Estimated reading time — 17 minutes

I just couldn’t do it anymore.

After thirteen long years on this road, it was time for a change. I’ve been all over the country. I’ve seen the flat lands of tornado alley, from Wichita Kansas to Canadian Texas, where the windmills turn like silent sentinels, and the milky way dazzles. There’s no light pollution out there and at night the sky lit up like some kind of majestic sorcery. But it was also lonely as hell. The kind of lonely that breeds alien abduction stories if you ain’t too careful with your whiskey intake. I’ve visited the cavernous womb of the Grand Canyon too. I’ve staggered reluctantly on to the Sky Deck at the top of the Willis tower to ponder how small and fragile we all are. I drove under the snowy peaks of the Smokeys. Camped out up on a little isolated mountain in Mangum Oklahoma called Quarts. Heard something like two velociraptors going at it over a snack up there. Never found out what all that noise was. But of course, I never left my tent to go investigating either. I’ve seen far enough horror movies in my day to know where that kind of curiosity gets ya. Go out looking for what bumps in the night and you might just fuck around and find out. Best to hold your breath and hope it don’t find you. It didn’t. And that was good. There wasn’t enough beer in the cooler to go around.
I’ve been to Florida, and to Georgia. Seen both the Carolinas. Went boating in the Great Lakes. Got high in The Big Apple. Made friends up in Maine. I’ve explored all of the east coast thrice over. You name it, we played it. I’ve been everywhere. Just me, my fold-out futon mattress, my Playstation, and a gas-guzzling pick-up truck.

I spend most of my time on earth drawing cartoons at carnivals and dusty county fairs. At night though, I mostly just take my medicine and pass out. All the while pretending that a ten-foot-wide cargo trailer was a suitable place to call home. But that last summer was a hot one. Had to rig up a portable ac unit to try and regulate the temperature in there. That never quite worked, though. Felt like I was roasting in an irrepressible tin can even after the sun was long gone from the sky.

Going to sleep every night stuck in suffocating darkness, with the fans humming, and the carnies outside hooting and hollering was a challenge. I often woke feeling groggy and unrested. Feeling the blaze of an unforgiving sun rising over us even through the aluminum walls of my box—even in my sleep. I once saw the sun climbing over the horizon in my dream, taunting me all the way up to its barbed throne above the clouds. I didn’t need an alarm clock in that stifling box. That yellow bitch clinging to the sky got me up every damn morning bright and early.

I had enough. It was time to bite the bullet and spend some money. It was time to get a camper. A real one. One with wheels, a bed, a working air conditioner, and a shower with hot water. You can only crap in a dingy outhouse and get washed up at your friendly neighborhood Planet Fitness for so long before you start losing your mind. The time had come to move out and move on. The question was where and how?

I soon found a potential candidate on Facebook Marketplace. I was somewhere down south of Florida. Hanging out at a local coffee shop, scrolling through the endless options on my phone. Just curious is all. That’s what I told myself. Desperate, was more the truth of it. Didn’t think I would find anything realistic, though. Until I did. I stumbled across this nice twenty-four-footer with a master bedroom and a cozy lounge that I just could not resist. It even had a walk-in bathroom with a door! A travel trailer that was calling my name. I tried to convince myself to be patient. But that ad kept drip-drip-dripping on the back of my desire.
Eventually I decided, what the hell! Why not?

They only wanted 4 G’s for that one. I could spare that much with no trouble. So, I took a stroll out to the listed address. They had it stashed way out in the boonies in real gator country. When I got there, I found the camper languishing on blocks, alone on a vacant concrete pad, in the middle of the woods, ensconced by a wall of shaggy bushes and bladed palm trees. As I approached, I unwittingly stepped into a sticky spider web that got me doing a disoriented jig to get it off me. It must have been sitting out here untouched for months. But the RV appeared immaculate. Clean, unmolested by dings or scrapes. All of its cosmetic parts still intact. At four thousand, it was a steal.

