Saving Sara

by Heather Chamberlain

The hour of doom is drawing near. Soon the bell will toll, and the heathens that patiently wait above will descend to tear his battered soul from its body. They’ll toss it about like a plaything, mocking him, and further bruising and mangling his soul than it already is. He could already feel their presence with the shifting breeze, though he could not yet see them.

As he waits, sitting on a cold stone bench in that remote little city park, his skin begins to itch and to crawl. This is the type of park where one can imagine dark things happening; things that only happen to other people and only happen to you in your nightmares. But for the past two years he had called this place home. He wasn’t scared of what people could do, only of what the spirits above had in store. He scratches at his flesh as his fear continues to spread and prickle under the skin. There are only minutes now, as the sky deepens from scarlet to crimson and into a murky greyish blue.

“What have I done?” Bernie whispers aloud to himself. The man, who never knew the Lord, now pleaded in his heart his most desperate prayer. “God, if you truly are all merciful and all loving, please help me!”

But the silence of the Lord’s answer rings in his ears.

He searches through his memories, again, wracking his brain for some error he had made that would explain the cause of his recent troubles. There was only one instance in his life that he could possibly think of, but in Bernie’s simplistic comprehension he could not understand why he was being made to suffer for it. Hadn’t he suffered enough? Her memory has haunted him for a year, yet he still could not identify his mistake. Now he must face dire consequences for a decision that he truly believed, and still believes, was right.

He never forgot the day she died. He could never forget. Every detail remained so lucid in his mind; as it should. He thought about it every single day and night. How the taste of salt had lingered in the warm ocean breeze. It had been unusually warm for a day in November. The beaches were deserted because the cool season had already set in. Tourists didn’t come to Blackport in the cool season. The timing was right. It was a beautiful evening and the sky was on the brink of twilight. Thick clouds reflected the orange and pink hues of the setting sun. Just beyond the clouds was the deep purple of advancing night and the twinkling of the brightest stars were just beginning to shine out from behind the veil of daylight.

Along the south end of the coast, the skeleton of the biggest carnival in the entire state could be seen. Against the setting sun, the tallest rides and attractions were cast in a deep shadow as they reached into the sky and looked like the bare bones of a decaying corpse protruding through its skin. In the dazzling colors of dusk, it looked like a beautiful death. As beautiful as it was though, the view of the park caused him much pain and brought back a flood of memories on that fateful night. Bernie looked across the campfire at his sister sleeping peacefully on the other side. During tourist season it was hard for them to find a peaceful place to be together, but in the fall, on nights like this, they were happy to cozy up to a fire on their secret beach; the shore to the north side of the carnival, and on the south side of Glassview beach. It was visible to anyone who wandered along the edges of the more preferable tourist sites located on either side, but no one ever went down there. It was their own private beach. The sand was coarse, the terrain rocky, and it was overgrown with saltgrass, pickleweed, and sea wrack, and littered with trash that nobody cared to clean up. It was a difficult mess to walk through but Bernie’s legs were strong. On a perfectly serene evening, against the backdrop of their unfortunate childhood, with a deliciously warm and gentle breeze, in their own private little camp, the time was right for her to die.

Bernie had always lived in this town, and in the streets surrounding the carnival. He grew up around the filth and vulgarity cultivated from the tourism it attracted. His job, for two years before her death, was to clean up its garbage and maintain its grounds. That was his life. The carnival had always been his life; his very unfortunate life and the life of his poor unfortunate sister. Before he began working for the carnival, he had been captivated by it. Before the death of his mother, and before the demolition of his childhood home, he had spent the majority of his days watching the carnival; the rides moving up and down and the visitors promenading about eating goodies and smiling. He could hear their laughter. When one must stay hidden from the world, without the ability to read or write or watch television, and without very many toys, a young boy takes to daydreaming about the only world he can see outside his little window.

His mother had taken him there once when he was four years old. He remembers the excitement, and the smells! There were smells he could never have imagined from his distant view across the cove. The aroma was exhilarating; the sticky sweet smells of fry oil, cotton candy, popcorn, dust, excrement, and sweat. His mother had work to do on the grounds and left him to his own devices for an hour. She warned her son to remain invisible and not to attract attention to himself, but he couldn’t help it. That was the first and last day that Bernie visited the carnival purely for enjoyment. An incident had occurred during that trip that frightened poor Bernie and embarrassed his mother terribly. She had bought him his first and last cone of cotton candy. It was wonderful watching the way the vendor spun together the delicate cloud, but in the humidity of the summer air some of the fluffy pink stuff accidentally got stuck in his beard. A lot of it, actually, got stuck in his beard. Then one detestable little boy started laughing loudly and pointing at him, and soon many other children and adults were laughing at him as well. “Freak!” someone hollered, and it made Bernie cry. His mother then returned, apologizing that her husband had recently suffered a loss in his family and must be excused. His mother never took Bernie to the carnival again.

