Dunn Katherine

Datlow Ellen

Wood N. Lee

Sharma Priya

Mamatas Nick

Wise A. C.

Dowling Terry

Lane Joel

Hirshberg Glen

Ford Jeffrey

Danvers Dennis

Valentine Genevieve

Jones Stephen Graham

Shearman Robert

Shearman Robert

Ballingrud Nathan

Llewellyn Livia

Nightmare Carnival

Nightmare Carnival

Edited by Ellen Datlow

ALSO EDITED BY ELLEN DATLOW

After (with Terri Windling)

Alien Sex

The Beastly Bride: And Other Tales of the Animal People (with Terri Windling)

The Best Horror of the Year

Black Heart, Ivory Bones (with Terri Windling)

Black Swan, White Raven (with Terri Windling)

Black Thorn, White Rose (with Terri Windling)

Blood and Other Cravings

Blood Is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism

The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (with Terri Windling)

Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror

The Dark: New Ghost Stories

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm

Fearful Symmetries

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (with Terri Windling)

Haunted Legends (with Nick Mamatas)

Hauntings

Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Lethal Kisses

Little Deaths

Lovecraft’s Monsters

Lovecraft Unbound

Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

Nebula Awards Showcase 2009

Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex

Omni Best Science Fiction, Volumes One through Three

Omni Book of Science Fiction, Volumes One through Seven

Omni Visions One and Two

Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells (with Terri Windling)

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (with Terri Windling)

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy (with Terri Windling)

Silver Birch, Blood Moon (with Terri Windling)

Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers (with Terri Windling)

Snow White, Blood Red (with Terri Windling)

Supernatural Noir

Swan Sister (with Terri Windling)

Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories

Teeth: Vampire Tales (with Terri Windling)

Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology

Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales (with Terri Windling)

Twists of the Tale

Vanishing Acts

A Whisper of Blood

A Wolf at the Door (with Terri Windling)

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (with Terri Windling, Gavin J. Grant, and Kelly Link)

NIGHTMARE CARNIVAL © 2014 ELLEN DATLOW

Introduction © 2014 by Katherine Dunn. Preface © 2014 by Ellen Datlow. “Scapegoats” © 2014 by

N. Lee Wood. “The Firebrand” © 2014 by Priya Sharma. “Work, Hook, Shoot, Rip” © 2014 by Nick Mamatas. “And the Carnival Leaves Town” © 2014 by A. C. Wise. “Corpse Rose” © 2014 by Terry Dowling. “Last of the Fair” © 2014 by Joel Lane. “A Small Part in the Pantomime” © 2014 by Glen Hirshberg. “Hibbler’s Minions” © 2014 by Jeffrey Ford. “Swan Song and Then Some” © 2014 by Dennis Danvers. “The Lion Cage” © 2014 by Genevieve Valentine. “The Darkest Part” © 2014 by Stephen Graham Jones. “The Popping Fields” © 2014 by Robert Shearman. “Skullpocket” © 2014 by Nathan Ballingrud. “The Mysteries” © 2014 by Livia Llewellyn. “Screaming Elk, MT” © 2014 by Laird Barron. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Dark Horse Books® and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

Some say the carnival is gone now, drowned out by decency and digital magic. But don’t you believe it. Carnival doesn’t die. It morphs and fractures and flares again. It flickers and sometimes rots, but it is rooted in ancient nightmares and it feeds on their immortality. It masquerades as giddy fun but the carnival is about fear, which is eternal. True, in some regions the old freak shows have receded into myth, and the simp twisters have safety harnesses. But the shrill music still cloaks a high and endless scream. The dark is still there behind the swirling lights. And that dark is what we need.

The midway teeters over an abyss, and the abyss draws us. The high wire and trapeze freeze our breath, and the rides taunt our blood-deep fear of falling. The fire-eaters snatch us back to a time when we had to flee the burning. The beasts remind us that we are smallish, ill-equipped predators, but eminently edible prey.

And we are prey to each other. The booths and spieling barkers lure us to booby-trapped tests of skill or luck or destiny. Their sleazy glitter is far more seductive than the humdrum camouflage of the dangerous day-to-day.

We defend ourselves feebly, declaring it’s all smoke and mirrors, tricks and cons that don’t fool us. We’re onto them. But we end up falling for lies, and doubting the astounding truth.

