The Carriage

The carriage with the striking man and the something inside turned up in our village one warm April afternoon. The man was in his thirties, and yet he looked dead. Like something was leeching off of him every day. The beast inside was a pathetic little thing, in one corner of a untidy cage, but one look at his eyes told you it was not only good at surviving, it enjoyed the squalor and the filth. It was happy, in other words, regardless of the messiness of it all.

I remember the night all of us sat around the carriage and the man began his show. He opened his mouth as if meaning to speak, but only ever let out a wail.

No tears fell from his eyes; his expression was unchanged. But the voice did something to all of us.

Some thought this was all part of the show. Some, that the man was dumb, and was obviously asking for money for a creature he loved, but could no longer take care of.

But none of us could get up, or move away, or ignore him. He had us rooted to the spot, not exactly in terror, but out of something that approached curiosity, but stopped just short of the kind of enthusiasm curiosity could engender.

Me and my older brother sneaked out to where they were camping out, in the last and only night of their stay. The cage, as we had suspected, had been unlocked all along. The creature was still in there, in the filth and rubbish. We felt we should clean it up, and we did too. It took us the better part of an hour, at the most. The man had been sitting outside, smoking. He didn't stop us, or say anything, and we'd suspected this as well.

My brother had fallen asleep inside the carriage with the creature. I'd gone back home a long time ago, since I'd be missed. At dawn, I sneaked out to find the man lying exactly where he was, dead. And the carriage nowhere in sight. My brother had left with it, and the creature inside.

We never did figure out what the man had tried to say. But we gave him a decent burial. As for my brother, he had never been the sort to stay put. If not for this, something would have drawn him away eventually.