The owner was late. He seemed rather terse and ill-tempered on the phone. When I told him that I was interested in his ad he brightened his tone. He almost sounded relieved. Bad sign. I wasn’t sure if I trusted that reaction. It felt impetuous. Dishonest. It engendered a species of urgent desperation. I suspected there was perhaps some hidden strings attached to this deal.

Oh god, I pondered, what if there’s a leak somewhere.

The door to the cabin was unlocked so I went in. I inspected the master bedroom first. It was spacious and inviting. The bed was soft and nice; way better than my cot or air mattress had ever been. A huge improvement. I laid on it for a moment. I could have gone out right then and there. Hadn’t quite realized how sleep deprived I was until my back met that bed. As I was relaxing there, I took a curious gander at the décor—the fake wooden panel wallpaper that garnished the tenuous walls of the room. It was weird. The liquid ribbon stripes that ran up and down them like wooden growth rings produced a daunting mirage. They looked like screaming faces trapped behind the walls. Ghastly faces, yawning in great agony. I found the same repeated design in every single panel that accompanied it. Faces here and there. Faces everywhere. As a caricature artist who draws faces for a living, it struck me with a foreboding irony.

I sat up, scrutinizing them. I was just about to crawl closer to have a better look. That’s when the headlights came streaming through the half-shaded windows. The owner. He had finally arrived.

His black Ford pick-up truck had seen better days. Both fenders were smashed in. The driver side door was the wrong color. The paint was either chipped or missing all over the thing. The wheel wells were spattered in thick clumps of back-country mud and rust. But the tires were big, bulky, and new, with deep tread that could dig its way through any terrain. They were good wheels for hauling. But the whole thing looked a mess as it pulled up beside my brand-new F-250.

There had been a computer chip crisis hindering production of the semiconductors needed to manufacture such vehicles at the time. It made truck shopping when I needed one the most quite an uphill battle. As soon as I found one available somewhere in South Carolina, I bought it right there on the spot. Picked it up earlier in the year with the goal of pulling a heavy load in my near future.

She was a beaut. Equipped with all the bells and whistles. But it made me look like some upstate trustfund prick with more money than good sense out in these parts. I was only in my early thirties at the time. Too young to have that kind of expendable dough in an economy that was taking a dive. But the Carnival business was booming right out the gate after the covid-lockdown days. There was nowhere better to spend all that precious stimulus money the newly liberated patrons were throwing at me hand over fist. Not when you are forever on the move. So, I got a new truck. Now, it was time to get a new house. I worked hard for it and I deserve an upgrade. But that’s what I tell myself about everything new I buy. Just ask my PS5 that I hardly ever use.

I emerged from the steps of the camper waving at him like some lost tourist at Disney World. The man paid me no mind. He was busy eyeing up my truck with sore, covetous eyes. Then he popped a fat cigar into his mouth and sparked it up with an old Zippo that was probably as old as his ride was. The light from the flame ignited the better details of his sagging, weathered face. He looked like a French Mastiff with a five-o-clock shadow.

I blithely approached the driver side window. He rolled it down with an antique winder. Nothing about that old hunk of junk was automatic. Everything was manually operated. All knobs and cranks. All old. It was a mechanical dinosaur. Something that Fred Flintstone woulda drove, or anybody who actually knew who that was. Looked like it would be better placed rotting away in the unkempt yard of an eroding trailer abandoned in the woods, pushing up weeds where its engine block used to be.

“Orin from Marketplace,” I asked.

The rustic old man never answered me with his eyes. He just continued glaring at the shiny new F-250 and puffing away on his cigar. The smoke drifted in my face, smelling as ancient as the man slouching behind the steering wheel.

After a few moments had passed in uncomfortable silence the man said gruffly, “Jeff from out of town?”
I licked my parched lips nervously. My instincts told me to jump back in my fancy truck and hightail out of there. But I couldn’t. the deal was just too tempting, and I really liked that RV. I offered my hand through the open window.

