From Twisted Roots Read online

  “Just now, when I went to throw the trash away. She was over there.”

  I knew that couldn’t be true. My daughter was home on summer vacation being babysat by her aunt, but I found myself hunting the crowded room for any sign of Molly anyway. Arianna took my distraction as an opportunity to flee back to wherever her parents were, but I didn’t care. My coffee forgotten, I half ran from the cafeteria to the locker room where I tore through my purse to find my phone.

  “Come on, Candace,” I muttered into the mouthpiece while it rang. Any minute my sister would pick up and laugh at me for getting so worked up over nothing. She’d put Molly on and I’d be regaled with tales of their arts and crafts and adventures going down to the community pool. But the phone just kept ringing.

  “Damnit, Candace!” Why couldn’t my sister be attached to her cell like everyone else?

  I threw the phone back into my purse and hurriedly changed into my “civilian” clothes. A small part of me felt bad about leaving my scrubs balled up on the floor in front of my locker, which I wasn’t sure I’d even remembered to close, but I was in too much of a rush to take them to the laundry chute. I tried to call Candace a few more times on my way to the parking garage, but each time it went to her voicemail. My tires squealed as I pulled out from my spot and descended to ground level. I was lucky that there was no oncoming traffic, because I didn’t even slow down as I hit the street.

  I probably passed the same billboard every day for however long it had been up, but I’d never noticed it before. A red light forced me to come to a rubber-burning halt. I anxiously drummed my steering wheel, urging the light to change, when I saw the sign.

  “Do you know where your child is?”

  Panic coiled and writhed in my stomach. For a moment, I thought the coffee I’d managed to get down was going to make a reappearance all over my windshield.

  “It’s just a stupid ad by one of those responsible parenting groups,” I said aloud, “Stop looking for signs.”

  I flipped on the radio to help drown out the dark thoughts shrouding my mind. It was playing a song I’d never heard before, some country lite number sung with a slight twang.

  “If I die young, bury me in satin; Lay me down on a bed of roses; Sink me in the river at dawn; Send me away with the words of a love song”

  When the singer started crooning about a mother burying her baby, I laid on my horn and blew through the intersection, light be damned. It took a car nearly side swiping me to give me pause and think that maybe I was overreacting.

  Maybe the kid knew Molly from school. They were about the same age, maybe she’d seen me picking her up and thought it’d be a funny joke to scare Molly’s mommy. And everything else was all coincidental; it was just the result of me being hyperactively aware.

  I started to slow down as rational thoughts overtook the hysterical ones. Then I passed a doll lying on the side of the road, her arms and legs thrown askew, her head twisted so that she was facing too far over her shoulder. I might have ignored it, except that its hair was the same shade of auburn red that Molly’s was. I was a woman of science and logic, but when the signs were all there, I couldn’t ignore them. All lights were optional after that.

  The drive from the hospital to home was only ten minutes, but it stretched on for an eternity. I almost let out a sob when I turned onto my quiet side street. The speed limit in the residential area was 25, but I was pushing 60 and even that was with great restraint. I had to get home. I had to see my child.

  The thump was so sudden that I barely had time to register it. A flash of color, a scream, and the terrible crunching sound of metal beneath tires. I slammed on my brakes and skid to a halt about half-mile down the road. I clutched my steering wheel in a white knuckled grip and gasped for breath. My heart thudded painfully in my chest. I could barely bring myself to look in the rear view mirror.

  A woman was on the ground in the middle of the road beside a little girl, frantically screaming for help. She held the child, who hung limply in her arms, against her chest. The girl’s bike had been dragged for a distance down the street and lay in a tangled mess a few feet behind my rear bumper.

  I don’t know how I managed to get out of my car. I don’t know how I made my way back to the pair before my knees finally gave out and I collapsed beside them.

