Carnival of Feasts: a short story

Carnival of Feasts

It was just after three in the morning when my little brother disappeared.

The sound of pipe organ music drifted in through the bedroom window, pulling me from sleep. Groggy, I peered out to find Manny, his tiny seven-year-old frame, scamper across the dew-damp grass. He headed towards the fallow field lying next to our house. The night was moonless, but an eerie blue light illuminated his trek.

Frightened, I called his name, but his steps never faltered, and I lost sight of him behind a few stray trees growing at the edge of the yard. I dashed down the stairs and out the open front door after him. Manny's head start was too great for me. When I caught sight of him again, he ran across the shimmering threshold of a carnival gate. A blue, spectral light emanating from striped tents, lighting the area. The disquieting organ music floated on the lazy summer breeze. As Manny crossed through the gate, the carnival vanished.

"Manny?" I said again, stopping short. A nervous sweat broke out across my back, and I shivered in the breeze. Regaining some of my senses, I closed the gap between where I stood, and where the impossible carnival had been. "Manny!" I yelled. I spun in a tight circle searching for some sign of what I'd just seen. Nothing. I stood alone. Manny had vanished.

I sprinted back to our farmhouse, screaming for my mom and dad. They bumbled down the stairs, bleary eyes and sleep-tousled. I told them what I'd witnessed. My words spilling out in a disjointed rush.

"It was just a bad dream," my father said. His rough-worked hands rubbed my back.

My mother, seeing something in my wild eyes, knew my hysterics were more than a bad dream. "Where's Manny?" she asked.

"I imagine he's sleeping," my father replied.

"He's a light sleeper. He'd never sleep through all this." She turned and ran up the stairs to Manny's room. That's when the screaming started. It was the worst sound I've ever heard.

The next morning came in a blur of police questions and ringing phones. Our modest home overflowed with milling uniformed officers and plain-clothed detectives. They tapped our phone and parked a surveillance vehicle posing as a white work van down the road. A support team of family and friends formed a search team and walked neat lines across the field and into the woods beyond. Cadaver dogs sniffed the area.

The detectives questioned me over and over. Had I seen the kidnapper? Did I recognize anyone? Where was the last place I'd seen Manny?

At first, I told them about the carnival and the ominous blue light, but as morning wore into afternoon I retreated into myself. 'It must have been a dream' I told them. They brought in a child psychologist who diagnosed with me post-traumatic stress disorder. I'd witnessed something, but the trauma barred me from remembering the specifics. The blue light likely meant I'd seen a blue car or van. The carnival? An obvious throwback to the old-fashioned one my brother and I had visited with our parents the day before.

The police told us to stay home. To stay by the phone in case ransom demands came through. My father thought this idea ridiculous. We weren't rich. We had nothing worth ransoming. Instead, he used his computer and printer to run off a full ream of missing posters. He would have printed more, but we ran out of paper. Manny's little league picture smiled from the right side of the page. Vital information took up the left: height, eye color, ethnicity, weight, date of birth, last seen. I shuddered. My animated and smiling baby brother, reduced to simple descriptors.

My father and I loaded ourselves and the posters into the family station wagon and headed for town. My mother wouldn't leave the house. She sat by the phone, hand resting on the earpiece, praying it would ring with demands to get her baby back. I imagined her tallying our family's wealth in her head, wondering how fast one could sell a home. My father and I didn't talk on the short drive. After the interrogations, I welcomed the silence.