Nightmare Carnival

THE POPPING FIELDS by Robert Shearman

Sometimes the children get so disappointed they cry. But that doesn’t matter, isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t that show they care? If the children cry, maybe they’re worth the extra effort. Joshua Shelton tells them to dry their eyes. He gives them a wink, but never a smile — he’s not good at smiles, that’s what Ruth’s good for, and right on cue there she is, doing her thing, bobbing her head and smiling away sweetly and looking so reassuring. Shelton will take from the distraught child’s hands the little creature he has made for them — something simple, like a rabbit, or a sausage dog, on lazy days it might even be a snake! He promises them something better. Something magical. He invites them into his caravan.

There’s nothing magical about the caravan, but it’s clean at least. Ruth is good at keeping things clean, she’ll have made the beds and tidied away all the breakfast things. At this stage the child ought to have stopped crying, and if it hasn’t Shelton gets impatient; if they can’t turn off the waterworks then how can they be expected to focus? They’re no use at all, he has to get rid of them fast. Maybe he’ll do them another rabbit, just for show he’ll give it bigger ears. Fair exchange, no robbery, then they’re out of the caravan, gone. But if the child shuts up — and the child usually does shut up — then the child can help let Shelton’s true skills out.

He’ll suggest they sit down. There’s really nowhere for the children to sit except on the bed, but he stands far away so they don’t feel crowded. He says that the first animal he made them wasn’t good enough, and that they were quite right to cry, if he had ever been given something so feeble he would have cried too. A rabbit, anyone can make a rabbit. Their mummies and daddies can make rabbits. The child itself could make a rabbit, if only it puts its mind to it — yes, you could! So what animal would you really like? In your heart of hearts, deep down, what do you most want to see?

A giraffe, the child might say. Or an elephant. Shelton knows that the child will have never seen a giraffe or an elephant, not for real, not even in books. The children who come are poor, they’ve never been to the city zoos, they may never even have gone to a library. The little pleasures they can expect from life are the circuses that visit the common ground, and these circuses are not the sort that can afford animals — a few clowns, the odd tumbler or two, but never a creature from the wild. A giraffe, the children will say, and they might know enough that it has a long neck — or an elephant, perhaps they’ve heard there’s a huge nose it can swish about. Shelton will give them an animal with a long neck or a trunk, that’s fine — but the rest is up to them. The rest they can work on together.

“Should there be horns?” he asks. “Should there be a pointy tail? What do you want your animal to look like?” The children will tell him. And he’ll wink again, never a smile but he’s always good for a wink, and he’ll reach for his balloons. Dozens of balloons sometimes, it only depends upon the limit of the child’s imagination. He’ll twist the balloons into each other, the balloons stretch and he likes the way that tautness prickles against his fingers. He’ll give them giraffes with humps and claws. He’ll give them elephants with wings and long tails, and tell them they can breathe fire.

He can create anything, so long as the child wants it enough. At times like this he is happy. At times like this he is God.

And then it’s done, and he gives the balloon creature to the child, and for all its complex meshing of limbs it is as light as air.

He shows the child out of the caravan then. Tears long gone, there’s only delight now, and maybe a little pride. “Don’t you forget,” Shelton says. “I’m the one who made it, but you’re the one who invented it, it couldn’t exist without you. So look after it.” He might have been with the child alone as long as half an hour, and the parents outside might have been getting worried. Ruth can only smile reassuringly for so long. But now the parents can see how thrilled their child is, and what a strange and beautiful beast it has for a friend. Maybe the parents will thank Shelton. Maybe they’ll give him money. That’s better still.

Then it’s back to the other children, the ordinary children, the dullards. The ones who’ll come by the caravan, and be happy with just a rabbit or a snake, and that’s fine, it’s fine, if that’s enough to make them happy then that’s all they deserve.

Joshua Shelton is not a member of any circus. He follows the circuses around, and he’ll pitch his caravan on the edge of the common, as far away as he can get whilst still catching their trade. Once in a while people will come and tell him to move on, and they’ll come with sticks, just in case Shelton objects; sometimes it’s the strong man flexing his muscles, sometimes it’s the ringmaster himself. One time it was a group of angry clowns and they were still in their makeup and their white faces cracked beneath their scowls and they did look funny! Shelton never gives them any trouble. If they tell him to go, he’ll go. There’s no need for any violence, there are always other circuses he can feed off.

But most of the time the circus ignores him. The children will go to the big top, they’ll watch the acrobats, they’ll get dizzy on the carousel and lob a few balls at the coconut shy. And on the way out maybe they’ll stop at the little caravan with the balloon animals, and the very lucky ones might cry with disappointment, and get something magical in return.

Joshua Shelton wakes up in the night needing a piss. He swings his legs over the side of the bunk, he drops to the ground. Quietly, gently — he doesn’t want to disturb Ruth sleeping in the bunk below. Ruth never stirs till morning, he knows that, but he can still be quiet, can’t he? He loves his daughter, he won’t have her disturbed for anything.

