"Boo!" came the first tentative yell.
"Get out of here!"
"Dirty biker!"
"Go home, faggot!"
Someone picked up a small stone from the ground and threw it. The stone clanked off the bars of the chimp cage.
Malcolm listened to the shouts and jeers and tried to concentrate on what Bateman Styles had told him to do. Styles had been kind to him and asked no questions, and he did not want to let the showman down. He concentrated. Nothing happened.
The boos got louder. Styles began to sweat as he anxiously watched Malcolm through the bars. The marks were getting carried away by their own voices. One of them heated a penny with a cigarette lighter and tossed it into the cage.
Malcolm blanked Bateman Styles out of his mind. He got off the stool and walked forward in a half crouch to seize the bars. He looked down into the taunting faces and summoned hack a series of images. The fire. The trap. The hunters. Dr. Pastory and the table. Kruger and the cattle prod. Kruger hurting Holly.
He felt it begin.
The jeers of the crowd died in their throats. For a moment there was silence in the tent. Bateman Styles, along with the paying customers, stared in awe at the boy in the cage.
"What's happening to his eyes?" a plump girl asked her boyfriend.
"Look at his face," somebody else said in a strangled tone.
"And his hands! My God, they're growing!"
"The teeth! Holy shit, the teeth!"
Styles watched the contortions of the boy in the cage. Even though he had seen the process before in reverse, he was stunned by what was happening in there. The growls that came from the boy could surely not be human.
He let the transformation continue until blackened hairy hands started to bend the inadequate cage bars. Then he caught the message flashed from the dangerous green eyes. This must go no further. Without ceremony the showman snatched the curtain back in front of the cage.
"That's it, my friends. I think each and every one of us can agree that we got our dollar's worth here today. Grolo the Animal Boy. There will be another show in one hour by the clock. Tell your friends. I thank you."
The dozen people who had witnessed the performance filed out silently. Once outside, they all began to talk at once, the general topic being speculation on how it was done. They scattered excitedly over the small carnival grounds to spread the word.
When he had seen the last of the customers leave, Bateman Styles hurried back through the curtain and helped Malcolm out of the cage. He was relieved to see that the boy looked normal again, if somewhat sweaty. Malcolm gave him a tired smile.
"How did I do, Bate?"
"Lad, you were sensational. We will never again have a crowd that small, or I do not know this business. How do you feel?"
"Okay. A little tired."
"Think you can do it again in an hour?"
"Yeah. I found out there's a kind of a trick I can use to make it easier."
"Whatever the trick is," said the showman, "don't tell me. There are some things a man should not know. Go catch a nap in the trailer if you want. I'll call you in time for the next show."
"I think I'll just walk around, if that's all right."
"Sure. If you want to see any of the shows, take a ride, tell 'em you're working with me. You're one of us now."
One of us. Beautiful words. He really wasn't, of course, but it was as close as Malcolm had come to belonging anywhere in a long time. He strolled around the small carnival, savoring the tinny music from the merry-go-round, the thumping drum from the kootch show. He inhaled with pleasure the raw smell of sawdust mingled with cooking grease and cotton candy. He gazed happily at the colored lights strung above the walkways. When he told the other carnival people he was working with Bateman, they accepted him without question. Nobody asked what he did or where he came from. He was almost one of them.
As Styles had predicted, the crowd was much larger for the second show. Many who had been at the opener came back to see it again. Jackie Moskowitz himself came in, positioning himself in the front row, where he would not have to look through people's armpits. Styles shortened his spiel this time and let the act speak for itself. Again the Animal Boy was a sensation.
When they closed out the week in Silverdale, there was no more talk of leaving Bateman Styles behind. The Animal Boy did bring in more than the kootch show and the ring-toss combined.
The sponsoring civic organization was so pleased with their share of the carnival's take that they invited the Samson Supershow back to Silverdale for another stand late in the summer. Jackie Moskowitz, with holes to fill on his schedule, was only too happy to oblige.
As they traveled north with stops at Manzanar, Crestview, Mono Lake, Markleeville, Sattley, Ravendale, and a dozen other California towns nobody ever heard of, the fame of Grolo the Animal Boy spread. People were driving fifty or a hundred miles to see the amazing change of boy into beast. Bateman Styles was supremely happy. He had a real attraction again. Jackie Moskowitz was talking long-term contract.
As for Malcolm, he was as close to being content as he could remember since childhood. Sometimes he would awaken in the night from a terrifying dream, then relax as he recognized the tacky trailer of Bateman Styles. There was still the nagging worry that someone would find him and take him back to answer for the business at Pastory's clinic, but over the weeks that faded, too.
It happened in mid-July. The Samson Supershow was playing a small town outside Red Bluff. Two men from Los Angeles paid their dollars and walked into the show, and Malcolm's life was about to be changed forever. By mid-July, with the Samson show playing a town called Castle Rock, Malcolm had relaxed enough to laugh out loud, something he had not done since his days with Jones. He felt sometimes that his life here was too good to last.
He was right.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
"What am I doing here?" Louis Zeno complained.
"What's the name of this town again?"
"Castle Rock," said Ted Vector. He was a bony, loose-jointed man with quick eyes. He wore a bag of camera equipment slung over a shoulder.
"Castle Rock," Zeno repeated. "That's not a town; that's a dance craze from the thirties."
"Don't be so negative. Once you see what I've got for us here, you will forever remember Castle Rock as our El Dorado."
Zeno came to a stop on the sawdust midway and stared at his companion. "Tell me something. What made you think of me, anyway?"
"Actually, it was Ed Endicott who suggested you."
"The editor of National Expo?"
"Do you know another Ed Endicott? He said he liked the way you were handling that werewolf business down in Pinyon until you got yourself in trouble."
"Yeah, trouble. I could have got myself eaten," Louis Zeno muttered.
"So when I told him what I had here, he said you'd be the perfect one to write it."
"Wonderful. Now I'm the National Expo's werewolf man."
"You would rather be the two-headed-calf man?"
"Okay, okay." They walked on a short distance in silence. Then Zeno said, "You really think this Animal Boy is legitimate?"
"What the hell, he's close enough. They're talking about him all over the state. Ed Endicott was convinced enough to give me an advance, and you know the Expo don't throw money around."
Zeno sighed. "Let's get on with it, then. This'd better not turn out to be some turkey in a rubber mask."
Grolo the Animal Boy had his own sign outside the tent now. Two garish paintings flanked the platform where Bateman Styles was delivering the pitch. One showed a figure with the body of a boy and the head of some nightmare animal with huge tusks leering out from between two trees. The other had the Animal Boy carrying off a terrified, near-naked woman in the tradition of l940s horror movies.