DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.
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Evander Geddes couldn't suppress a gasp on seeing the child.
Chubby and rosy-cheeked, the lad appeared to be about six years old. Innocent and trusting as they all were at that age, with a cherubic smile.
Geddes' pulse was pounding; this was the first child of any description he'd seen in months. But he made himself take his eyes off him, and peer through his screen door at the two adults.
Both were middle-aged...the boy's grandparents, he guessed. Despite his own lack of interest in women, he knew most men would find this one still desirable, with her raven hair (surely it was dyed?) and full breasts. Her dress was garish by local standards, the neckline scandalously low-cut. Her presumed husband was pale and scrawny, with a careworn face and thinning gray hair; he had the look of a man who was used to being invisible, overshadowed if not dominated by his wife.
There was nothing remotely threatening about either of them.
"Yes?" Geddes said in his benign, sugary voice.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," the woman said earnestly, "but could we use your phone? If you got one, that is? Our car done broke down."
"I been tryin' to fix it," her husband put in. "Cain't see what's wrong."
Geddes spotted the ancient jalopy with its hood raised, smack in the middle of the road. The surprising thing was not that it had broken down, but that such a hunk of junk had gotten them anywhere.
"Of course, of course," he chirped. "I don't know much about cars, so I can't help you there. But you're certainly welcome to use the phone. But first, you must be tired -"
"I don't know who to call," the man said sullenly. Geddes guessed he'd wanted to continue poking at the engine, and ringing a stranger's doorbell had been his wife's idea. "We're headin' west, don't know a soul in these parts."
Geddes' spirits soared. Good. Perfect!
"Come in," he insisted, "and we can think about it, figure out who you should call. I don't get many visitors - it's a treat for me! We can think about your car trouble while you and your little boy relax with a nice mug of cider."
The child's mouth puckered in a gratifying Oooh!, and Geddes knew they were hooked.
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Five minutes later he emerged from the kitchen, prattling happily about his enjoyment of visitors. He carried a tray with four mugs of cider...of which all but one were drugged.
As he entered the parlor, the only person he saw was the woman. She was standing so near the door that he thought for a moment the man and boy must have gone back outside. He walked toward her. But before he could ask about the other members of the family, he was stopped dead in his tracks by an icy voice that came from just behind him and to his right.
"We've changed our minds, Mr. Geddes. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we won't be havin' none o' that cider."
The words weren't necessarily alarming, but the tone was something else again. Geddes was quaking as he turned slowly to his right. "Oh, come now, I can't believe none of you are thirsty -"
He stopped, with what he knew was an audible gulp, as he saw the man. Could this possibly be the same one who'd entered with the woman and child?
The drab clothing, he realized, was exactly the same. And his visitor was still pale and lean. But Geddes had thought him scrawny; now he saw his build as tough and wiry. His hair was neither gray nor thinning, but brown, on the shaggy side.
And his face... I know faces. How could I have been so mistaken? It was the face of a man in his twenties! But granite-hard, aged beyond his years by cruel experience.
I know faces...
Oh my God. I know this face.
He remembered running his hands over it, fascinated by its contours, while it still had an innocence, a naiveté, of which no trace remained. He'd murmured about its foreshadowing of "a powerful man who will soon emerge." But when he said that, he hadn't expected that he - or anyone else! - would actually encounter that man.
He let out a whimper, and the tray dropped from his suddenly nerveless hands. The mugs shattered on the floor.
Without looking down or changing expression, his visitor said, "Oops." Then he smiled. But the smile didn't reach his eyes. He said smoothly, "I know you admire children, so I thought I'd let you see what Ruthie's son Gabe looked like when he was six. Cute little tyke, wasn't he? They do grow up, though. If you look behind you, you'll see he ain't so little now."
The words look behind you sounded like an order. Geddes was afraid to turn his back on the speaker, but even more afraid to disobey. He half-turned, stole a quick look - and wished he hadn't. Gabe was well over six feet tall, built like a linebacker. He still had a childlike quality, but his eyes shone with devotion to his comrade.
He was undoubtedly capable of breaking Geddes in half.
Geddes shot a glance at the woman, only to realize he couldn't expect any help from that quarter. She was hanging on every word, but was clearly neither surprised nor alarmed by the strange goings-on.
Trembling, he looked back at the man who was capable of changing his and others' appearance. "I - I don't understand..."
"Oh, I think you do. I've been here before, an' I can see in your eyes that you remember. Don't think I told you my name, though. It's Ben Hawkins. You can call me Mr. Hawkins."