The day his sister Sara died; Bernie empathized with her pain and humiliation. She had broken down crying after a long day of being harassed by her coworkers, like she always was, Every Single Day, but this day was by far the worst one for her yet. Her work? To be a freak. To parade around with the rest of the freaks in the carnival’s very small side show along with the werewolf, the fat lady, the fire-eater, and the Siamese twins, but Sara’s act outshone them all. She was the side show’s best source of income, and coincidentally, Bernie and Sarah’s best means of income as well.  It didn’t bring in a whole lot because the company didn’t find it necessary to pay a child as much as they paid adult workers, but Bernie and Sara were used to surviving without a lot. Bernie would have said something, but no one could discover that Bernie and Sara had a secret relationship. No one could know that they were siblings, because, you see, Bernie had the same special talent as Sara. “Talent” is one way of wording it. 

There was something peculiar about Bernie and Sara; something very strange. They were not like everyone else. Bernie’s mother knew this and is the reason why she had kept Bernie hidden from the world. Though Bernie was very young, he understood that he had been cursed and that his sister had been stricken with the same curse. At the age of eight, Bernie’s mother died during childbirth, leaving Bernie, still a child himself, to raise and care for his infant sister. He named her Sara, after Abraham and Sarah. Once upon a time, Bernie’s mother had taken him to a church. They only went for a few months because Bernie couldn’t stay anywhere for very long, but during that short amount of time he learned of the bible story. Sarah, he learned, meant Princess. He didn’t know where his own name came from, but he wanted his sister to have a meaningful name. Besides, if she were a princess then that most certainly would make him a prince.

Bernie’s mother herself had been raised in the streets, and when she became a mother, she worked very hard to teach her son how to be smart and survive in that harsh environment. When she was pregnant with Bernie, Matilda happened upon an abandoned lighthouse with a spectacular view of the town, and the carnival where she worked. She had her own show there, but the money generated from her performances was never enough for them to survive on, so she worked a little on the side. In addition to her regular shows, she offered to perform for tourists who entered her tent and found they wanted to see a little more. Her son, she taught to stay in the safety of the lighthouse and never to enter the dangerous world of the town without her. Often, he was left alone in the lighthouse for days and nights at a time, but whenever they did go into town together, she was constantly teaching him how to survive. She showed him how to beg for money and how to seek out the best alleys to find scraps of food thrown out by restaurants and grocery stores; how to find the hand outs provided by charities, and even though they had the shelter of the lighthouse, she showed him where he could find a warm bed on nights when there was an opening.

When Matilda died, Bernie was left with the responsibility of providing for Sara. He relied on the knowledge his mother taught him when he had asked during pregnancy what babies ate and how he could help when the baby finally arrived. He knew how to gather food for himself, and he begged for spare change to purchase formula for Sarah. He wrapped her in strips of cloth for a diaper, which he would later wash in the sea. But scrounging for food and moving quickly throughout the town was difficult to do with a baby, so after a week Bernie snuck into the carnival one night and placed his sister into a tent of women workers who he knew would be better suited to care for her. On her diaper he wrote in his childish block letters her name “Sara.” Women, he knew had better intuition with babies. Bernie himself would, the next day, seek employment at the carnival so that he could be in close proximity to watch his sister and ensure no harm ever befell her.

But harm would befall her. Bernie had no idea that Sara would develop the same illness as himself. When she was born, she looked like a perfectly normal baby. Within the first few weeks of her birth, she showed no signs of the curse, but after a few months it became apparent. Bernie had obtained a job in maintenance at the park. A job under the radar of tourists, and most of the other workers. He kept quiet, and he kept to himself, and he labored at his work like a ghost faded in the background of blurring motion. The women began to see signs that Sara was aging profusely. The same infant child, only weeks before, had had baby smooth skin and plump baby cheeks, but now her bones were more refined, and the fatness of her body began to recede. She appeared to be growing at a rapid rate right before their eyes, and soon the baby looked to be years older than was possible.

