Skullpocket is, of course, a culling game. It’s not about singling out and celebrating a winner. It’s about thinning the herd.
Jonathan Wormcake does not appear to be listening to the story anymore. His attention is outside, on the darkening waters. Although her name has not come up yet, the Orchid Girl haunts this story as truly as any ghost. I wonder if it causes him pain. Grieving, to a ghoul, is a sign of weakness. It’s a trait to be disdained. The grieving are not fit for the world. I look at the hard, clean curve of his skull and I try to fathom what’s inside.
They were clever little ghouls, Uncle Digby said, and they kept to the outskirts and the shadows. They didn’t want to be discovered. A ghoul child looks a lot like a human child when seen from the corner of the eye. It’s true that they’re paler, more gaunt, and if you look at one straight on you’ll see that their eyes are like little black holes with nothing inside, but you have to pay attention to notice any of that. At the fair, no one was paying attention. There was too much else to see. So Wormcake and his friends were able to slip into the crowd without notice, and there they took in everything they could.
They were amazed by the striped, colorful tents, by the little booths with the competitive games, by the pens with pigs and mules, by the smells of cotton candy, frying oil, animal manure, electricity — everything was new and astonishing. Most of all, though, they marveled at the humans in their excitable state: walking around, running, hugging, laughing, and clasping their hands on each other’s shoulders. Some were even crushing their lips together in a grotesque human version of a kiss!
Here the children laugh. They are young enough still that all kissing is grotesque.
There were many little ones, like themselves, and like you. They were swarming like hungry flies, running from tent to tent, waiting in lines, crackling with an energy so intense you could almost see it arcing from their hair.
It was quite unsettling to see humans acting this way. It was like watching someone indulging in madness. They were used to seeing humans in repose, quiet little morsels in their thin wooden boxes. Watching them like this was like watching a little worm before it transforms into a beautiful fly, but worse, because it was so much louder and uglier.
A little girl raises her hand. She seems angry. When Uncle Digby acknowledges her, she says, “I don’t think flies are beautiful. I think they’re nasty.”
“Well, I think you’re the one who’s nasty,” Uncle Digby retorts. “And soon you’ll be filling the little tummies of a thousand thousand flies, and they’ll use you to lay eggs and make maggots, and shit out the bits of you they don’t want. So maybe you should watch your horrid little mouth, child.”
The little girl bursts into shocked tears, while the children around her stay silent or laugh unhappily.
Wormcake stirs beside me for the first time since the story began. “Uncle,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” says Uncle Digby. “Dear child, please forgive me. Tonight is a glorious night. Let’s get back to the story, shall we?”
The children are quiet. Uncle Digby forges ahead.
So they made their way amongst the humans, disturbed by their antics. They knew that it was only a matter of time before the humans all reached their true state, the condition in which they would face the long dark inside the earth; but this brief, erratic explosion of life stirred a fascinated shame in the ghouls.
“It’s vile,” said Stubblegut. “We shouldn’t be seeing this. It’s indecent.”
“It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen,” said young master Wormcake, and with the courage that had always separated him from the others, he strode out onto the midway, arms a-swing and head struck back like the world’s littlest worm lord.
You might be forgiven in thinking that someone would notice, and cause the humans to flee from them in terror, or cry out in alarm, or gather pitchforks and torches. But human beings are geniuses at self-delusion. Let’s be honest, children, you are. You believe that your brief romance with the sun is your one, true life. Our little friend here, for example, becomes upset when contemplating the beauty of the fly. You cherish your comfortable delusions. That evening the humans at the fair just looked at the ghouls as wretched examples of their own kind. Sickly children, afflicted with some mysterious wasting illness that blued their flesh and tightened the skin around their bones. Pathetic creatures, to be mourned and fretted over, even if they also inspired a small thrill of revulsion. So the humans pretended not to see them. They ushered their own children to a safe distance and continued in their revels in a state of constructed ignorance.
Mr. Wormcake leans over to me and whispers in my ear: “Not entirely true. The human adults ignored us, yes. But the human children knew us for what we were. They pointed and quaked. Some burst into tears. It was all such fun.”
What was so difficult to tell my parents, all those years ago, was that I wanted to go to the fair. The summons was terrifying, yes, but it was also the touch of relevance I’d been wanting so badly. I was just like Christina Laudener now; I was just like weepy Eddie Brach. Two other children had had the dream the same night I did, and by the time a week had finished, there were fourteen of us. The dreams stopped after that, and everyone understood that it was to be us, and only us.
We became a select group, a focus of envy and awe. There were some who felt the resentment I once did, of course, and we were the target of the same bullying I’d doled out myself. But we were a group by this time, and we found comfort and safety in that. We ate lunch together at school, hung out on weekends. The range of ages — six to twelve — was wide enough that normally none of us would give each other the time of day. But the Maggot had changed everything.
The town was abuzz with talk. Of the fourteen summoned children, certainly, but also of the fair itself. Hob’s Landing had been without anything like this since the night of Wormcake’s arrival, thirty years before. That Wormcake himself should be the one to reintroduce a fair to the town seemed at once sacrilegious and entirely appropriate. Fliers began to appear, affixed to telephone poles, displayed in markets and libraries: The First Annual Skullpocket Fair, to Be Held on the Grounds of Wormcake Mansion, on the Last Weekend of September, 1944. Inaugurated by Select Children of Hob’s Landing. Come and Partake in the Joy of Life with the Gentleman Corpse!
People were intrigued. That Mr. Wormcake was himself using the nickname he’d once fiercely objected to — he was not, he often reminded them, a corpse — was a powerful indicator that he meant to extend an olive branch to the people of Hob’s Landing. And who were they to object? He and his family clearly weren’t going anywhere. Wouldn’t it be best, then, to foster a good relationship with the town’s most famous citizens?
My parents were distraught. Once they realized I wanted to go, despite my panic of the first night, they forbade me. That didn’t worry me a bit, though. I knew the Maggot would provide a way. I was meant to be there, and the Maggot would organize the world in such a way as to make that happen.
And so it did. On the afternoon the first Skullpocket Fair was set to open, I headed for the front door, expecting a confrontation. But my parents were sitting together in the living room, my mother with her hands drawn in and her face downcast, my father looking furious and terrified at once. They watched me go to the door without making any move to interfere. Years later, I was to learn that the night before they had received their own dream from the Maggot. I don’t know what that dream contained, but I do know that no parent has ever tried to interfere with the summons.