"Y-yes, sir. Mr. Hawkins." Geddes was in imminent danger of wetting his pants.
"You're gonna tell me the truth." The voice was relentless. "I know I didn't fall asleep on your couch an' have no bad dream. You drugged me an' made a mask o' my face, didn't you? Tell me!"
"No! That's crazy!"
Suddenly, Geddes was flung against the wall and pinned there - even though no one had touched him. "Tell me the truth!" Hawkins roared.
Geddes did wet his pants. But by now he was too terrified to care. "All right, all right! I made a mask."
He was released from the wall, and sagged down on the floor.
"You're gonna give it to me," Hawkins said fiercely. "Now!"
"I can't! I - I don't have it. I gave it to someone else!"
"You'll tell me the truth, or so help me God -"
"That is the truth! I gave it away."
Hawkins grabbed him and yanked him up to a standing position; the younger man's eyes bored into him. "Who did you give it to?"
"To...B-Brother Justin. A radio preacher, Justin Crowe."
The woman let out a string of oaths.
Hawkins looked horrified, but only for a moment. Then he released his grip on Geddes - who managed, somehow, to stay on his feet - and told the woman, "It may not be so bad. I'm rememberin' somethin' strange that happened, a day or so after I left here." Turning back to Geddes, he demanded, "What was the mask for? What kind o' power did it give him over me? Don't lie. I can't read your mind an' see exactly what the truth is, but I will know if you're lyin', an' you won't like the consequences."
Geddes cringed. "I won't lie." He was utterly defeated. "If Brother Justin put the mask on, he would have been able to see through your eyes - see whatever you were seeing. That's all."
The woman snorted. "That's bad enough."
But Hawkins asked, "What would happen if he dropped an' broke it?"
"That would have made it useless for magical purposes, even if he glued the pieces back together." Much as he admired Brother Justin, Geddes hoped desperately that Hawkins had a reason to think that had happened; it would lessen the man's fury with him.
"A day or so later," Hawkins said slowly, "I had occasion to be movin' some stuff around, an' I picked up a big mirror. I didn't see nothin' in the mirror but my own face. But for some reason, the damn thing came out o' my hands, fell an' broke.
"It was almost like I dropped it 'cause I was startled by somethin' - but I wasn't startled. It was like I lost control o' my hands."
"That was it!" Geddes felt a wave of relief. "For some reason, Brother Justin was startled when he saw your face in the mirror. There was a link between you, and you dropped and broke the mirror because he dropped and broke the mask."
He let himself relax. But he only had a moment's respite; Hawkins fixed him with a baleful glare. "Don't think you're off the hook. To begin with, I got questions. What's your connection with Crowe?"
"N-none, really. I'd heard him on the radio, admired him. I turned the Church of the Air on after you left that night, and I had a sudden feeling that I should send the mask to him instead of keeping it for myself. A feeling that...that you opposed him in some sense, or would oppose him, and he needed to know more about you. But I just sent it to him without any explanation, or even a return address."
Hawkins pondered that for a minute. "I believe you," he said at last. "Next question. If the mask was real, that workshop I remember has gotta be real too. Where the hell is it?"
Geddes had hoped the man wouldn't pursue that issue. He said nervously, "In the attic."
"Shit." Hawkins appeared briefly disgusted with himself. "I just thought to look for a basement, never imagined no attic. Guess the drugs you gave me hadn't completely worn off." His eyes narrowed. "Where is it? Show me the stairs!"
A shaky Geddes led the little company into the kitchen, then reached up with a long-handled hook to open the trapdoor in the ceiling. A steep staircase descended into view.
Hawkins whistled. "Christ. How'd you carry me up an' down that thing when I was unconscious?"
"You weren't unconscious," Geddes explained. "You were drugged, too groggy to resist or remember anything. But you were on your own two feet, and I coaxed you up and down it."
Hawkins and the woman (who Geddes now guessed wasn't his wife) muttered oaths. Then Hawkins said, "All right. Now on to a big question. I remember you puttin' plaster o' - someplace - all over my face, not leavin' me no airway. Did you try to kill me?"
Geddes swallowed hard. "Yes."
The woman gave a sharp intake of breath.
Hawkins asked steadily, "Why'd you change your mind?"
"I - I didn't." Geddes shuddered, remembering the terror he'd felt at the time. "I tried in every way possible to suffocate you, but I couldn't. It was like you...c-couldn't die."
Hawkins nodded. He wasn't surprised, Geddes realized; he looked as if he'd received confirmation of something he'd already suspected. "Why'd you want to kill me in the first place?"