If our innermost terrors are incarnate in the midway, there is also hope. The acrobats, the fliers, the sword swallowers and torch jugglers defy gravity and anatomy. The freaks trigger our horror of the alien within, but they, and their nimble cohort, are beyond us. They possess an uncanny superlative, an eerie defiance of normality, physics, and frailty. They flout perils that overwhelm us.

We watch, amazed, and grapple with our fears. The carnival lets us do that in what passes for safety. And when the calliope moves on, what remains are torn tickets, spilled popcorn, and strange stories shifting on the night wind. The stories stay with us, and they grow.

Crows probably croak whole sagas of snakes and hawks, cats and shotguns. Mice sing each other to sleep with images of traps and talons, sly escapes and tragic endings. Long ago, in some cliff notch above a shifting sea, our grandmother — great to the umpteenth power — hunched to tell the little ones what to fear. These scary fables are the original carnival of the mind.

Every generation spins its own tales, fresh smoke signals from our smoldering fears. Like the cackling Ghost Tunnels, the Cyclone rides, and the snake charmers, the stories raise our hackles and acquaint us with the physical sensations of dread, creeping horror, and the shock of terror. This experience is essential for our survival. We absorb the stories and learn how fear feels, so when those sweeping emotions come at us out of life we are not paralyzed by them, but can react. If the stranger’s smile takes on a peculiar twist, we step back and walk away. When the siren shrieks in the dark, we rise and run.

So welcome this collection of extremely useful stories from the Nightmare Carnival. Strap yourself in and buckle up. You’re in for a wild ride.

— Katherine Dunn, March 2014

PREFACE

I’ve got a confession: I never went to a carnival when I was growing up. I was, however, taken by my parents to the circus on a regular basis — the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which was held annually at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. I loved the acrobats, the jugglers, the tightrope walkers, the animals, the smell of popcorn, the cotton candy. Always hated the clowns. I wasn’t afraid of them; I just didn’t think they were funny and disliked that their humor was usually ridicule, or being mean to each other. In the late 1950s there were still freak shows attached to the circus, but my parents never took me around to see them. The only “freak” show I’ve ever attended is the ongoing Coney Island Circus Sideshow, which has human blockheads, fire-eaters, sword swallowers, contortionists, and other people who can perform crazy feats.

I’ve only gone to carnivals as an adult. Carnivals usually held in fields or parking lots. With their games (win a goldfish!), their rides, their guess your weight or guess your age or tell you your fortune, their hit the bell and know you’re big and strong. The smell of popcorn, the cotton candy.

Some of you may be curious to know the difference between the carnival and the circus. Initially the two were very different: carnivals were held to honor a specific religious, historical, or cultural figure and provide entertainment, such as food stalls, rides, games, and mini shows; circuses were held in a ring or circular tent, and a crowd would gather to witness exhibitions by entertainers and trained animals.

But there’s always been overlap. Both circuses and carnivals had freak shows. And as shown by my limited experience, they’re places to see unusual things. To enjoy acrobatic skills, trained animals, clowns. And to eat junk food.

While carnivals and circuses are usually considered wondrous places for children, there’s always been a dark underside, expertly depicted in the past by such masters as Katherine Dunn (Geek Love), Ray Bradbury (Dark Carnival), William Lindsay Gresham (Nightmare Alley), and others.

In Nightmare Carnival this tradition continues with fifteen new tales about monstrous creatures lurking, or occasionally hiding in plain sight, of human jealousy and envy and their consequences. Chilling tales of mystery, tragedy, and death.

Come to the carnival and experience it all.

— Ellen Datlow, May 2014

SCAPEGOATS

by N. Lee Wood

In the two-window compartment of the sleeping car she and her husband, Max, occupied, “The Amazing Lobster Woman” Mae Wrightson awoke, sleep crumbling as the clacking of rails began to slow. She sat up in the narrow bed, Max still snoring beside her, and pushed the velvet curtains aside with her deformed hands to blink bleary eyed at mist seeping through dead grass, moonlit sky the color of bad milk. As the train curved around a bend, she could make out the engine puffing black smoke, the tips of elephant trunks squirming through the slats of the cattle cars, the rocking of parade wagons atop the flatbeds. All the windows in the sleeper cars were drawn, shutting out the world.