Orin sneered at it like I had just flipped him the bird. He went back to staring at my truck.
He said, “That’s a pretty thing, in’it.”

I took the hint and withdrew my feeble hand away from his space, returning it back to my jacket where I could wipe the sweat from my palm.

“Yeah, I…I just got it a few weeks ago.”

“Lucky grab,” Orin remarked coldly. “Heard China was hoarding all them computer chips to stunt our economy.”

I had to fight off an impulse to roll my eyes. “Well, Covid blocked up a lot of things.”

The old man chuckled cynically at that. “Covid.” He stole another puff from his cigar. As he blew out the rank smoke he said, “where did that come from again?”

It wasn’t a question meant for answering so I said nothing.

He snorted. At least there was some kind of humor in him, as sardonic as it may be.

“Just when ol’Donnie’s tariffs cost them over three hundred billion dollars…that’s when we all get sick.”

“They got sick too,” I said flatly, not enjoying where this conversation was going.

Orin turned his head my way, but still he wasn’t looking at me. He was thinking. His eyes weren’t really looking at anything just then. His focus was busy rummaging through whatever xenophobic conspiracies he had stacked up on his mind. He said, “What a convenient way to make everyone forget about the protesters in Hong Kong.”

A chill prickled down my back. I straightened my posture and cleared my throat. Changing the subject, I said, “so, about the RV…”

“Yet, despite all that,” he interjected, “you managed to find yourself a brand new truck. 2019?”

“2020.”

He whistled. “The year of the great plague. And it’s white.”

I shrugged my shoulders, aggrieved. “So?”

Now, he was looking directly into my eyes at last. His gaze was cold, dark, and frightening. He exhaled a lofty cloud of smoke as he said, “White as death.”

Fear gripped my heart. It made me want to run and hide. But my legs were frozen.

He plucked his ashes out the window, sending the charred flakes disrespectfully down at my rigid feet. “You got money then?”

I snapped out of my horrible trance and stammered, “Y…yes…well, no. Hold up. Why is it so cheap. The ad said you only want four for this thing. So, what’s the catch?”

He frowned. “The catch is, you buy it cheap, you get everything that comes with it…including all of its blemishes.”

“That’s fair, but what are the blemishes?

Orin then messaged the stress that was starting to cinch between his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand.

“Look, do you want the fucking thing or not,” he said curtly.

I held up my hands in defeat. The life was back in my legs again, and I used that as a sign to start retreating from this awkward situation immediately. No fight, all flight. I backed away and said, “Forgive me. I have to go home and think about this.”

I was just starting to pick up speed, scurrying back toward my truck when in a fit of sudden desperation Orin yelled out, “One thousand and it’s all yours!”

I stopped. Slowly I turned on my heel. I gave him a dubious glance. “One thousand?”

“Yes,” he said, his obstinate confidence abandoning him for an ambiance that seemed much more reasonable—if not distraught. The thing that had been eating him alive inside was very much present. A great burden that he wanted so eagerly to liberate himself from.

I stepped closer, intrigued. “It’s a good deal, but it does nothing to mitigate my concerns.”

“I just need to get rid of it,” he confessed. I could see him struggling to find an excuse that curtailed the truth. “It’s taking up far too much space in my life.”

“Clearly.” I approached the window again, “And what will it take from me.”

Now, it was the old man’s own hand that seemed to be shaking. I saw it as he lifted his cigar to suck out another gulp of toxic smoke. He was buying time for his answer. Then he said, “Only your soul.”

I waited a moment, searching his face for any sign of that mordant humor he had only a few seconds before. I didn’t see it. Still, I laughed. It must be a joke.

I said, “Well, I must admit, one thousand dollars and my soul is still a decent tradeoff for a good bed and a hot shower.”