He always needs a nighttime piss, it’s regular as clockwork. He didn’t used to, his bladder was once so very well behaved. It must be age. He fancies he still looks fit, but there are grey hairs appearing in his beard. Soon he’ll look like his father, he thinks, and he remembers him only with that shock of white hair, and that suited him, didn’t it, it made him look grander and more mysterious. Maybe it’ll be good to be old. Maybe it’ll suit him too, and suit the act. And there’s Ruth, she’s getting older as well — she’s fifteen now, sixteen? She looks like a woman. And it was only so very recently she was no older than the children for whom he makes the balloon animals. The children used to stare at Ruth in jealous wonder — this girl got to live at the circus with the balloon man! And now they just look at her the way they would at any other grownup. Ruth sleeps on the lower bunk because when she was small he worried she might roll off the edge and fall and hurt herself. She was worried too. She doesn’t worry about such silly stuff any more, and really, if he’s going to wake up every night for a piss it might be more convenient if he took the lower bunk. But he won’t suggest it to her. He’s not quite ready to stop protecting her yet.

He stands on the common and relieves himself. The heat of the day still clings to the air, but there’s a slight breeze against Shelton’s skin and he shivers pleasantly. The summer has been warm, many families have come to the circus. He has been tailing this particular circus for nearly two months, and it has worked out well; no one yet has threatened him or told him to leave, some of the carnies may have glared at him but they’ve not said a word. The circus even has a big wheel — it’s not so very big, really, by daytime it looks rather twee and apologetic. Now at night it’s the tallest structure for miles, it seems to scrape the sky, and some of the bulbs studded about its circumference are still glowing. Shelton wishes everyone could see it like this. And he shivers once more, and is at peace.

When he goes back inside the caravan he almost falls over the open trapdoor.

Joshua Shelton stares at the trapdoor. It shouldn’t be there. His caravan doesn’t have a trapdoor. After all, where could it lead to, but to the ground half a foot below? And yet he can see that there is a staircase leading down from it, gripping the side of the trapdoor like a claw. It’s too dark to see how far down it goes, after the fourth rung it’s lost to the blackness.

He pinches himself to see if he is dreaming, and the pinch hurts, but that doesn’t prove anything, he could be dreaming that the pinch hurts.

He looks at Ruth, and she’s still fast asleep. He doesn’t want to leave her. But then, he won’t really be leaving, will he? This is all nonsense. He puts his hands to the rungs of the ladder. They are hard and metal and cold.

Slowly he starts to descend.

And he’s soon underground, or so he supposes — but it doesn’t feel like underground, the air is fresh, there’s no hint of mud or soil, there’s wide open space. He begins by counting the number of steps, but pretty soon he’s lost his place and gives up. And very soon he can’t see anything; he looks down to see how much farther he has to climb and he can’t even see his feet, and when he looks back up there’s no sign of the caravan at all. And suddenly he feels all alone, and that he’s clinging blindly to something he can’t see and can’t trust and that might give way at any moment, he’s clinging to the side of the world and the world has turned the wrong way round, and if he just lets go he will fall forever, he’ll fall right into the bowels of the earth, and no one will ever find him, no one could ever find him, he’s just a speck in a void without end and it seems almost arrogant that he’s pretending to be alive when his life has no point. And the only reason he doesn’t panic, the only reason he doesn’t let the claustrophobia overwhelm him and he doesn’t take his hands off the ladder and he doesn’t give himself to the pitch blackness — the only reason is that he knows this isn’t real, none of this is real, because if he believes this is real that would make him mad. And what would happen to his poor Ruth then?

So still, still he goes downward. Because upward now seems more frightening. Because he fears he could climb upward and never reach the top.

Only at the last few rungs is there any light. And the light is so sudden that it blinds him for a moment. It’s like he’s dropped into another world, and there was never any dark, there’s light all about, there’s no room for darkness here. All above him the blueness of the sky — it’s a thicker blue than he’s used to, gloopy like syrup, dripping down impossibly through the air — and beneath him an expanse of green, green in all directions, grass green and yet too green for grass, it’s as if someone has taken every blade of grass and painted it to make it greener still, and Shelton thinks why would they do that, why would anyone want to do that, he wants to scream it out. His fingers are sweating. They slip, they slide. He misses the rung beneath him. He lets go of the ladder. And it doesn’t matter, there’s no distance left to fall. He lands on the grass, and it is grass, and it’s wet with dew. And when he looks about him the ladder has gone.

He dry-heaves. The brightness hurts his eyes, and he screws them tight, he cries out for it all to stop. And maybe it does, because when he dares open his eyes again the pain has gone. And maybe it hasn’t, maybe he’s just got used to it.

Nothing but colour wherever he looks. The blue above, smashing into the green below. And himself, jammed fast beneath the two. And then, then the animals come.

Some of them float. At least, some of them try to float. But the air is escaping from their bodies, and as they lift off the ground they bump right back on to it in a stumble. He hears the air escape, it’s like a hiss that surrounds him. Some of them limp. The stronger animals try to help the others, sausage dogs carrying exhausted little rabbits on their backs, elderly elephants, constructed from a dozen different balloons, supported on the shoulders of the young.

Shelton wants to run. But there is nowhere to run. There’s just the sky, the grass, the animals all around.

They speak as one, although they have no mouths, he has never given them mouths. They speak, and there’s no anger, no irony. “Welcome,” they say. “Welcome to the Popping Fields.”