The Bishop had organized his advance banner men well, judging by the sheer number of posters pasted on every barn, water tower, and weatherboard hotel they passed for miles as the fifteen-carriage-long circus train rolled into Ashton. Last season on the big road hadn’t been as profitable as hoped, too many rival shows sucking up each other’s air. This year, the Bishop guarded his small road routes carefully to avoid tipping off competitors. Dukey runs made more money but the pace was exhausting. Mae was glad this weekend they’d at least have two nights of sleep without the clatter of rails beneath them.

Mae drew the patchwork quilt up over her knees and watched the progression of rainbow-bright lithographs roll past: lions and tigers jumped through fiery hoops, grease-painted dogs in organza skirts and sea lions balanced balls on their noses, bosomy girls with tiny corseted waists rode atop white horses. Alastair Kleininger’s clown whiteface flashed a joey-red-lipped grin from the side of a tumbledown hayshed. She felt a pang of sadness at a poster of the circus troupe’s most treasured asset, Madelaine the Elephant, elegantly decked out in her maharaja headgear, with Mischa LeTellier the Half-Boy in the howdah on her back. Mischa had died unexpectedly of apoplexy six months back, having never reached his twentieth birthday, poor boy. There hadn’t been time to modify the poster, or more likely the Bishop didn’t like wasting money on new posters until the old ones ran out.

No one else had ever had quite the same bond with Madelaine as Mischa. The two of them had practically grown up together ever since the Bishop had bought the Asian elephant as a wild orphan, her mother shot in the jungles of Ceylon, the calf shipped over on a steamer half starved to death by the time she arrived in Boston. Barely a teenager, Mischa had signed on with the circus shortly after, and fallen in love with the baby elephant at first sight. He regularly slept in the menagerie top, the elephant’s trunk cradling his legless torso like a child holds a doll for comfort. The bull man the Bishop had hired especially to break her when she was still a calf had appealed to the circus boss to split up Mischa and Madelaine, claiming the half man got in his way, undercut his authority, interfered with her training.

But Mischa and Madelaine had been inseparable even when the little elephant quickly grew into a very large one. Mischa, with no legs, could manage Madelaine better than the bull man with an ankus, using watermelon rinds to reward her when she sat on her back legs and raised her front legs, the buoyancy of a river to teach her to spin. The legless boy had loved riding Madelaine, so the Bishop commissioned a howdah especially built to fit Mischa, intentionally undersized to make Madelaine seem even bigger than she was. The gasps of surprise and fright (and if they were lucky the occasional fainting lady) when Madelaine knelt on her front legs and lifted him with her trunk out of the howdah to the ground used to delight him. Even Madelaine looked as if she, too, enjoyed the applause, the tip of her trunk raised to her bulbous forehead in salute pulling her lips up into an open-mouthed grin. They were happy, they were making the circus money, and the Bishop was content to leave them be.

Madelaine had been the Bishop’s first, and for a time only, exotic animal, soon parlaying his dog-and-pony show into a modestly successful traveling circus, The World-Famous Bishop Brothers Traveling Carnival. If there ever had been a brother, Mae never saw him, and all those who knew the circus master simply called him the Bishop, no one sure what his real name might be. Not that many circus folks ever used real names anyway.

The Bishop grew his circus methodically, attracting enough talent like Eric and Lavinia Malcome, the fire-eater and sword-swallower act, and professional sideshow freaks like Mae and Max until he could finally get rid of the Chinaman. The Bishop had brought the opium addict back with him after the Boxer Rebellion, employing him as a circus geek who bit the heads off live chickens and rats and swallowed them to the shrieks of titillated spectators. The chickens ended up in the kitchen pots, the dead rats tossed out with the night soil.

The Bishop bought out two smaller circuses, bringing in Billy North and his Marvelous Menagerie: camels and llamas, a pair of black bears, three lions and a tigress, two wallabies that had quickly multiplied into ten, a troupe of chimpanzees that worked with the clowns, and sixteen zebras harness-trained to pull the gilded animal wagons along with his miniature ring stock ponies. The dogs, farm animals, and exotic birds Kleininger used in his clown act had their own cages, but their pet rhesus monkey lived in the animal trainer’s car with Billy and his wife.

