Free The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant Page B

smile. “I ever said something like that, god, my
mother would wash my mouth out with soap, I’d be grounded for a
year.”
    “Yeah, well —”
    A faint whirring startled her. A brief metallic
sputtering, and suddenly bells in the steeple clanged tunelessly,
and so rapidly she didn’t think to count them until Kitt said,
“Nuts, it’s five already.”
    Fran didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be. That
meant she’d been walking all afternoon, walking all over and not
once leaving town.
    “Hey,” said Kitt, “I gotta go. Maybe I’ll see
you tomorrow?”
    “Sure,” Fran said, still staring at the church,
at the dark rectangles in the stone tower the bells hid behind.
    Five o’clock?
    Then Kitt faced her toward Mainland Road,
gently. “Two blocks down that way, turn left, two blocks more. I
know you’re not lost, but that’s where you live anyway.” A grin
that exposed a missing tooth on the bottom. “See you.” And she ran
in the opposite direction, dragging her shadow behind her until she
rounded a corner and disappeared.
    I don’t like this place, Fran decided as she
headed for the place where she lived now, it wasn’t home; I don’t
like a place where people know where you live when you didn’t even
tell them.
    But by the time she reached her front walk, she
hated herself for already recognizing a few of the houses, for
thinking they weren’t all that bad, not really, some of them were
actually kind of pretty in a weird sort of way. Different colors on
one place. Red and cream; dark blue and white; grey and maroon.
They were big enough that it kind of looked good. Not old, not like
she first thought; at least not falling-down old.
    Even the house where she lived now — two stories
and lots of that stuff her mother called gingerbread, fresh white
and dark green, and her room right over the front-porch roof on the
left, she could tell from the curtains her mother had hung in the
open window. They waved at her. Slowly. Reaching out and sighing,
sliding back in. Suddenly she was mad enough to want to run in and
tear them down from their rods, stamp all over them, drag them
through mud and dirt and leave them in the street where cars would
run over them; and just as suddenly it left her, and left her
puffing as if she had run a million miles, making her so tired that
she nearly had to crawl to the steps, sit down, elbows on knees,
cheeks in palms.
    Trapped.
    “Fran?” Her mother calling from inside. “Fran,
we’re going to eat in a few minutes.”
    “Yeah, okay.” She hunched her shoulders, made
herself small, like the small brown bird with the touch of yellow
on his head that sauntered across the grass like he owned it. He
stabbed at something on the walk and moved on, popping into the
bushes that separated her house from the one next door.
    When she looked back to the street, someone was
standing on the sidewalk.
    She sat up abruptly; it was a boy. He wore a
baseball shirt with the sleeves rolled up, baseball pants, and
sneakers that had a black band around the edge. His hair was thick
and brown, and streaked with light, as if he spent most of his day
in the hot sun.
    “Hi,” he said, not shy at all.
    She sort of smiled, keeping most of it in
because she didn’t want to act like a jerk, because he was, after
all, only a boy even if he was cute.
    He looked the house over. “You just moved in, I
bet.”
    She nodded.
    He kept one hand in a hip pocket. Any minute now
she expected him to start chewing tobacco.
    “Fran, supper!”
    She grimaced.
    “Fran.” The boy worked his mouth around it like
something he hadn’t ever eaten before and wasn’t sure how it
tasted.
    “Short for Frances,” she told him brusquely,
blinking rapidly because she didn’t know she still had a voice, or
could use it. “I hate Frances. I hate Fran too, but it’s better
than nothing.”
    He grinned, his cheeks fat like a chipmunk after
a full meal. Then, to her embarrassment, he pointed at his cheeks,
poked at them.