CreepyPasta

The Song and Dance Man

There are few now left alive who remember the Song and Dance Man. Time has claimed the ones that survived the long night and I’m sure they went willing to meet their maker. Life takes on a strange tint after a night like that.

The ones still left, Bill Parker, Sarah Carter, Sam Tannen, they don’t talk about it. Sam is lucky. His brains started to turn to porridge a few years back and now he has trouble figuring out how to put on his pants. He got an early reprieve from his memories. He doesn’t wake up night after night, the music still playing in his ears, tears still drying on his cheeks.

The Song and Dance Man came to Belle Carne with little fanfare in the fall of 1956. I had just gotten out of high school and was working as a stockboy at Handy’s Hardware. I was there the afternoon that Sarah Carter burst through the door, making the bell over the door jingle like mad.

“George, you gotta see what’s been set up by the bandstand. There’s this huge tent up and this man standing in front of it yellin’ like a carnival barker.” Sarah was out of breath and obviously had run from the park and all the way down Main Street. Her hair was whipsawed every which way and one strand stuck to the end of her nose. She gave a quick puff and blew it out of the way and waited for me to react. With Sarah, I was always two steps behind and running to catch up. Girl had energy in those days and in an unlimited supply.

I stopped rearranging the nails and said, “There wasn’t anythin’ up there when I walked by this mornin’. When’d it go up?”

She shrugged her shoulders, a quick raise and drop, “Dunno, but it’s up. And you gotta see this guy. He’s all dressed up, head to toe and he can talk. Boy, can he talk.”

I thought about and checked the clock. It was near about 5 and time for me to quit anyway. “All right, let’s go check it out then.”

Sarah grinned from ear to ear and was gone. I didn’t doubt she was telling everyone in the gang, the ones that were still in town anyway. Most of us scattered to the four winds after graduation. Only a handful of us remained in town and only a handful of us were on hand to witness the dance.

I walked down to bandstand by myself, not bothering to wait for the others. Most likely Sarah was already there waiting for us. I met up with Bill as I passed the drugstore, where he worked as a soda jerk. “What the hell is Sarah talkin’ about George? She blew in here and then blew out again before I could ask her anything.” Bill was a big guy, tallest (and heaviest) guy in our class and I just about cracked up the first time I saw him wearing that little peaked paper cap McCleary makes his soda jerks wear. Bill doesn’t really like to be laughed at though and after the knot under my eye went down, I made sure not to laugh at him anymore.

He’s a good guy aside from that temper. He was the best guy on the highschool basketball team too, though he’s one of the few guys who got kicked out of a game. Threw another player halfway down the court. And they were on the same team too. Bill said the other guy elbowed him in the gut. Had to have been an accident, no one would have done it on purpose.

We both walked down the street, Bill smoking a cigarette, a habit that caught up to him in 1995 when they removed his right lung. At the end of Main Street, we crossed Buchanan and entered the park. Normally, at that point, we would have been able to see the bandstand, perched on a hill near the center of the park. During the summer, there’d be concerts: performances by the school marching band, a church choir singing some hymns, that kind of thing. Once a couple of kids from the high school had put together a pretty good rockabilly group, but somehow the parks committee passed an ordinance that banned rock ‘n’ roll in the park. Small towns, you know?

But now, there was a huge, faded yellow tent blocking the bandstand, like the kind in the circus or the kinds those old revival ministers like to use when they’re feelin’ the spirit and they like to feel your wallet too.