And now he sees them properly. The misshapen creatures whose limbs have been twisted into the wrong positions and cannot walk. Heads lopsided, ears and tails askew, what was he doing when he made them like that, was he drunk? The older animals who had once swelled full with air, now sagged and wrinkled. Shelton cries then. He can’t help it. He looks upon all these beasts that are suffering and he cries. And they urge him not to cry. Don’t cry, because he can help. And they ask him for that help now.

He tells them he doesn’t have anything sharp. They don’t seem to listen. They crowd about him on all sides, bobbing on top of each other to reach him first, they’re eager for his touch in a way he hasn’t known in years. His fingers are thick and blunt, but he tries his best — he picks up a dog, and he digs his fingers into its rubbery skin as far as they can go, and he can feel the dog howling in his head, and he doesn’t know whether that’s in pain or in anticipation — he claws at the rubber, he tries to break the surface of the balloon, and then, at last, at long last, he’s done it. And the dog pops. Thank God it pops. And it isn’t a loud pop, it sounds to Shelton like a sigh of relief.

He gets better, faster. And as he squeezes some animals with his hands, he’ll step down hard on others, and there is popping in the fields that night, there is so much popping.

And at times he thinks that he’s done, that there are no animals left to pop. And he can stop long enough to wipe the tears from his face. But when he looks again there are still more, they’re stretching into the distance as far as he can see.

He does not know how long he spends in the Popping Fields. The blue sky stays blue, there’s no sunlight here, no dark at night. His hands begin to blister, his tired arms ache. And the green grass beneath him is now hidden under a blanket of spent rubber — scraps of yellow, red, orange, all the colours of the rainbow. “No more,” he says. “Please. No more.”

“No more,” the animals agree. “No more. For now.”

And he turns, and there is the ladder again, and it has always been there. He need climb only a few rungs, and there he is, hauling his exhausted body into the upper bunk, Ruth still sleeping peacefully below.

The trapdoor is there the next night too, and the night after. Joshua Shelton feels the stirrings in his bladder and knows it must be time. The animals don’t mind him taking a piss on the green before he starts, they’re not proud. Each time he goes down the steps it’s a shorter climb, and as the weeks go by the Popping Fields seem ever closer to him, sometimes in the heat of the afternoon, as he sits outside his caravan making rabbits for the children, he feels he could close his eyes and drift back there and pop what he’s just created. He isn’t frightened. And he isn’t ashamed.

He doesn’t rely upon his fingers any more. He’s selected the sharpest knife he can find, one with a blade so keen he’s sure the animals don’t feel the slightest pain as he slits them. And he sleeps with it, tucked under his pillow, ready each night for when he awakes.

One evening he goes into the caravan and there’s Ruth — and she’s not cleaning, she’s sitting on her bed and playing with a pack of cards. He decides not to say anything. But she sees him watching, and she starts, and turns red.

“I’ve been practising a magic trick,” she says, lightly, as if that’s the most reasonable thing in the world. “Would you, do you want to see?” She tells him to pick a card. Wordlessly he does so, tapping one randomly with his finger. She shuffles the pack, smiles so charmingly at him. “Is this your card?” she says, holding up the nine of spades in triumph.

“Where did you learn this?” he asks. Still hoping for the ludicrous, that she’ll have taught herself — or hoping that she’ll lie and say she taught herself anyway.

She tells him she’s met a boy from the circus, and she admits she knows his name too, and that his name is Ed. Joshua Shelton asks his daughter if she’s going to see Ed again, and she says she doesn’t know; he asks her again, and she says they’ve arranged to meet the next day. “When you see this Ed of yours, you must ask him home for supper.”

Ed is polite, and arrives in clothes that are clean and may even have been ironed. He calls Shelton “sir,” and shakes his hand respectfully. He is short and slight, and that reassures Shelton somewhat, if it comes to a fight he’s sure he can best him. Shelton doesn’t know how old Ed is, can’t judge it; old enough to grow a moustache, not so old it doesn’t look absurd.

There’s no room in the caravan for three, and so the men sit outside whilst Ruth busies herself with the stew. The stew smells good, and Ed says so, and Ruth looks uncommonly pleased. They all eat as the sun sets, and Ed says it is the best stew he has ever tasted, and he grips the handle of his spoon in his fist too tightly for Shelton’s liking. There is a little tattoo of a star below Ed’s knuckles, and it is clumsy enough for Shelton to guess it’s been self-administered.

The meal is done, and Ed pats at his stomach and sighs, as if his belly is full and tight as a drum. He takes out a hand-rolled cigarette. “Would you like one, sir?” But Shelton refuses. Ed lights it with a match, and then, with a flourish of his fingers, causes the match to disappear. Ruth beams with delight, she claps. Ed beams right back at her, a big grin full of confidence, and gives her a wink — smiling and winking, Ed can do them both.

“You like tricks, do you?” asks Shelton.

“Indeed I do, sir,” says Ed, and grins even wider for his benefit, and Shelton distrusts the way that “sir” comes out of his mouth.

“Ed’s going to be a great magician in the circus,” says Ruth.

“I’m going to be a great everything,” says Ed. “I’m strong, and I can tumble a bit too. Why, I could do most of the circus acts myself!” Ruth seems to find this very funny.