Billy’s wife, Theresa, a hatchet-faced woman from New Jersey who Mae had never seen smile, billed herself as “The Incredible Jasaleena, Hindoo Serpent Charmer from Bombay,” and kept her trio of immense pythons in a heated cabinet in their sleeper. As well as breeding small lizards for the strolling butchers — concession salesmen who peddled them as circus “bugs” on the midway to small children as pets — she jealously maintained her own flea circus. She crafted elaborate harnesses from hair-thin gold wire to shackle the insects to miniature Ferris wheels and crafted flea horses pulling tiny coaches with flea Cinderellas waving from inside. Fleas in tutus were forced to “dance” to diminutive orchestras by hidden candles heating the bottom of the exhibit until they thrashed about in a frenzy, giving credulous mooches the notion the insects had been trained to play instruments or pull carts. But such treatment took a toll on the performers; replacing the dead fleas with live ones was a routine chore. She dressed the dead fleas up as wedding couples, which Billy sold alongside the souvenir photos of a near-naked Theresa with her snakes draped strategically to maintain her modesty.

A few weeks after Mischa died, Bishop purchased five more elephants along with a sea lion and a team of sturdy draft horses to pull the stock wagons from the train to the setup lot. All of the elephants had been born in other circuses and sold on as soon as they could be separated from the cows. If he’d harbored any illusion that Madelaine would feel a natural maternal instinct for the newcomers, the Bishop was sadly disappointed. One of the calves bawled nonstop and refused to eat from the moment he was unloaded from the train wagon, then lay down and died within a week. The other four fared better, healthy if half Madelaine’s size. But while they performed well enough with Madelaine, even deferred to her, the younger elephants had already formed a tight camaraderie of their own while Madelaine still pined for her lost friend.

Without Mischa, the normally good-natured Madelaine seemed bewildered, turning sullen and uncooperative. North was enough of a professional to know how to balance the carrot with the stick to get the best out of his animals. But not even chaining Madelaine down when she misbehaved and beating her with an ankus until she had to be painted with “wonder dust” to hide her wounds before a performance worked nearly as well as had Mischa’s gentle persuasion — his fingers stroking under her wrinkled eye, a whisper in her ear enough to work miracles. North, exasperated, stalked off in frustration as the big elephant turned her face to a wall and rocked for hours with her eyes closed like a disconsolate child.

Pieter Schmidt, Kleininger’s dwarf sidekick who was shot out of a spring-loaded cannon in a puff of fake smoke into a net a dozen times a week, refused to go anywhere near the elephants, terrified of them. Olga, smallest of the Van der Honigsberg sisters trapeze ensemble, complained the howdah was too tight a fit, her legs cramping. They’d tried the monkey, but Madelaine didn’t react well to the gabbling creature struggling hysterically as it was tied down in the howdah, nor did the monkey adhere to its training discipline, no matter how emphatically it was applied to the screeching animal’s head and shoulders. The Bishop finally conceded defeat, and the howdah remained empty.

The oversized poster of happier days crept past Mae’s window and disappeared as the train rolled to a stop, steam hissing loudly, hot metal clanking. Max stirred, stretching naked arms as vibrantly decorated as the circus posters, his strongman-thick body swathed in tattoos of tropical flowers, foundering shipwrecks and mermaids, exotic butterflies and mythical dragons. A campaign portrait of Charles E. Hughes, Senior, in a cartouche of laurel leaves and a furled American flag, covered half his back. Max smiled at Mae, and blinked out the window of the railcar, scratching his unshaven cheeks.

“I think we’re early,” Mae said.

Max coughed, the sound wet and sticky in his lungs, as he rolled a cigarette and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he left it in his mouth as he pulled on a button-up shirt and drew up his canvas overalls, one strap of his suspenders nearly frayed through. “Best be getting the rousties up for the haul, then.” He shoved his feet, still in the socks he’d slept in, into his boots, banged on the partition separating their compartment from Eric and Lavinia’s, eliciting a drowsy groan from the other side. The Bishop had a team of roustabouts along with employing a few forty-milers and itinerant wobblies willing to work for a meal and a bunk before the circus moved on. But any of the able-bodied performers were expected to muck in as well. Max gave Mae a tobacco-perfumed kiss, then jumped down out of the car to help unload the train and set up for the parade through town.

Mae stripped to the waist and washed her face and chest in the cold-water washbasin, then slipped on her cotton chemise and a skirt before opening the sleeper car window and tossing the contents of the chamber pot onto the tracks. She could hear murmured voices as the rest of the occupants in the married carriage roused themselves from their beds. Mae stepped down onto the wide, sloping rail line, struggling for balance on the crushed stone ballast dotted with optimistic weedlings. Her feet hurt, her equilibrium not good even at the best of times.