Shifting nervously from one foot to the other, Geddes made his first attempt at deception. "You were looking for Henry Scudder, an old friend of mine. He'd always acted as if he expected enemies to be after him, and I thought you were one."
"Liar!" With shocking suddenness, Geddes found himself spread-eagled against a wall again - this time with his head brushing the ceiling. "Scudder was the last person who'd want you to kill some stranger 'cause he might be after him. You woulda known that. Besides, I was barely nineteen at the time, couldn't o' looked like much of a threat."
"Let me down!"
After he'd said that, Geddes realized he should have phrased it differently. Hawkins said viciously, "Sure," and let him fall some eight feet to the floor. He landed in a crumpled heap.
As he painfully picked himself up, Hawkins said implacably, "Tell me the truth."
"All right!" Geddes was in tears. "I knew Henry had magical powers. I figured you were either an enemy or his son. Either way, I guessed you'd have the powers too, but were young enough that I'd be able to deal with you. Kill you. Then I could learn about the powers, maybe come to wield all of them myself."
"You knew Scudder had a son?" Whether or not Hawkins intended it, his focusing on that told Geddes he was the son.
"No. But I was sure that if he'd ever fathered a child, it would have been by his lost love Flora. I never knew her last name. But Henry could never stop talking about her. He'd only been with her a short time, after his service in the War, and you appeared to be the right age to be their child."
"Huh." For a moment Hawkins had a faraway look, almost wistful. Then he snapped back to the present. "Some 'friend' you were - but that don't surprise me. It leads me to another question. If you started out expectin' me to wind up dead, a mask that let someone see through my eyes wouldn't o' made no sense. So if you were tellin' the truth about the mask -"
"I was!"
"Then you changed the spell you were puttin' on it, or whatever, after you realized you couldn't kill me."
"Y-yes."
"So what was it originally meant for? How could a death mask give you my powers?"
"I'm not sure it could. I just thought it might, because it would enable me to...to..."
"What?"
"To...capture your soul." The words came out in a whisper, but Geddes didn't doubt that his captor had heard them.
"So you really have been capturin' souls." Hawkins' voice was dangerously calm. "All them children - you killed them by suffocation, an' captured their souls in the masks?"
"Not all," Geddes said defensively. "Only since - since your father gave me more powers than he intended.
"Before that, I killed them, yes. And kept the masks to remember them by. The mask I wore while I was making yours was of the first child I ever killed." Now the whole story came tumbling out. "I just wanted children to play with! And they wouldn't stay with me, play with me, any other way. So I killed them, and for a little while, I played with them. Dressed them and undressed them, like dolls. Took them to bed with me and cuddled them. Cuddled, that's all. I never touched their - you know what." He was a child in many ways himself; he perceived himself, rightly or wrongly, as being completely asexual. "But I couldn't keep them longer than a day or so -"
"I get the picture." Hawkins seemed paler than before. "An' my pa tried to give you some power - I think I know why - an' gave you more than he intended?"
"Yes. He never realized it. But after he left, I discovered I could create several different kinds of magical masks. When I've captured a soul, I can look through the mask and view, selectively, incidents from the person's past. The child's past - that's all I cared about, till I was tempted by your powers. Reliving the incidents, experiencing them with a child's innocence and sense of newness." I am a child - I have a right to be one! Why am I trapped in an old man's body?
Hawkins looked ill. But he kept asking questions. "How the hell did you get away with killin' all them kids?"
Geddes was surprised that he needed to ask. "I never harmed any local children. Just snatched migrants passing through - the occasional Indian or Gypsy, but mostly Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl. In many cases the children had already lost their parents to dust pneumonia. They were traveling with groups of migrants, but no one was paying close attention to them, or cared when they drifted away." He didn't mention that when necessary, he'd killed adults as well (the fate he'd planned for the supposed grandparents of the child he'd targeted today). "To the locals, I was a kindly old retired carny living on his savings, earning a little extra by repairing dolls and other toys. Most times it was the parents who brought the toys in - I didn't even see their children.
"But there haven't been any migrants for months now. They've all gone. Even the locals have started moving west, in a last wave..." He sniffled, wiped tears from his eyes.
"I feel for you," Hawkins said sarcastically. "Really got your hopes up when I showed you Gabe as a six-year-old, didn't I?" He smirked. "But don't be sad. You are gonna make a mask today."
"Wh-what?" Geddes was bewildered.
"No child involved, an' nothin' you'll get to keep. But at least you'll be usin' your skill. Hell, I'll even pay you for the damn thing."