  Streaks of red lined Molly’s pale face. Her helmet, the blue Frozen one she’d begged for at the store, was split so that Elsa no longer had a complete face. My daughter’s arms and legs were thrown askew, and her head rested at an odd angle against her aunt’s shoulder. Candace was screaming, perhaps at me, maybe still just for help, I couldn’t make it out. I couldn’t touch Molly. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything except stare at my baby’s face.

  The ambulance came later; I don’t think it took long. They wrapped my little girl in a white sheet and put her on a gurney bound for the hospital morgue. Police tried to question me, but by then the only sound I could make was an animalistic wail. I had no words. As they guided me into a cruiser, I looked back to where Molly had lain. Where her blood still stained the asphalt. Standing on the sidewalk just beyond the police tape, grinning and hugging her teddy bear, was Arianna. She waved as the officer closed the door behind me.

  As Long As There Are

  Children

  Times were different when I was young. Used to be that if the sun was shining, the kids were out. Whatever they got into was between them, their buddies, and their bikes. As long as everybody made it home in one piece without the cops on their tail, there were no questions asked.

  That summer, the one when the rumors started, I was finally old enough to tag along with my big brother when he ventured out with his friends. I knew he didn’t really want me there; he was only letting me go because Mom told him he had to, but it didn’t matter. I was getting to hang out with Billy and his boys, the coolest guys anywhere, in my nine year old opinion.

  They were all older than me, twelve and thirteen. They swore and had fire crackers, and sometimes one of them would nab a couple smokes off their parents when they weren’t looking. Billy wouldn’t let me try any of them, but just standing in the circle while the others took drags made me feel like a real Bad Boy.

  It was during one of these sessions, all huddled behind the Woolworth’s, trying to look devil-may-care and inconspicuous at the same time, that Mac Stanson brought up the carnival.

  “It’s out in the woods off the old highway,” he said after a short pull from the cigarette. Smoke curled in thin tendrils from between his lips with every word.

  “Bullshit,” Billy said. I couldn’t help whispering the word immediately after with nervous glee.

  I’d never said such a grown up thing before. I glanced around with some hopefulness to see if anyone had noticed. They were all too focused on Mac, though.

  “No, it’s there,” he said with a dismissive scoff. “I heard some kids at the arcade talking about it first; they said they heard rumors about it. It’s supposed to come around every few years or something like that. But I’ve got a first-hand account; my cousin’s best friend was cutting through the woods to get to the pond last weekend and actually saw it. It looked huge, and there were rides, and he said it smelled like cotton candy and peanuts. He talked to the guy running it, the Barker or whatever, at the entrance, and he said it’s open all summer. Free for kids. No adults.”

  It was the kind of rumor only bored kids caught in a small town summer lull would pay attention to. We were buying into it, hook, line, and sinker. An impressed murmur rippled across the group. A whole carnival with no supervision sounded like utopia.

  “So how come nobody’s heard of it then?” Billy, still skeptical, asked. I quickly changed my expression to match his doubtful one.

  “‘Cos it’s a secret, shit for brains,” Mac said. “It’s like...only certain people can go to it. You gotta know about it. Otherwise all the parents would be there too.”

  “So we kno
w about it, can we go to it?” Kirk Blatts, Billy’s best friend and the biggest kid in the whole eighth grade, swiped the cigarette from Mac. Kirk eyed him with a raised brow, a look he’d been trying to perfect for ages. I thought it made him look more confused than anything else.

  “We just gotta find it first,” Mac replied.

  “It’s a big carnival in the woods; how hard can it be?” Billy said.

  Talk of the carnival went on for the rest of the week. Maps were examined, and we hung out at the arcade and mall trying to overhear more conversations about it from other kids. We were careful not to let our parents in on the planning. We took the “no adults” rule very seriously.

  Robert bowed out first. His mom smelled smoke on him when he got home one night and grounded him for the next month. Then Jerry remembered he had a family thing to go to. When the scheduled morning actually arrived for us to bike out to the woods, only Billy, Mac, Kirk, and me were left; my place in the group was shaky at best.

  “Noah’s not gonna be able to keep up,” Mac griped.