The mist was dissolving as the sun rose behind the Great Smoky Mountains, the stink of creosoted sleepers, coal smoke, and animal dung mixing with the aroma of frying bacon and hot corn muffins already drifting from the smokestack of the pie car. The new trio of Negro cooks the Bishop had hired in Ohio bickered with one another in their good-natured sing-song voices. A little pickaninny, the girl no more than two years old, sat on the steps of the pie car eating a slice of bread and jam, but froze when Mae smiled at her before scurrying inside to the safety of her mother’s apron.

“Coffee’s near ’bout ready, Miss Mae,” the head cook said from the open window of the pie car. “I got a sack of treats fo’ you, too.”

“Thank you, Eileen. I’m going to see the Bishop, back in a tick.”

The treats were for Madelaine. Whenever she could, Mae took her bits of carrots and apples, leftover cornbread, or watermelon and celery, then stroked her trunk to calm her down as she’d seen Mischa do. Sometimes she would sing quiet lullabies or snatches of ragtime tunes, or hum through forgotten lyrics of vaudeville songs. Sometimes, not always, the elephant would stop rocking, would explore Mae’s open hand, blowing hot puffs of breath across the claw-like palm as she delicately searched for the last crumbs of bread or apple slices. Sometimes, not always, Madelaine would gently wrap her trunk around Mae’s waist. Then Mae would lean against the elephant’s leathery sides and feel a rumble from deep within that vibrated through her skin into her bones, close her eyes, and imagine distant thunder out over a foreign ocean far away.

Schmidt and Kleininger sat in folding chairs outside the clown carriage smoking and muttering to one another in gloomy German as their pack of yapping dogs bounced around them. The surplus roustabouts, riggers, prop and canvas men who shared the clown car rolled out, yawning and stretching. The girls in the “glamour car” were already squabbling, tempers as usual frayed and high pitched.

Out of fifteen carriages, six were sleepers, the rest either cattle cars for transporting the menagerie animals, or flatbeds to carry the circus wagons. The Bishop had bought English surplus hospital train wagons after the Great War and revamped them into living quarters — one for the single roustabouts and one for the colored workers and minstrel band — providing not much more than a six-foot by three-and-a-half-foot bunk and a battered footlocker. The women-only carriage wasn’t any roomier but it at least had its own changing room and private donniker and the Bishop allowed the spec girls to decorate their individual berths as they liked, fancy curtains and cubbyholes stuffed with feminine bric-a-brac.

Not that any of them were ever satisfied, jealous of the extra space the married couples and those with families enjoyed in their sleepers. Most never lasted an entire season before they bit the grass and took off running. As long as they were pretty and plentiful, they didn’t have to be talented, Max always told her. That’s what separated real circus folk from the greenies. Mae walked past without looking in their direction, and they returned the favor by pretending she didn’t exist.

The Bishop lived alone in his sleeper behind the caboose. Even though the door to his sleeper was open, Mae knocked timidly on the side of the carriage. The Bishop stood at the map table, his back to her, but didn’t stir for a long moment, his attention fixed on his charts. Then he straightened as if awakening from a trance, turned, and smiled. He hadn’t yet shaved or waxed his moustache, the ends drooping limply.

“Good morning, Mae. Come in.”

Mae took his hand to allow him to lift her up the steps into his private sleeper. While the circus train boldly advertised its existence on every car with bright colors and ornate calligraphy, the inside of the Bishop’s car was almost monasterial. His bedroom was closed off at one end of the car, the rest divided into his office and the infirmary. No other decorations adorned his walls, completely bare but for a plain wooden cross.

Maps of train routes were pinned to the plain walls, while all the paraphernalia of a circus train master sprawled across a plain oak table. Dozens of timetables and track connections, tunnel clearance charts, and mileage records balanced with the enormous amount of personal knowledge the Bishop carried in his head: where his competitors were and when, how much talent to hire for how long and how much to pay them to keep bigger circuses from luring them away, what towns offered the best pickings along the best routes.

Most circus folk had two personalities: the one they used in their everyday lives and the one they donned as much as a costume for the paying spectators. Even so, Mae had always found the dichotomy between the Bishop’s personal character and his public performances startling. As ringmaster, the Bishop could assume any accent; a hard Midwestern twang in Cincinnati turned into sugary antebellum Southern as soon as they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. In private, the Bishop rarely spoke, as shy as a virgin schoolboy, and then barely above a whisper with an accent tinged with a faded Highland brogue. But there was nothing soft about the man, nothing effeminate or sentimental.