"But...what? Who?"
"Who do I want a mask of? Myself, o' course."
Geddes found this incomprehensible. "You want me to make another mask of your face?"
"Yep," Hawkins said coolly. "But things will be a lot different this time. I won't be drugged, an' you'll leave me an airway an' make the whole process as comfortable as possible. Ruthie an' Gabe'll be hangin' over you - an' you know that if I ain't satisfied, you'll regret it!
"First, though, I want you to confirm somethin' I think I got figured out. The reason Scudder gave you some power was that he wanted to give his mother a magical mask of his face, right?"
Geddes nodded, eager now to ingratiate himself. "That's right. He told me he had powers, but he couldn't just take a completed mask and put some magic in it himself. The magic would have to be put there by the actual maker, and my skill was needed to make the mask."
"An' I'm sure that mask didn't let his blind mother see what he was seein'," Hawkins continued, " 'cause he had her an' all his folks believin' he was dead. I think I know what she saw through it. But you tell me anyhow."
"Of course. The mask gave her the ability to see, psychically, things that were happening in her house and the surrounding area. Especially what her young kin were up to."
"That's what I thought." Hawkins didn't look particularly happy about his correct guess. "He was afraid them louts would abuse her, an' he wanted to protect her by givin' her just enough psychic ability to make them afraid o' her powers. They probably never knew her 'sight' depended on the mask.
"But I happen to know it got broken, an' she must be havin' a hard time without it. So I want to give her a mask o' my face that will work the same way. I assume that's possible?"
Geddes wanted to say And I assume you broke the one she had. But he didn't dare. He settled for a polite, "Certainly. And it won't matter whether she believes you alive or dead."
"One more question. Will the mask only work for kin?"
"No." Geddes found this question puzzling, since Hawkins presumably intended it for use only by his grandmother. But he told him, "Anyone who puts it on will see interesting things that are happening within a range of a few square miles."
"That's good," Hawkins replied, with a grim smile. " 'Cause there's no way I'd take your word that you've made what I asked for. After you make it, Ruthie can test it, an' my own powers will tell me whether she's reportin' things that are real.
"Now let's head upstairs an' get to work."
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Their sojourn in the workshop got off to an inauspicious start, from Geddes' point of view. Gabe stared up at the shelves of children's masks for several minutes, then burst into tears. When Ruthie tried to comfort him, he said plaintively, "There's children in pain, Mama!" Geddes was torn between longing to add the sensitive youth's soul to his collection, and under the circumstances, fervently wishing him elsewhere. But Hawkins gave his friend some whispered reassurances, and work on the mask began.
By nightfall it was complete, and the finished product had been tested to Hawkins' satisfaction. He asked how much Scudder had paid for his mask, received a truthful answer, and handed over twice that sum.
But while an amazed Geddes was gaping at the bills he held, Hawkins said imperiously, "Listen up." When he had the older man's full attention, he continued in a tight voice, "You're a worm, Geddes. You don't deserve to live."
Geddes was dimly aware of the money slipping through his fingers and scattering on the floor. "I...I don't..."
"Oh, I am gonna leave you alive. But I want you to know I'm doin' it for one reason, an' only one. I might need you again. Can't think of a reason why I would, but I've learned not to be too quick in figurin' somethin's impossible.
"You're gonna continue livin' in this house, Geddes, an' you ain't gonna hurt anyone, ever again. I'm capable o' lookin' in on you whenever I choose, even if I'm hundreds o' miles away. I'll prove that by lettin' you see me in visions.
"Don't ever forget what I'm tellin' you now. If you so much as talk to a child, I'll know. An' I'll take a revenge that'll make you wish you were already in Hell."
Geddes dropped to his knees. "I promise, I swear, I'll never harm anyone!" Blinded by tears, he choked out, "Th-thank you for not killing me, Mr. Hawkins. And for p-paying for the mask. But please, please, take it and go!"
"Just what I intended," Hawkins said, in a suddenly casual voice. He picked up his mask. "Ready, Ruthie? Gabe?" He strolled toward the staircase.
But just before reaching the trapdoor, he stopped. Turned back, with a malicious smile on his face. "There is one more thing to be done here, though. Gabe...restrain Geddes!"
Geddes hadn't let himself think, consciously, of what else Hawkins might do. But he knew at once what it was. Worse than killing him, far worse! But even as he screamed No!, Gabe was seizing him in a viselike grip from which there was no escape.
He could only look on - shrieking, then blubbering in utter despair - as Hawkins and Ruthie smashed every one of his collection of masks.
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The End