“And what do you do now?” asks Shelton.

Ed shrugs. “This and that. I help out. But ‘now’ isn’t important, is it? You can’t settle for ‘now.’ ‘Now’ is no place to be.”

“I make balloon animals,” says Shelton, quite suddenly. “Would you like to see one of my balloon animals?” Ed shrugs again — sure, why not? So Shelton makes Ed a bright orange rabbit. “There you are,” he says to the young man. “That’s all yours. That’s just for you.”

“Why, thanks,” says Ed. “Well, look at that.” He takes the rabbit, and turns it over in his hands, and studies it. “It’s a fine piece of work.” He lifts it up close to see it even better, and he forgets there’s that cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth, and it brushes against the rabbit skin, and the rabbit goes pop. And Ed responds with mock alarm, both at the bang and at the rabbit’s unexpected disappearance — where’d it go, where’d it go? He looks all about him, in the air, over his shoulder, under his seat. “Mr. Shelton, I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t control my magical powers! Looks like I made your rabbit disappear!”

Later, as Ruth busies away the plates, she asks her father whether he thinks Ed is charming. “He is charming,” Shelton agrees. “I don’t want you to see him again.” Shelton isn’t used to having his decisions questioned, and when Ruth does so he refuses to say another word to her — she refuses to speak either — and that night both go to their bunks in silence.

The next morning Shelton is relieved to see that Ruth is back to normal. She is a little quieter than usual, maybe, but she’s a quiet girl. She makes him his coffee and his porridge and Shelton decides he’ll say no more about the upset of last night. The day is overcast and few people come to the circus, and even fewer to the caravan — still, Ruth sits outside with her father and smiles sweetly at the passers-by. At one point, when there has been no trade for over an hour, Ruth gets up from her chair, she says she’ll go for a walk.

“Should I come with you?” asks Shelton. “Let me come with you. It’ll be nice.”

“No,” she says. “I’m all right.”

Over the next few days she goes off for lots of walks, and Shelton knows he has to trust her, that it is the only way they can be happy — because they are happy, or, at least, have been happy, they were very happy once. He remembers it. And they will be happy again.

One night he wakes up and his bowels feel like they’re going to pop, and he looks from his bunk and sees in the shadows that the trapdoor is open and ready for him. He swings himself over the edge and on to the floor. “Where are you going?” he hears Ruth say, softly, in the dark.

He mutters something about needing a piss.

She is crying. She is trying so hard not to make a sound, he can hear her holding back the sobs.

“It’s all right,” he says. “We’re all right.”

“No,” she says, still soft, so soft there’s no colour to her voice at all, no emotion, and no accusation. “I’m so tired of the ‘now.’ ”

He can’t see her face, can’t see whether she’s facing him, whether she’s facing the wall. He wants to touch her. He wants to put his arms around her. He doesn’t.

“Go back to sleep,” he says. “I shan’t be away long, I promise.”

He goes down to the Popping Fields. The blue is so blue and the green so green and Shelton feels normal there. The balloon animals line up in front of him, they’ve stopped crowding now, they know he’ll do his best and despatch them as quickly as possible, they form an ordered queue and wait their turn. He kills them all swiftly and with compassion, he stays even longer tonight, he stays until his arms feel like rubber as well, and he feels their gratitude. But eventually he has to return to the caravan, he can’t stay loved forever—“No more for now,” they say, and up the ladder he goes. When he reaches the top he sees that Ruth has left. She has taken a few clothes, not much. There’s a note. I hope you unnerstan’, it says, and the handwriting is big and childish, too childish to be the work of someone who is setting out into the world.

Some days he wakes up and the anger has gone. It is such a relief. Because it has been burning inside him, and he doesn’t want to be angry, he doesn’t want to hate her. He wakes, and he sees it all from her point of view — it’s rational she left, even sensible — and he’s pleased for her, and proud of the courage she’s shown. He only wants the best for her. He’s only ever wanted the best. He couldn’t keep her forever. Didn’t he always know that? No one should have to spend their lives with a man like him — just like her mother said, it was the exact same thing, it was right that she left too, he should have expected it.

And then comes the rage. He feels betrayed. And so lonely, so very very lonely. He loved her with all his heart, he loved her sincerely. Maybe his love wasn’t up to much, but he deserves better than this, doesn’t he? He deserves some scrap of happiness. He’s not a bad man. He tries not to be a bad man. He goes through the caravan and picks up everything that was hers, everything she left behind — and more painful still, everything she ever gave him, the little pictures she drew him as a child, yes, what use will they ever be to him now! He gathers them up in his arms, his arms are full of Ruth, every scrap of her — and he flings them out the caravan door. Minutes later he’s rushing outside to rescue it all.

He goes to the circus and asks if anyone knows where he might find Ed. If Ed is coming back, if Ed has gone far — if they saw whether Ed left alone. No one seems to know Ed. No one has ever heard of Ed, or anyone who has ever been called Ed, they grunt and turn away from him. He goes to the circus a lot.

He loved Ruth with all his heart. He couldn’t have squeezed more love out of it if he’d tried, there was no more love in him to give. But it wasn’t enough. It so plainly wasn’t enough.