Bernie kept watch in despair, powerless as to how to retrieve his sister from the women, and even then, how to care for her. A full year after Sara’s birth, the one-year-old infant looked to be five years old. In her body she was tall and lanky, but in her speech and mobility, the child was still ignorant. She could not talk but for random baby babblings. She could not walk but learned to crawl on her hands and knees like any other infant of one. Sara could not feed herself or wash herself, and she unfortunately was still wearing diapers, though now pullups rather than strips of cloth like Bernie had first wrapped her in. Bernie was horrified; not just in seeing Sara’s changes, but in understanding his mother’s burden and fear. Within a single year, he had destroyed her efforts to keep them safe and hidden, and instead had put his sister on display. But what could he do now? Poor Bernie was still only a child himself.

The changes in the girl fascinated the women. Intuitive as they were at motherhood, they were more animalistic in their greed. They mutually agreed that the child could serve to better advance their careers. The masters of the company would be pleased to have a new sideshow act. And that is how Sara came to be a part of the show.

Another year later and the two-year-old Sara looked ten. Often, she was harassed. Often, she was degraded as a mere idiot. In two-year-old Sara’s brain she didn’t understand the people’s offenses, but by their demeanor, she could detect their ridicule. A two-year-old may not understand meanings, but their impulsive reactions are the same as adults. They feel the same human emotions such as embarrassment, sadness, and fear, and poor Sara felt them all, and all too often Bernie watched helplessly as his sister cried herself to sleep and the women cursed at her and screamed “Shut up you baby!”

Though the women were eager to exploit Sara, they were careless about watching over, thank God. This was how Bernie and Sara found time to themselves in order to bond. When the women would leave their houses to go into town on down days and nights, they left the child all alone to fend for herself. Bernie, always watching, would sneak into the house where Sara was kept and would carry his sister down to the beach. He would talk to her about their mother, and he would try in vain to teach her to walk. “I’m your brother Bernie,” he would tell her. “Knee!” Sara would chime as she continued to play with the seashells Bernie had given her. When it was time to go back, he would hide the shells under a rock covered with sea wrack. For anyone else it would be impossible to find again, but Bernie knew the secret spot. That was the spot he hid his mother’s earrings and his sister’s seashells. “I love you Sara,” he told her, and he meant it.

The day Sara died had been the worst of them yet for the poor child. Though during the busy season she was put on display, and on stage she faced ridicule, humiliation, and the snaring of strangers and the poking and prodding of the women in order to make her do things like shout out in anger in her baby talk, or crawl toward a goodie that was waved in her face to entice her but was never given. Sara would bawl and the crowd would laugh. Sarah would be forced to eat her food on stage and because she had no coordination, she always made a mess. Afterwards Sara felt ashamed, the way a two-year-old feels shame when they know they’ve done something wrong, but when a bad parent doesn’t tell them what it is, the child never learns. Off-stage was just as bad, if not worse. For during shows the women at least paid attention to Sara. Off-stage, they took notice of her only to abuse her for crying too loudly or for annoying them with her incessant needs and wants for things like food, hygiene, and attention; things that any normal child needs. That night Bernie decided enough was enough. He was not going to let Sara endure any more of their wickedness; from any of them.

Some may say he murdered her. Bernie believed he’d set her free. On an evening in November, when the carnival folk were making merry in the town during the down season, Bernie snuck into the house that Sara was locked in and carried her down to their private beach. Sara was sleepy after a long day of being mistreated by the women; after being beaten into terror-stricken silence like only a small child with no conscience idea of their crime could be silenced. After Bernie had seen the carnival people leave for town, he knew from experience that they would be gone for many hours and way into the wee hours of the morning. He had plenty of time to conduct his plan. He gathered materials for a bed from his stores in the maintenance building, and he made something like a raft from items like wet cautions signs, boxes from various types of supplies. He took a screwdriver and removed the front door off the house that Sara was being held in. After he built the raft, he then gathered blankets and pillows of all kinds and made the bed as soft as possible for his sister. When he carried her down to the beach and placed her sleeping in the bed, he thought her face looked as sweet as an angel’s, and a little spittle dribbled down her cheek. He despised people for their cruelty toward Sara. Bernie knew it was too late for him to escape the depravity of this world, but he could save his sister.

One by one he put a teal balloon to helium and then tied each to the bed as his sister continued to dream sweetly. After he’d tied forty-two balloons, he felt the raft was ready. He lifted the small generator he’d placed at the end of the raft to keep it weighed down and she was lifted into the air. What a vision she was! The sleeping beauty drifting away into the dazzling sunset brought tears to his eyes, and a tiny prong of envy into his gut. Bernie wished that he too could float away into the pink and orange clouds where people do not hurt, and time does not age.