Orin chortled. “The water heater is new, and the ac works fine. No problems there.”
“You got the title?”

The old man then patted the breast pocket of his threadbare flannel coat and said, “Right here.”
“Good…how bout a pen?”

He lifted his cigar inches away from his lips. Pensively he answered, “Only the one the devil gave me.”
I grinned. “Well. Does it work?”

“It always does.”

_________

My first fair with my new camper was at a little mall parking lot near Tampa Florida. Throughout the winter and early spring, we primarily do mall gigs. They were the easiest contracts to score in a brick-and-mortar economy that was quickly plummeting fresh off the lockdown. When I was younger in the business, I would avoid parking lot shows like the plague. But in an age where that wasn’t possible anymore, they were the best bet to leech on a profligate crowd.

Back then, I regarded such open-air events with contempt. They were more for thrifty craft show types. Thought they were beneath me. That’s a hard sell coming from a carny, but it’s true. I was a bit pretentious in those days, proving that there are levels that exist even beneath hell. But this ride company had figured out how to make them bangers. Somehow, wherever Sun Rise Amusements set up shop, like by way of some forbidden magic the people came in droves.

I operated my nomad caricature art stand under a gaudy concession tent. Not a lavish getup, but I made enough to pay my bills and then some. And that was good enough for me. I used to aim for the stars. I wanted to be a big Hollywood, hotshot cartoonist when I got out of college. But I have since grown rather accustomed to the life of a carny and abandoned that dream entirely. I found that my trailer park upbringing made me a nice fit for that king of lifestyle. Besides, there’s only so many rejection letters that a big dreamer can possibly endure before depression starts filling up the empty cavity where the heart used to dwell. I didn’t care, though. Not anymore. I finally had a house to live in on the road. I was on cloud nine. I hadn’t known yet that that cloud was really the start of a life-altering tempest.

I got the first complaint when I was out on site setting up my stand for the next show. My lot manager sent a picture from his phone showing me that the black water line on my house trailer was leaking sewage. That’s a bad one.

In his text message to me he wrote: “You got a leak!”

I immediately dropped what I was doing and hopped in my truck to race back to camp.

To my dismay, I found that he was right. The black water line was cracked wide open, and it was spilling shit and piss all over the place. I called a professional and we did our best to rectify the issue. The mobile mechanic told me that it might be a good idea to get the camper in shop to swap out the tank as soon as I could. The repair was good enough to last me for a month or so, but I took a week off to get it done right.

Then, at my next fair, I went straight to sleep after set-up. I had a terrible nightmare that night. I dreamt that the faces in the walls were taunting me. They were whispering in an alien language. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I somehow knew it was bad. A bright, scalding light blew through the window beside the bed, and a jarring BOOM rattled my senses. Suddenly, I felt something like a hand shoving me in the back. I jumped out of my slumber. I sprang up in the bed panting. My forehead, neck and shoulders were all covered in a cold sweat. The ac was off. The timer on the microwave over the kitchen was blank. The power was dead.

“What the fuck?”

I looked about the room, searching for an intruder. Nobody was there. I clambered out of bed and grabbed my bat. I checked the living quarters, and then the bathroom. Nothing. Bemused, I turned around to stare at the strange wallpaper that surrounded me. The faces were still there, snarling at me from the designs that were supposed to represent the patterns of cut wood but didn’t. Circumspect, I stood there very still for a long moment, waiting expectantly.

A startling crash drew my attention back to the kitchen where the sink faucet had abruptly exploded, sending shards of plastic smacking into the ceiling. A geyser of unbridled water was shooting out of it.

“Christ,” I cursed as I dropped the bat and darted for the door.

I ran to the back of the camper to cut off the city water supply. When I went to check on the damage, I noticed that all four of my tandem axel tires were blown out and the rims were stuck deep in the sand below.

Just then, my neighbor came rushing out of his RV to investigate all the late-night ruckus.

He came up beside me and asked, “You okay?”