And one night he resists the call of the trapdoor — instead he gathers up all her belongings again, and takes them out on to the common, and before he can change his mind he sets fire to them and he makes himself stand and watch as they burn.

He hopes she is all right. Wherever she is, he hopes she is happy. He hopes she is so happy she never has to think of him. Or rather, he hopes she sometimes thinks of him, and it makes her a little sad. Or rather — no. He hopes she can’t sleep at night for the guilt of what she has done to him, that she dared leave him, that she dared have a life of her own. He hopes that every night she cries. He hopes that she cries so hard she can’t breathe. He hopes she chokes. He knows if she comes back to him he’ll fling his arms around her and never let her go. He knows if she comes back to him he’ll tell her he’s never loved her and he doesn’t want to see her again.

One day he goes to the circus and asks about Ed. They laugh at him. He gets angry, he knows they’re hiding something. He swings a punch. They punch back, and then they kick, and when they’ve had their fun they leave him bleeding on the ground. And a part of him is pleased it hurts so much.

They come that evening, of course — a whole posse of them, and they tell him they don’t want him on their patch any longer. They come with sticks. He pleads with them. He tells them he has to stay — because if he leaves, when his daughter wants to come home, how will she ever find him? They tell him his daughter is never coming home, and he knows it is true. He weeps. And then they beat him again, just for good measure.

That night he packs up the caravan and sets off to find another circus, and pretends that he is letting Ruth go, and she can live her life the way she needs to, and that running away is an act of great magnanimity and not cowardice.

Once upon a time the animals used to talk to him. He’d pick up a balloon rabbit in his arms, and maybe its ears would be in the wrong place, maybe the air would be running out and it’d look so weak and baggy. The rabbit would be in such pain. And it would tell him how frightened it was. “I want the pain to stop,” the rabbit would say, “but oh, Mr. Shelton, I’m so very scared of death.” And Shelton would stroke at its rubber skin, and shush it, and kiss it on top of its head. He’d say there was nothing to be afraid of. That soon the rabbit would be at peace and all its worries would be done, and it’d be in a place where the blue and green would be bluer and greener still. It would shudder in his arms with fear and he would stroke it patiently until the shuddering had stopped. “Thank you,” the rabbit would say, and Shelton would nod, and give a wink — and he’d stab at the balloon then, and the rabbit wouldn’t see the knife coming, the rabbit would never know a thing.

Since Ruth left, the animals don’t talk to him anymore. He doesn’t know why. Perhaps they’re no longer afraid. Perhaps they’re just used to death, and the sure comfort it must bring. He’ll pick up a balloon rabbit and it’ll sit in his arms quite complacently, it won’t even look at him. He won’t try to talk to it either. What’s the point?

During the day he sits outside the caravan. The children come by, maybe, and he’ll make them animals, maybe. Sometimes the children will be disappointed enough to cry, and he’ll suggest they follow him inside where he can give them something special. But that doesn’t often work. Not now Ruth isn’t there with her smile.

Once he makes a little girl cry so hard that it breaks through his numbness. He actually looks at the animal he has made her, and it’s just a snake, and it isn’t a very good snake, he hasn’t even blown much air into it. He apologises. He congratulates her on her discernment, it really is the most terrible of balloon snakes. Can he make it up to her? The girl’s father looks wary, but there’s a sincerity to Shelton’s desire to put things right. “Please,” he says, “please, give me a second chance.” The girl agrees.

He sits her down on the bed, on Ruth’s old bed. “Now then,” he says, “what animal shall we make together?”

She shakes her head.

“Would you like a giraffe? Little girls like giraffes. Or an elephant? Come on now. Whatever you most want.”

She shakes her head again, but she smiles. It’s a nice smile. It makes him think of Ruth.

“How about I just make you the very best animal I can?” he says. And he takes a dozen balloons — no, two dozen. He begins to twist them together, but carefully this time, with love, with art. “Fluffy ears? Nice long legs?” It’ll be something special, this will be his masterpiece. She’s still smiling, she’s looking at him, she won’t take her eyes off him, and it’s not with curiosity exactly, it seems like some sort of devotion. And once more he thinks of Ruth, the way Ruth used to stare at him when she was just a little girl, she wanted no one else in the world except her dadda. “Do you want horns? Shall I put on a tail?” His hands are moving fast now, he’s reaching for still more balloons, and look at all the colours, whatever this animal turns out to be it’ll be unusual! She puts her finger in her mouth, and nibbles on it, and he gives her a wink — didn’t Ruth do that exact same thing, the finger in the mouth, the nibbling, the head tilted to one side? Maybe he could persuade this girl to stay with him. He’d have to ask the father to stay too, of course. Maybe there’d be room for all three of them here. The girl is smiling still, but she’s looking away now, what’s she looking at, why has she turned away? He wonders where Ruth is. He hopes she is happy. He hopes that she misses him. “Nearly there, sweetheart,” Shelton promises the little girl, “nearly there, why won’t you look? Why not look at me?” And she takes the finger from her mouth, and looks, and she stretches her mouth into what will surely be the biggest smile ever, she stretches it so far that screaming comes out.