Yes, he remembers that evening perfectly, like a fine-tuned fantasy, refined within the memory over and over again. He still believes he’d done the right thing. Why, then was he being punished for saving his beloved sister? For a year he’d searched and searched for his mistake, for the reason of his hauntings, but the devils gave him no hints. One year after Bernie had rescued Sara, he began to be haunted by her memory.

The first one appeared exactly one year later, on the anniversary of her liberation. Bernie had quit working for the carnival, no longer able to bear the presence of the wicked individuals who worked there and the joy of the tourists who were ignorant of its evils. Bernie resolved to begging for change and squandering his days like any other individual in the crowning of life just waiting to finally be deliver over to death. No one took pity on Bernie. No one had ever pitied the boy. At the ripe age of eight he had had to become a man to care for his sister, but what no one knew about Bernie was that he was not already a man. Bernie had the same aging disease as Sara, and he had always looked like a man for as long as he could remember. He was able to work for the carnival at the age of eight, under the radar, like many elderlies who are overlooked and cast from the mind of society. No one suspected that old man Bernie was behind the disappearance of the girl. No one even knew who old man Bernie was.

At the age of eleven, Bernie looked to be near seventy. He knew he didn’t have much longer to live, and he chose to spend his days modestly. He lived by scraping by, and he lived to watch the sunsets and dream of the day he will join his mother and his sister in heaven. One morning, Bernie sat on the cold cobblestone street near the entrance to the town’s grocery store, pleading with the customers coming and going for a simple loaf of bread. Once he won the heart of an individual who would give him a loaf of bread, he would begin to plead for a simple package of cheap bologna. This supply would keep him alive for another few days. Sometimes he would receive a few coins for his efforts which was a real treasure. He could purchase something extra special like a chocolate bar, or a package of hot dogs, or some cheese. He had just received a few dollars from one generous individual when Bernie saw something unusual out of the corner of his eye. A flash of blue that was not supposed to be there. In the grey and brown city streets of a November day, blue was not supposed to be there.

He looked and looked for the source of the blue flash which had disturbed him, but he could not see it anywhere. Finally, he decided to pack up and walk away from the store with only the two dollars and the one loaf of bread. Bernie stashed the loaf of bread in his hiding place on the beach and took to walking around the town. At one point, he crossed a shop window and saw another flash of blue, but again, when he back paced to look into the window, he could not find the source of the flash. The day continued in this way. A reflection here, a flash in his peripheral sight there, but as the hours passed Bernie felt himself going mad at the uncertainty of it all. Where was this blue coming from? Was it simply within his own head?

That evening, as Bernie sat restless in the shade of an oak tree, the sunlight flickered through the leaves, casting shadows on the ground and playing with Bernie’s imagination. At one point he looked up and saw a little girl staring at him and he was horrified to see her carrying a single teal blue balloon. Her eyes were drawn into angry slits and Bernie was suddenly filled with fear and a hint of understanding, but in the next moment the girl was gone. A van rushed past on the street dividing him and her and the connection of fear and understanding Bernie had thought he felt was gone. Now he was only left with confusion and relief.

That night Bernie slept soundly knowing that he was imagining things. After all, that day had been the anniversary of his sister’s death. He was bound to be emotional and to be thinking about her. The next morning, he resolved to scavenge through the alley behind the butcher’s shop to see if he could collect some meat to roast over his fire that night, but as he lay on his bench in the park that nobody went to, he thought he caught another glimpse of a teal blue balloon in the peripheral view over the horizon of his belly. He quickly sat up. He did see a balloon, several actually. Someone was hosting a birthday party in his park some distance away. Bernie’s bench was safely hidden from the innocence of the partygoers, but he could still see them through the covering of trees and brush that hid him. Strange that someone would suddenly decide to have a party in the little park that nobody went to. His sacred resting place was no longer safe.

Bernie crept from the park and proceeded with his plan to raid the butcher’s alley. As he walked the twenty minutes to the butcher’s shop, at one point he swore he had seen, in the backseat of a car racing by, another teal balloon. He was losing his mind! Throughout the remainder of the day, teal balloons seemed to creep up on him everywhere. They taunted him. They glared angrily at him, from reflections in shop windows and car windows. From a distance they stared at him from the birthday party in the park; from the balloon shop on the corner; from random places all over town! All day they tortured his conscience with the memory of his sister. Why? He had saved her! She had suffered a cruel two years of life and he had delivered her, hadn’t he? Why should he be troubled in his conscience now?

