Jack felt his heart kick up its already rising tempo when he noticed the wide scar distorting the creature's lower lip. He knew this particular rakosh. Scar-lip. The one that had kidnapped Vicky, the one that had escaped the ship and almost got to Vicky on the shore. The one that had almost killed Jack.
He ran a hand across his chest. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the three long ridges that ran across his chest, souvenir scars from this thing’s talons.
His mouth felt like straw. Scar-lip . . . alive.
But how? How had it survived the blaze on the water? How had it wound up on Long Island in a traveling freak show?
"Ooh, look at it, Fred!" said a woman behind Jack.
"Just a guy in a rubber suit," said a supremely confident male voice.
"But those claws—did you see the way they came out?"
"Simple hydraulics. Nothing to it."
You go on believing that, Fred, Jack thought as he watched the creature where it crouched on its knees, its talons encircling the iron bars, its yellow eyes burning into him.
You know me too, don’t you.
It appeared to be trying to stand but its legs wouldn’t support it. Was it chained, or possibly maimed?
The ticket seller came by then, sans boater, revealing a shaven head. His cold dark eyes gleamed with a strange glee. He carried a blunt elephant gaff that he rapped against the bars.
"So you're up, ay?" he said to the rakosh in a harsh voice. "Maybe you've finally learned your lesson."
Jack noticed that for the first time since it had opened its eyes the rakosh turned its glare from him; it refocused on the newcomer.
"Here he is ladies and gentleman," the ticket man cried, turning to the crowd. "Yessir, the one and only Sharkman! The only one of his kind! He's exclusively on display here at Ozymandias Oddities. Tell your friends, tell your enemies. Yessir, you've never seen anything like him and never will anywhere else. Guaranteed."
You’ve got that right, Jack thought.
The ticket man spotted Jack standing on the wrong side of the rope. "Here, you. Get back there. This thing's dangerous! See those claws? One swipe and you'd be sliced up like a tomato by a Ginsu knife! We don't want to see our customers get sliced up." His eyes said otherwise as he none too gently prodded Jack with the pole. "Back now."
Jack slipped under the rope, never taking his eyes off Scar-lip. The rakosh didn't look well. Its skin was dull, and relatively pale, nothing like the shiny deep cobalt he remembered from their last meeting. It looked thin, almost wasted.
Scar-lip turned its attention from the ticket man and stared at Jack a moment longer, then dropped its gaze. Its talons retracted, slipping back inside the fingertips, the arms dropped to its sides, the shoulders drooped, then it turned and crawled back to the rear of the cage where it slumped again in the corner and hung its head.
Drugged. That had to be the answer. They had to tranquilize the rakosh to keep it manageable. Even so, it didn't look too healthy. Maybe the iron bars were doing it—fire and iron, the only things that could hurt a rakosh.
But drugged or not, healthy or not, Scar-lip had recognized Jack, remembered him. Which meant it could remembe
r Vicky. And if it ever got free, it might come after Vicky again, to complete the task its dead master had set for it.
The ticket man began banging on the rakosh's cage in a fury, screaming at it to get up and face the crowd. But the creature ignored him, and the crowd began to wander off in search of more active attractions.
Jack turned and headed for the exit. A cold resolve had overtaken his initial shock. He knew what had to be done.
2
It was late when Jack parked at the edge of the marsh on a rutted road. It ended a few hundred yards farther out at a tiny shack sitting alone near the Long Island Sound. He wondered who lived there.
A mist had formed, hugging the ground. The shack looked ominous and lonely floating in the fog out there with its single lighted window. Reminded Jack of an old gothic paperback cover.
He stuck his head out the window. Only a sliver of moon above, but plenty of stars. Enough light to get him where he wanted to go without a flashlight. He could make out the grassy area the Oddity Emporium used for parking. Only one or two cars there. As he watched, their headlights came alive and moved off in the direction of town.
Business was slow, it seemed. Good. The show would be bedding down early.
After the lights went out and things had been quiet for a while, Jack slipped out of the car and took a two-gallon can from the trunk. Gasoline sloshed within as he strode across the uneven ground toward the hulking silhouette of the main show tent. The performers' and hands' trailers stood off to the north side by a big eighteen-wheel truck.
No security in sight. Jack slipped under the canvas sidewall and listened. Quiet. A couple of incandescent bulbs had been left on, one hanging from the ceiling every thirty feet or so. Keeping to the shadows along the side, Jack made his way behind the booths toward Scar-lip's cage.
His plan was simple: Flood the floor of the rakosh's cage and douse the thing itself with the gas, then strike a match. Normally the idea of immolating a living creature would sicken him, but this was a rakosh. If a bullet in the brain would have done the trick, he’d have come fully loaded. But the only sure way to off a rakosh was fire . . . the cleansing flame.
Jack knew from experience that once a rakosh started to burn, it was quickly consumed. As soon as he was sure the flames were doing their thing, he’d run for the trailers shouting "Fire!" at the top of his lungs, then dash for his car.