The father isn’t waiting outside any longer. The father is in the caravan. “What is it?” he shouts. “What have you done to her?” The little girl recoils, she can’t say a word, she just points her nibbled finger at the balloon animal Shelton is holding.

And at last Shelton takes a look at the creature. A strange contortion of limbs, sticking out at broken angles. Lumps that seem to swell at haphazard intervals — are they horns, stumps of leg — something crueller, are they cysts, they are yellow and beneath the darker colour of the main body they suggest something sickly, the yellow looks like pus. There’s not just one head, there’s at least two, there’s a third that might be a half-formed head, it’s impossible to say — the heads growing out of the first like tumours, and they all seem to have faces, and those faces are twisted in pain.

“Freak!” cries the father. “Freak!” And Shelton doesn’t know whether he means the creature or Shelton himself. Shelton thinks the man might hit him, but he’s lucky, instead the father has got his daughter in his arms, he’s holding her tight, he’s kissing her on the head over and over again. Shelton watches and feels a pang of envy.

He turns back to Shelton. The little girl has buried her face safely in his chest, she doesn’t have to see the monster or the monster who created it. “You’re evil,” he says to Shelton. Not even in anger, because that would have made it easier.

“It’s just balloons,” says Joshua Shelton. “Just balloons! I can pop them, easy as anything! I can pop them!” He takes the knife from under his pillow and he has at the creature, he stabs away at every one of the segments of its demented body, he slashes hard and they burst one after the other. He begins to laugh as he does so, this killing is easy, and there’s so much of it to kill. It seems that the balloons are red hot suddenly, they burn his fingers, but that’s all right, if it causes him pain then that’s just the way it has to be, and at last he is done, he has popped the last of them, and there’s broken rubber on the caravan floor still sizzling, and he looks around, and the father and the little girl have long gone.

Summer is over, winter’s passed too. And Joshua Shelton wakes in the night and there’s a storm raging outside. He listens to the rain for a few moments as it batters against the window, he feels the caravan rock in the wind. He gets up from his bunk.

The trapdoor isn’t there. “No,” he says, “no,” and he gets on to the floor, and feels for where it should be, he’ll pull it up with his fingernails if he has to — but it’s gone, it’s gone, there aren’t even the thinnest of cracks between this world and that for him to claw at and gain purchase. “No,” he says, and he looks around the caravan, as if perhaps he’s misplaced the trapdoor somehow, it’ll be by his bed, by the stove, in the ceiling even! “Come back!” he cries out desperately, and then, “I’ll be good!”

And then he hears it, faint, underneath the wind and the rain — a rapping at the door. He freezes, listens for it again, wanting to believe but not daring to believe. And — there it is again, weaker this time, someone wanting to be let in.

He opens the door. The rain blows in, he misses his breath. He can’t see. And then, in the blackness he sees a shape — it has given up waiting for him, it is moving deeper into the storm. “Wait!” he calls. “Please!” The figure cannot hear him, or doesn’t want to hear at any rate — and there’s nothing for it, he rushes out into the wet and the cold, his night clothes immediately sodden and sticking to his skin, there’s water in his mouth as he calls out again. He runs toward the figure, he reaches it, he touches its shoulder, he turns it around.

It is not a balloon. It doesn’t float, it falls exhausted into his arms.

He doesn’t know how Ruth found him. Doesn’t ask then, and never asks her. He doesn’t know why having found him she had changed her mind, why she’d hurried back out into the rain.

He helps her into the dry. He hugs her, he kisses her. Cries — his face is already so wet it doesn’t matter, maybe Ruth can’t tell. She says nothing all the while. He has kept nothing for her to change into. He fetches towels. And then, because she won’t do it herself, he strips off her soaked clothes, he sees his daughter’s naked body before he turns away his head in shame and wraps the towels around her.

Her face is marked with old bruises. One of her arms is swollen, it was probably broken, it doesn’t seem to have set right. Her stomach is swollen too, but that’s because she is pregnant.

He puts his arms around her then, he holds her as tight as he dare.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you. I forgive you.” At this last he feels her stiffen. He lets her go.

He makes her hot soup. She eats it all, but slowly, without any apparent appetite.

“I love you,” he says again. “Thank you for coming back to me. And you can have your child, and it can help us. With the balloons. Three generations of us, making animals, just as my father taught me. I’ll teach him everything he needs. I’ll be his grandadda. Or her, if it’s a girl, it might be a girl. I forgive you. Do you forgive me? I need you to forgive me. Do you? Do you love me too?” And he only stops then because she turns and looks him in the eyes, and what he sees isn’t acceptance and it isn’t even blame, it’s just embarrassment he’s going on so.

And still she doesn’t speak, and he wonders if she can speak, whether it’s something Ed has done to her, and he wants to look inside her mouth and see if she still has a tongue. But he doesn’t like to ask.

She sleeps that night on her old bunk bed, and all the next day too. He looks at her sleeping, and at least in her dreams she smiles and seems to be at peace. When she wakes he has more soup waiting for her.

The next night she cries out in pain, and he lights a candle and kneels hunched by her side. She speaks to him at last, weakly, as she kneads at her belly. “Help me,” she says. “Help me.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he says.