I scratched my head, dumbfounded. “I…I was.”

Then the elderly man regarded my tattered tires with tired interest and said, “Looks like you got a flat, my man.”

I hadn’t had anything clever to add to that, so I just hung my head and shrugged absently.

He patted me on the back and said, “Welcome to life on the road.”

With that, he left me to sulk alone.

_________

Two thousand dollars in additional repairs later, we were off to Long Island New York. It was the start of fair season, and we were at long last seeing big crowds again. After having so many months prior of slow-moving progress, the rush of eager carnival patrons was a bit of a shock to us all. Everyone was busy. Everyone was anxious. The pent-up fairgoers were in a frenzy. I had a long line that didn’t stop until we closed the gates at eleven PM. It was just nonstop cartoon faces for ten hours straight. Enough work to burn into my dreams.
I was still having nightmares almost every night since I got my camper. I slept fine, but my dreams were haunted by horrible visions of endless noses, eager grins, and feral eyes. They tormented me all hours of the night. They were surrounding me. Stalking me. They were whispering strange, venomous incantations.

I shot up in my bed gasping.

I was still alone, but I didn’t feel alone. There was a cold presence lingering in the house—something that did not want me to be there. I couldn’t shake the feeling. I looked at the time on my phone. It was 3:33 am. It was time to get a drink.

My wrist still hurt from all the drawing I had done the day before. I knew I shouldn’t put so much strain in my wrist and elbow when banging out retail caricatures, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t really know how else to draw. My lower back ached from all the leaning in I was doing just as well. Felt like someone kicked me square in the spine. But a couple shots of whiskey worked nicely to put that all out of me. Didn’t take long for the sleep to find my eyes again. But when I crawled back into bed, I found myself looking at all those hideous faces that populated my wallpaper. They were always on my mind. Drip-drip-dripping over my conscience—forever haunting me. I closed my eyes. I slipped swiftly into a deep inescapable rest.

The dream devoured me. I felt its teeth digging ever deeper into my conscience—chewing, chomping, mashing. It threatened to never let go. I saw myself signing my name onto the dotted line of the title to the camper. I saw its previous owner smiling; a curse lifted from his life. A curse that descended onto me. It was all mine for just one thousand dollars. Just the cost of one hundred faces. An hours’ worth of drawing. It belonged to me and I belonged to it. My blissful house of horrors.

I suddenly felt weightless. I felt as though I was floating over my bed. I felt that way because—unbeknownst to me—I was. And the faces in the camper were laughing at me the way my customers had laughed at their caricatures.

When I came to, I heard the birds chirping giddily outside. I could feel the heat from the autumn sun rising outside. I was lying in a heap of covers and sheets left in disarray. It looked like I had been thrashing and turning violently all night. All my muscles were wracked in sleepless pain. I must have a hangover. I rolled out of bed and went straight for the Tylenol. I had another busy day ahead of me and I needed to get my head right.

When I went outside, I found myself stepping right into my concession stand. That didn’t feel right. The carnival was at least a thirty-minute drive away from camp. But I shrugged it off. The line of anxious patrons was already there, waiting for me to get at it. They cheered as I took my place behind my easel. I drew them up as quickly as I could manage it. But the line just kept growing. It seemed that the entire carnival was there. All of the carnies. All of the ride jocks. All of the bosses. They each sat down one after the next. I drew everybody I knew from Sun Rise. More kept coming. The line kept growing.

At last, my final customer took the chair. It was Orin, the wayward gentlemen who had sold me the camper. He came with that same relieved smile plastered on his face, a smoldering cigar clutched in his bony hand. He drew a long suck from it. He blew acrid eddies all around me.

He said, “so, how do you like your new home…is it everything you dreamed?”

Grudgingly, I got to work. I started with his low-hanging aquiline nose. I scoffed at the question and said, “Would be if I could sleep.”