  “I will!” I promised earnestly, looking to Billy for support. It stung a bit that he didn’t immediately jump to my defense.

  He frowned, obviously weighing his limited options, and finally shrugged. “He can ride on my handlebars.”

  “Come on, man,” Mac said. “We’d have more fun without him!”

  “Mom says I have to let him come when he wants.”

  “That’s bull—” Mac started to complain again, but Kirk punched him soundly in the shoulder.

  “Quit bitching and let’s go,” he said.

  I’d never been so grateful for the big lug in my life.

  I perched on Billy’s handlebars with a wide grin and held on tight as we lurched out of our driveway. We rode out of the neighborhood, straight down Main Street. Past all the mom and pop shops that weren’t open yet, across the wooden footbridge to the old highway. The road was pockmarked with deep, wide potholes that the other two made a game of jumping over. Billy swerved more carefully around them, struggling a bit to keep us upright.

  Even at that early hour, the sun was glaring down at us. I urged him to go faster toward the woods and their welcomed shade. He just grumbled at me to shut up.

  Kirk skid off the pavement first to sweep down the embankment, followed closely by Mac. Billy and I came last at a more cautious pace.

  The bikes had to be abandoned shortly after we crossed the tree line. There was no good path, and it was quickly decided that we’d be better off hoofing it. I stuck close to Billy as we delved deeper into the woods, equal parts nervous and excited. The guys were talking about all the treats they were going to eat and the rides they’d go on, but I just focused on keeping up, determined to prove Mac wrong.

  We wandered aimlessly, unsure of where exactly we were going, but certain that we were going to take as long as we needed to find it.

  The morning dragged into a sweltering early afternoon and I’d started to lag behind the others. My mouth was dry, my legs were tired from kicking through underbrush, and my clothes were damp and clinging with sweat. It was Mac who was doing all the whining, though.

  “I’m thirsty! My feet hurt! It’s hot!”

  It was hard not to feel smugly superior to him after all the moaning he’d done about me earlier. At least I could keep my mouth shut about how miserable I was. His long string of complaints earned him some sharp remarks from Billy and Kirk, and the three of them started bickering back and forth until I shouted at them to be quiet. Mac was the first to whirl around, ready to lay into me, but my wide eyed smile stopped him short.

  “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  They all paused and sniffed the air. One by one, their faces lit up.

  “Cotton candy!” Billy said.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Kirk tilted his head up like it might give him a better sense of direction.

  Like a pack of hunting dogs, we followed those enticing scents through the trees. They were sweet and warm and thick, the kind of smells that only comes from one kind of place: a carnival.

  When we heard the music, distinctly cheerful and tinny, we knew we were going the right way. We started to walk faster and faster until we were running, all of our previous aches and pains forgotten so close to the Promised Land. The woods thinned around us until we spilled into a large clearing, directly beneath a banner featuring a painted-on smiling man in a top hat. Large, blocky letters read: “Welcome!”

  We’d arrived!

  Beyond the banner, we could see the tips of rides and brightly colored tents poking over a wooden fence. There were music and smells too! It was heavenly; there was no other word for it.

  Waiting to greet us, standing tall atop an overturned bucket, was the same man who was on the banner: the Barker. He plucked his top hat off and waved us over with it, smiling broadly from beneath a thin mustache.

  “Ah, welcome, welcome!” he said, hopping down to greet us each with a shake of the hand. “Why, you’re the first ones here! Lucky you! You’ll have the whole place to yourself!”

  We cheered and whooped, and the Barker told us to follow him to the ticket booth where he handed us each five tickets.

  “These can be used freely on any ride, on any game. Once they’re gone, there’s a price to pay!” he said with a wag of his long finger.

  “Aw, man!” Mac groaned. “We were told it wouldn’t cost a cent.”

  “And so it won’t, my boy, and so it won’t!”

  “But you said—”

  “Don’t worry yourself about that. Just be mindful of your tickets and go enjoy the carnival!”