He boils the kettle. He knows there should be hot water, but he’s not sure what for. Maybe its use will become apparent. He fetches more towels too. He strokes her forehead, it’s running with sweat, she doesn’t seem to notice. She lies out on the bunk, legs splayed, and she’s screaming now, it’s more than he can bear, she’s thumping down on her stomach with her fists as if that’ll help push the baby out, and he’s watching to see whether a tiny human might emerge, a head, an arm, some legs, anything.

“Help me!” she roars.

He prays to God. He stops. God hasn’t helped him in all these years, and he’s not going to help him now. He prays to the Popping Fields.

“For all that I’ve done for you,” he cries out. “For all the mercy I’ve shown! Save my daughter now. Save her. I love her. Save her. Take the baby if you want it, that’s no matter. But spare my daughter’s life!”

One last terrible shriek, and Shelton thinks it’s all over, that Ruth is dead — and he turns back to her in slow dread. But she’s alive, he sees her blinking and gaping with astonishment and panicking too — the pregnancy has passed, her stomach looks curiously deflated now — and from between her legs something is seeping out. Red, blood red — but it is not blood, it is too thick for that, it oozes over the sheets, thick and rubbery and stretching taut. Shelton dares reach his hand out to it. Shelton dares touch it. He grabs hold, he tugs, and out it comes, there’s so much of it, it’s as if his poor daughter has had her insides stuffed with a giant balloon. But it’s popped now, it’s all right. Out it comes, and you can see the nozzle you blow into, lying there limp like a shrunken penis, you can see the little swelling at the top where the head might have grown.

“Well,” says Joshua Shelton. “That’s that all over, then.”

Ruth says nothing to her father. Ruth says nothing to him ever again. She glares at him with pure hatred, and he flinches. Then she turns on to her side against the wall.

Shelton goes outside, and, as dark as it is, he digs a hole, and buries the useless burst balloon skin within it.

Ruth refuses more soup, she’ll recover without it. It takes a week before she’s strong enough to stand. As soon as she does, she gets into her clothes, she makes for the door and leaves. This time she doesn’t leave a note.

He waits for her to come back, although he’s sure she never will.

He never regrets sacrificing her baby, and he knows he would do it again.

He waits for her.

He looks in the mirror and he seems so very old. His whole beard is grey. He thought it would make him look like his father. But he isn’t grand and he isn’t mysterious. His cheeks hang limp and thin like empty bags. He traces his fingers across the wrinkles. He puts the tip of his knife into the deepest of the grooves, presses the blade downward, and a trickle of blood lazily drips out. It’s strangely satisfying. But the cheek doesn’t pop the way it should.

He waits.

And when the knock at the door comes Shelton knows it isn’t Ruth. He knows it won’t even be the balloon animals. Ed stands there, and of course he has brought a stick. He hits Shelton with it; Shelton staggers back. Calmly Ed climbs into the caravan and closes the door behind him.

“I don’t know where Ruth is,” says Shelton. “She left me.”

“I’m not looking for the bitch,” says Ed. “I’m looking for my child. Where is my child?”

Shelton runs to the bunk bed, feels under the pillow. But he fumbles, or he’s too slow, he turns around to face Ed with the knife but Ed swipes his stick down and now the knife is on the floor and Shelton is weeping in pain.

“You’re a father too,” says Ed, pleasantly. “You must know I was never going to give up on my own child. Tell me. Is it a boy or a girl?”

Shelton hears himself say it’s a boy.

“Ah!” And Ed grins, and for a moment looks charming. “A boy, of course he is! My son.” Shelton stares at Ed, he stares at Ed’s knuckles, and the star tattoo beneath them, he wonders how often that star tattoo came into contact with his daughter’s face — and then the knuckles pummel into his own. Shelton slumps to the floor. He reaches around blindly for the knife, but when he looks up he sees that Ed has got it.

“Where’s my son?”

“Ruth took him with her.”

“No,” says Ed. “She didn’t.” And at that Shelton’s blood runs a little colder.

Ed stoops, with almost tender care he puts the knife against Shelton’s neck. Shelton glares up at him, this slight silly boy, and he knows there was a time he could have beaten him with his bare fists, but that was long ago, before the grey hairs and the despair. “There’s no help coming, old man,” Ed says. “The circus has packed up and moved on. Didn’t you realise? The circus left town ages ago!” The blade is still so sharp, just the way Shelton kept it for the animals, he hardly notices that it’s cutting into his throat. “Tell me!” Ed roars suddenly. “Where have you hidden my son?”

And Shelton is about to answer. He’s going to make something up. Or he’s going to tell him the truth. Or he’s going to tell Ed to go to hell, and die, and that’s all right too. But he looks away from Ed’s face, he looks across the caravan floor. Ed hesitates, he frowns. Then he turns around too. And they both stare at the open trapdoor.

Ed makes Shelton climb down the ladder first. “Don’t try anything,” he says. “I’m right behind you!” But within a few steps that hardly seems to matter — they are plunged into darkness, up and down are just absurd concepts and just as frightening as the other, and Shelton can’t see Ed as he cries out in panic. Ed demands to know what’s going on. He pleads, he makes threats. “Are you still there?” Ed calls. “Please, say something!” But Shelton refuses to answer, he won’t give Ed that small scrap of comfort.