The old man snorted the same way he had when I opined that Covid had blocked up everything. He said, “But, haven’t you slept enough?”

I had just finished drawing his mincing grin when I paused. My marker hand seemed to be trembling. I gave him a curious glance as I replied, “What do you mean.”

The old man stole another puff from his stogie. As he exhaled the smoke from his lungs he said, “You dreamed of being a cartoonist. You got it. You dreamed of having a real roof over your head. You got that as well. What more could you possibly dream.”

I shook my head. Then I started illustrating his protruding brow and sharp, receding widows peak. I thought ruefully, a fast end to this conversation, perhaps. But instead, I only said, “a leak-free RV would be nice.”

Orin’s uncomfortable grin deepened. “You have to pay much more for that I’m afraid.”

“I guess so,” I groaned.

A mischievous twinkle winked in Orin’s eye. “Probably not as much as that fancy truck of yours, I suppose.”

I scowled at that.

“You know where all those computer chips come from?”

“No,” I admitted sullenly.

He simpered, lifting his cigar, readying it for another suck. “Taiwan.”

Here we go again, I grieved. “So what.”

The old man shrugged. “Just a fun fact.” Then he asked, “does your hand ever get tired from all that drawing?”

“Sometimes,” I answered scornfully. “Not as tired as my brain, though.”

Orin was amused by this. “Maybe sleep isn’t what you need.” He took in another puff. He blew out slow. “Maybe it’s time for you to wake up.”

Agitated, I leaned back in my seat to give my guest a critical glare. “Wake up to what?”

“To the truth,” said Orin in a cryptic tone.

“What truth?”

Again, he smiled. “That you’re still asleep.”

“I don’t—”

Then I saw the drawing that I had just completed. It didn’t quite look like the Orin that I remembered back when I bought the camper. The creature scrawled on my canvas had two diabolical cat-like eyes, a crooked, sinister grin, a sharp pointed chin, scraggily, hoary hair, and two massive, gnarly, coiling horns protruding from his jagged, bony temples. It looked like the devil.

I gasped.

I jolted out of my seat. I recoiled from my easel, sending the chair spilling sideways into the dirt. The unsuspecting couple that was sitting in the place where Orin had been only a second ago frowned up at me, startled. The attractive young woman with the auburn hair and big, bright, blue eyes set a contrite hand against her lover’s chest. They were both staring at me, plagued with concern.

The boyfriend asked, “damn, bro, you good.”

Confused, exhausted, and frightened I could only stand there rigid, hyperventilating.

“I…” I stammered, nonplussed.

I looked up and found a crowd of anxious faces gawking at me, bewildered. The carnival was carrying on with its gaily noise. The rides were still whirling, its passengers still screaming. The delighted patrons were streaming this way and that unbothered by the burdens of the world. I heard a jolly melody chiming from inside the drawer of my messy easel.

“I think your phone is ringing,” the girl provided with a hopeful smile.

“Oh,” I said. “Excuse me.”

I pulled open the drawer and found it buried under a pile of markers and color sticks. I snatched it up and cleared the lock screen. There was a message waiting for me in the text interface. I swiped it open.
It was my lot manager again. He wrote: “Something’s up with your camper.”

A picture appeared underneath the text. I touched it to expand the image. There, I saw the bulk of my new camper sinking hitch first into a swirling black hole that was like quicksand. Black mist was rising out of it. The sifting smoke formed into curious shapes around the travel trailer. They looked like a bunch of yawning, snarling faces. They looked like the faces that swam all over the wallpaper inside.

Another text materialized under the photo. It read, “Looks like you got a haunting.” He ended it with a shrugging emoji.

My face went as white as my truck. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“Is everything alright,” the nice woman behind my easel asked.

I then picked up my chair and sat down. I got back to drawing. I gave my guests a reassuring smirk and said, “Just life on the road.”

They both laughed as if they got the joke. I wasn’t convinced that they had.

Credit: Jeff Arce

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