  That was good enough for us. The Barker ushered us to the gate and we were off, each of our five little blue tickets clutched tight in our fists. It was empty inside, both of workers and other children. The lights were on though, the music was playing, the popcorn popping, and, for a moment, we were the luckiest kids alive.

  Kirk ran for the shooting gallery where little wooden ducks with targets on their sides were sitting in front of mounted BB guns. He fed a ticket into a slot on the booth and the two rows of ducks churned to life, going back and forth while Kirk took aim. He missed his first two shots, but the third hit its mark and the unfortunate duck folded down. A siren went off, and a string of lights around the backdrop flashed. The Barker appeared, stepping out from behind the booth to reward Kirk with a lollipop.

  None of us knew how he’d gotten all the way back there from the gate without any of us noticing.

  We went from booth to booth, each taking turns at the ones that interested us. I spent two tickets trying my hand at ring toss. Billy knocked over milk bottles, Mac popped balloons with darts, and each of us tried the strength test. Every time the lights flashed and the siren sounded, the Barker would be there with a treat for the victor.

  The tilt-a-whirl was next, and then we were rushing toward the small Ferris wheel and its half-dozen seats that would lift us just high enough to see over the tents.

  I can’t say if Mac really meant to trip me or if we just collided with one another and I ended up going down. Just before we reached the ride though, I found myself flat on my back and seeing stars after smacking my head against the ground.

  He barely paused to glance down at me. He laughed once, then shoved his ticket into its slot and got into one of the slow moving buckets after Kirk. Billy shouted a nasty cuss after him and crouched beside me.

  “You ok?” he asked, probably more worried he’d get in trouble if I was hurt than he was about me.

  “I think so,” I said.

  I sat up, gingerly touching a hand to the back of my head. I scowled down at the ground, trying not to cry like a big, fat baby, when I heard this terrible creaking: the squeal and protest of old metal. It seemed even louder now that the music had become fainter and more disjointed, like a cassette tape about to tangle. Looking up, I realized right away where the sound was coming from.

  T
he Ferris wheel, which had only a moment before been gleaming steel, was little more than a rusted, skeleton of its former self. It had stopped rotating, and sitting in two of the warped buckets were Kirk and Mac. They were laughing and pointing like they thought they were high overhead instead of still at ground level. The creaking sounded again every time they shifted their weight.

  Billy was still asking if I was sure I was ok, unphased by any of it.

  “W-what happened to the ride?” I looked to my brother in confusion, and he returned my stare, equally baffled.

  “Huh?”

  “The ride! It’s all wrong; it’s old and broken!”

  I pointed at it, desperate for him to realize that something wasn’t right. He looked over his shoulder, but his expression didn’t change. By then, the others were hopping out of the buckets and heading over to us.

  “What’s with him?” Kirk nodded down at me.

  “He tripped,” Billy said.

  I wasn’t even bothered that that wasn’t what happened at all. I was too busy looking around at the carnival. There were no lights, no music except that ghostly, off key melody coming from somewhere in the distance. Even the smell had gone, replaced by that of mildew and rotting wood. I leapt to my feet, turning in circles. I only grew more upset, more frightened, when I saw the state of things.

  Tents were dirtied and torn. The rides were run down and unusable. Stalls once filled with food and sweets were empty, except for remnants of packaging that looked like it had been nibbled on by rodents. All of the brightness and good cheer had been washed away by age, and sun, and decay.

  The other kids didn’t notice and were still walking toward the spinning swings.

  “This is my last ticket,” Mac said

  “Mine, too,” Kirk held his up.

  “I’ve got two more,” Billy gloated.

  “It doesn’t matter, he said we could still do stuff after we use them all,” Mac was quick to remind them.

  I tried to call after them, to tell them that the swings they were climbing into were just cracked plastic on dangerously groaning chains. I couldn’t find my voice though. They sat on the broken-down ride, their hands raised over their heads, hollering and carrying on as if they were swooping around high in the air.