The hours flew by as Bernie ran. Down street after street of the town, he ran from the balloons. Past the carnival and the silvery beach, he ran. Past the ruins of his beloved lighthouse, he ran. Past his and Sara’s private beach and the secret hiding spot, past the seconds and the minutes and the hours, he ran, until the shadow of night began to fall upon the town, upon his soul, and the streetlamps of the town flickered on. Bernie found himself far from his park and a stranger in foreign neighborhoods of nightfall. He stood in the safety of the light cast by a streetlamp not entirely sure of what to do. He was afraid. In his mind he knew balloons were harmless, but he was afraid. Then, approaching from the left, out of the corner of his eye, always out of corners, came a shadow. A balloon drifted toward him and Bernie turned to face it, swallowing his fear. He was too tired to run any more. Where would he run anyway? Into the darkness?

The balloon was slow approaching, as if it enjoyed tormenting him. It seemed surreal, this innocent object approaching of its own accord. It was not unusual for a balloon to be swayed by the wind, but here and now there was no wind, not a single wisp of air was flowing. In fact, all the air seemed to have been sucked out of the world. Bernie felt his lungs quiver under the pressure. At first, he couldn’t look directly at the balloon. Instead, he kept his head downward cast, barely lifting his eyes. But then, by the light of the streetlamp, he caught a glimpse of a reflection, and when he finally looked up into its face and there a bright white light glaring out from within, and a dark blur seemed to move and sway in front of that light. It was almost distinguishable, but not quite. He squinted his eyes to focus on the dark figure. It cannot be! It was the image of Sara inside the balloon! And she was smiling at him.

“Knee!” he heard faintly calling. He turned to look around him, but he couldn’t see anything in the blackness beyond the light of the lamp. “Knee!” he heard it call out louder and more desperate. Bernie closed his eyes and shook his head. No noo noooooo he thought. This cannot be happening! This isn’t real! “Kneeeeeeee. Kneeeeeeeee!!! KNEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”

His sister’s voice continued to scream louder. Bernie dropped to the ground and curled himself into a ball. He shut tight his eyes and covered his ears, refusing to listen to the ghost.

That is the state in which Bernie was found the next morning. Curled into a ball with his hands over his ears and his face white with fright, when he was shaken from his dream by a small crowd of people gathered around him. He shook the final remnants of the dream from his head and sprang to his feet. He didn’t know then, but Bernie would continue to run from the ghost for another year. After that night, he began having dark dreams. Balloons turned from teal blue to black. They would surround him and suffocate him. Bernie came to understand that this was to be his fate. His fantasy of being carried away by balloons was to become his damnation. Bernie didn’t know much about religion, but he knew enough about heaven and hell to know that some people were damned, and some people were saved. His mother and he had attended church for a few months once. He remembered something the preacher had said about how, if you confess your sins that God would forgive you of your sins, but Bernie didn’t really understand much about sin. He didn’t know if he had any. After all, though he looked like he’d seen years of agony, he was really only a child. An innocent young boy who believed that he had done at least one good thing in his life: saved his sister. He was sure that his angel sister had gone to heaven. Wasn’t that better than living in hell on earth?

Another year had gone by, and Bernie knew he would not survive for much longer. His body was rapidly decaying, and his mind was tormented with guilt and confusion. The anniversary of the death of his sister was again approaching and, in his heart, Bernie knew that he was doomed. He’d been haunted by dreams of this day. He’d been haunted by devils for a whole year. The hour of his sister’s passing was drawing near. On the exact same day, at the exact same hour that Bernie had set his sister free two years before, Bernie was going to die. The hour of his sister’s revelation would be the hour of his own damnation, and he was sad that he would not get to see her in heaven.

BONG! There’s the toll of the bell! It’s first ring reverberating the soul. Hateful, and evil it sounded. 

BONG! “Lord please!” he cried out again, “I plead again for your mercy!”

BONG! Wings fluttered hastily. Eager, too, to flee the encroaching doom. Hot tears slipped, slipped down his cheeks. Burning red hot like his soul in its anguish. BONG! Above there is movement. He doesn’t need to look; he knows it’s the balloons. Hundreds of the devils. Thousands of them swarming. BONG! But he cannot resist looking up at his tormentor. White balloons? BONG! The park, the world spins and grows distant to his eyes…BONG! It escapes. The terror in the throat!

BONG.