Americarnie Trash

By Jon Jacks

The way the Americarnie tell it, we used to run this country we now tour with our cheap carnivals. Then again, we also claim we’re descended from angels! The truth lies somewhere in-between: in the darkness beyond the lights, a place of freaks and tortured souls where the Carnival Diabolus lies. That’s where Lorn has gone: me too, if I’m to save him. I’m just not sure how to return...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Jul 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310782275

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Trash, tramps and thieves – townsfolk see them all as interchangeable when it comes to describing Americarnie folk.

Even so, whenever we’re in town, they’ll come to see our show.

To have their fortunes told. To buy miracle cures. To get drunk. To make fun of us. To luxuriate in their sudden sense of superiority.

They’re laughing now, at our stupidity. At our ridiculous beliefs.

It’s a free show. One we put on out of pride. To give an idea of whom we once were.

Whom we believe we once were.

Not that we’re really entitled to hold that belief.

It’s blasphemy. Leaving us open to arrest. Even execution.

Therefore it has to be a comical show. To show we’re not serious.

It also has to feature other acts, like juggling, fire-eating, the trapeze. To ensure they come to watch.

A story that goes back almost three thousand years, trivialised.

The shepherds below me, their nervous conversations coming to an end, look up in fear as they see me fly overhead.

The light from the oil lamps, directed my way with angled mirrors, lights up my glistening gown, my glistening wings, as I soar high through the air.

The simple shepherds crumple to the ground. They almost bury their faces in the earth in their terror.

‘Now I pray you, I lie down on this green!’ one wails.

‘On these fears; repentance I mean!’

The small yet incredibly high plinth I have to land on, like most of the trapeze apparatus, is in darkness.

It all adds to the sense of the miraculous.

But it makes it all the more dangerous for me.

I land lightly, gracefully, on the plinth. I stretch out my vast wings, peer down imperiously on the cowering shepherds far below me.

The light cast on me glows all the brighter, adding to the sense that I am a fearful messenger from God.

‘Where to should ye turn?’ the bravest of the shepherds asks of me, daring to look up at last. ‘So, what is it I must say you?’

‘Rise, herd men!’ I cry triumphantly. ‘For now is he born! God is made your friend, now at this morn!’

Although still quaking, the shepherds begin to rise from the ground. Even so, they avert their eyes as they attempt to observe my gloriously glowing presence.

‘He be-stays at Bedlem, go see,’ I continue, hoping that my voice carries the necessary majestic tones, the hints of awe. ‘There lies that child, in a crib full poorly!’

My message to the shepherds delivered, I raise my arms; and soar off up, up into the darkness of the night sky.

*

Like our equipment, Jeserel is cloaked in the blackest materials.

With the ingenious interplay of light, the perfectly rehearsed moving of the mirrors, no one should have seen him swing down on his trapeze, snatch down at my raised arms, and pull me back up into the air with him.

As we reach the top of the curve, he throws me out into the air so that, briefly, I really am flying, with nothing supporting me but the momentum of the swing.

I twirl a few times in the air, letting my blazingly white wings wrap around me.

I reach out for Verelda’s outstretched hands, hoping she is out there in the darkness, ready to catch me.

*

As, in her turn, Verelda flings me up onto the highest point of the pole, the lights playing on me are covered in black sheets.

To the watching crowd, I appear to vanish as I soar ever upwards into the darkness.

Once again, however, it’s a darkness that makes it all so much more dangerous for me. I have to remember, through so many days of practice, where I’ll find the small platform I have to land on, the ropes I must grab for security.

My fingers curl around the invisible rope. My feet slip smoothly onto the minute wooden platform.

I sigh with relief, my heart almost bursting with the pleasure of knowing I’m safe once more. At least, that is, until my next appearance.

Far below me, the play goes on.

It’s a travesty, a disgrace.

If the audience could see me, they would see the weeping of an angel.

Yes, we adhere to the lines of an original Miracle Play: but we add our own devices, as we have to by law, to be sure of an audience.

The baby’s father places him across his shoulder, burps him. The fire-eater hiding in the darkness breathes out his fire, such that it seems to come from the baby himself.

The audience laughs.

The father holds the baby as if he has dirtied himself.

The audience laughs all the more.

The attendant shepherds wave their hands, as if wafting away a terrible smell.

‘Might I kneel on my knee,’ a shepherd asks, ‘some word for to say to that child?’

I fling myself out into the air, the light on me once more.

To the audience, I’m an angel flying. As, I’m reliably told, we used to do so long, long ago.

In the time when we still had wings.

The time when we ruled the earth.

His timing perfect, Jeserel catches me in mid-air. His hands tightly clasp around my wrists, catching me at the top of his curving swing on his trapeze.

As he swings back down, he takes me with him, letting me go as we near the plinth once more.

I land on the darkened plinth, my wings outstretched to give the impression that I’m hovering high above the manger.

‘In a crib was he laid,’ I pronounce imperiously. ‘He was poorly arrayed, both manner and mild.’

As I’m carried up into the air once more by the secure, outstretched arms of a swooping Verelda, I glance down at the shepherd juggling with his gifts.

It’s a parody of the tale we would once have told with such conviction.

As Verelda throws me out into the seemingly empty black air yet again, I wonder, as I always do at this point, if someone is going to be there to catch me.

Today, though, I don’t care.

In fact, I sense Jeserel’s hands rush by me in the darkness, clutching at nothing.

I haven’t reached out for them, as I’m supposed to do.

For today I can fly.

I can prove, today, to everyone fortunate to be watching, that all our tales are true.

I stretch out my arms beneath my