Further downward they go. It takes longer this time, Shelton thinks, longer than ever before. And that terrifies him, but it also gives him a strange warm buzz of nostalgia. Above he hears Ed whimper as he follows.

Then, suddenly, there’s the blue, and there’s the green! And even though Shelton was expecting them he’s dazzled all the same and has to shield his eyes for a moment. Too long — because when he opens them Ed is beside him, and Ed is raving now, and he jams a hand around Shelton’s throat.

“What is this place? Is this where you hid my son?”

And as he watches Shelton sees the fear fade from Ed’s eyes, and something calmer and madder takes its place.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ed whispers, quite confidentially. “I can kill you here just as easily.”

Even now Shelton thinks that the balloon animals might come and save him. If not as an act of friendship, then at least as payment for services rendered. He tries to twist his head around to see if they’re on their way, the legions of the old and the broken and the weak. But he can’t shake Ed’s grip for long, and he can see there’s no help, not in either direction — maybe that’s the joke of it, the Popping Fields are empty now and they’re all dead and he did his job too well. Ed grips tighter. The blue of the sky is getting darker now, a dark blue, turning to black. Shelton’s eyes roll at the black, with all the colour here it’s a shame that black will be the last thing he sees. And then — then, Ed lets go.

Ed is staring at his hand in horror. It’s now too big to fit around Shelton’s throat, and the distended fingers flop limp and large from the swollen mass of the palm. The other hand is swelling too; Ed drops the knife, either in shock or because he can no longer grip it.

“Please stop it!” he squawks. And it is a squawk too, his own throat has inflated now, the neck is stretching wider than the little head it’s designed to support. And there goes the stomach, it puffs up big and round as if it’s been pumped full of air, and Shelton thinks back to how Ruth looked when she was pregnant — but no, swelling further now, this stomach wouldn’t house merely a baby but an entire circus, one of those proper circuses, not just with clowns and tumblers but a whole menagerie of wild animals! The thin rubbery skin of the stomach ripples as if all the animals are trying to get out. The legs can’t keep Ed upright any longer, he lists over, he rolls. The head hasn’t grown at all. The head is a spot. The head is a nub. The head is a tiny stub of nipple sticking out from the engorged breast beneath.

“Help me,” Ed manages to say. “Help me.”

Joshua Shelton picks up the knife. He can imagine plunging it deep into that balloon body. He can imagine the loud bang it would make. How good it would make him feel. He imagines it all, and he enjoys it. And then he drops the knife to the grass.

“No,” he says, simply. And he walks away.

He doesn’t look around again for a long time, not until Ed’s cries for help can no longer be heard, not until he’s certain he’ll never see Ed again.

On he walks through the Popping Fields.

And in time he realises that he was wrong — that it isn’t just a single green or a single blue. It delights him. He likes looking for all the variations.

Sometimes he gets lonely, but he’s used to that.

When he’s hungry he can bend down and scoop up handfuls of green. It’s good and filling. If he needs a drink, he cups his hands into the air and the blue he brings down is refreshing and cool. He sleeps on a mattress of grass, and the sky is a warm blanket.

He is happy.

One day he finds a ladder. It reaches up into the sky, as far as he can see. He wonders where it would take him, to what new caravan, what new circus. He puts his hand against the rail, and it is cold to the touch. He steps onto the bottom rung. He doesn’t like the sound his foot makes against the hard metal.

“No,” he says. “That’s all right. I don’t need it.” He says it out loud, and it’s only for himself. But he thinks maybe the Popping Fields should hear him too, just in case.

And in time the green grass feels so soft underfoot, and he looks down, and he realises he’s not even touching it, he’s floating a few inches off the ground.

He sits down, hard. His bottom hits the grass, that clearly isn’t floating. He examines his feet. He runs his fingers over them. They feel thick and rubbery. He stretches them, he likes the way the tautness prickles against his fingers.

And then his feet swell. He watches as they do so, and it doesn’t alarm him at all. It’s rather a pleasant sensation, like someone’s breath so close to you as they lean in for a kiss. He laughs.

“No, no!” And he’s still laughing. “No, be careful now!” Because the feet are now so swollen they’re rising up into the air. He tries to push them back to the ground with his hands, but it’s no good, they’re floating ever upward. It tickles him. “No, you stop that, you two!” But he’s laughing, he doesn’t mean it. His feet are caught on a gust of breeze, and they’re pulling the rest of the body up after them — a body that feels in comparison so dull and flat, it’s the feet that are having all the fun.

Joshua Shelton sails into the sky, feet first. He stares down at the ever receding green. The blood rushes to his head. It makes him feel giddy, he likes it, he laughs in appreciation.

He wonders how high he will float. He wonders if he’ll float to the very top of the world, and what he will do when he gets there.

He strains his head so he can look up. And at last he can see her — there’s Ruth, right above him, he’s still some way to go but he’s sure he’ll reach her eventually. She’s got that reassuring smile of hers, and he calls out to her that it’s all right, he’s not frightened at all. He’s not frightened of anything, and he feels so young. He gives her a wink, and he manages a smile as well, it’s a good smile, one he can be proud of. And he opens his arms out wide for her, and he’s pleased to see that his arms have swollen too, they’ve swollen so large he could hug her if she were his entire world.