The Bishop escorted her through to the infirmary. Like the rest of his car, it was functional and austere, with an examining table, a bookcase of medical books, and a medicine cabinet. The air was tinged with the faint smell of phenol, carbolic acid, and chloroform.

“Is it worse today?” the Bishop asked as she sat down and allowed him to peel off the custom-made slippers she only ever took off to bathe or when on display in the sideshow.

“Yes, sir.” She watched him lift up her right foot to peer at it, her feet as ugly and warped as her hands. When she’d been a child, an unscrupulous manager had “enhanced” her feet, breaking the bones and binding them to fuse into even more of a fishtail shape. It increased the amount he could charge the curious and gullible, but left her nearly crippled. She’d had to use canes when she walked down the aisle last year with Max, and was only able to walk without them after Max had massaged her feet every night with Holland’s White Liniment. That hadn’t stopped the rheumatism, however, her feet still so swollen and red the skin had cracked.

The Bishop prodded the lumpy bone underneath the scaly, dry skin gently. “The liniment isn’t helping anymore?”

“It stings real bad when it gets in the cracks.” Which made her cry. Which made Max go white in the face and stand outside to smoke one cigarette after another helplessly.

“Pliny the Elder wrote about physicians in ancient Athens who applied bee stings to their patients, the venom having a therapeutic efficacy for rheumatism.”

Mae stared at the top of his balding head as the Bishop kept his attention on her feet. She had no idea who Pliny the Elder might be, but she was quite certain he would not have been a doctor she would want. Even if she could have ever gone to see a real doctor. “No, thank you.”

“Mmm,” the Bishop said, not fussed. “You should stay off your feet for a while. Cleanliness is vital to avoid infection. Soak them in Epsom salts and leave your slippers off whenever you can. Skin needs to breathe, too.” He set her foot down and picked up the left to scrutinize. “Madelaine seems to like your singing. You have a sweet voice.”

She started, her foot kicking out and almost connecting with his nose, forcing him to hold on more tightly and making her wince. Heat rolled up into her face. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“Don’t be. It’s helping her. Maybe you should ride her; that would keep you off your feet.”

Mae studied him, but couldn’t tell if he intended that to be funny. She decided he was joking, and smiled wanly.

He handed her a bottle of medicinal mouthwash to deliver to her neighbor Eric Malcome — the fire-eaters suffered chronic blisters and ulcers — and helped her down out of the carriage. The train already had been unloaded, poles and canvas piled onto the wagons. With the last of the animals harnessed, elephants decked out, and performers in costume the circus was ready for the grand parade through town to the lot. The site for the circus was a long haul from the railroad loading spur, further than the Bishop would have liked. But it was at least dry, late autumn rains turning most of the town into a swamp. Already a sizable crowd had clotted the roadsides as factories, schools, and shops emptied and closed for circus day.

Ashton wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just another grubby boomtown in the middle of nowhere with unpaved streets and board sidewalks. The railroads had transformed this once isolated part of the South into a hub serving the supply lines to and from the coal mines and logging camps, the ironworks and textile mills all employing several thousand workers desperate for entertainment and ways to spend their money. Easy pickings for any circus.

Or it would have been, had it not been for the Reverend Leroy Taylor Randall and his Pentecostal tent revival already in full swing by the time the circus arrived on the lot. Although the revival consisted of one pathetically small tent with only half a wall around it, it was packed with parishioners, mostly women and old men, waving arms about and hollering in tongues at the top of their lungs. The preacher, dressed head to toe in funereal black, held a Bible over his head while shouting out scripture in a crow-hoarse voice. A gospel choir behind him clapped and sang while every few minutes he would lay a hand on a random forehead praise the Lord and send someone toppling backward Jesus save me to writhe and twitch like mosquito larvae in an overcrowded pond hallelujah!

The canvas men and the riggers laid out the tents and poles while pairs of gandy dancers pounded spikes with synchronized sledgehammers. The canvas boss walked through the lot demarcating where the midway would form, siting locations for the menagerie top, the big top, the sideshow tent, the cookhouse tents, while sledge gangs tried to ignore both the usual crowds of the curious and the sudden appearance of the preacher and his flock singing and clapping and shouting just outside the ticket tents rapidly going up.

“And the Lord said unto these followers of Satan, ye defiled whores of Babylon, I shalt cast out the sinners, I shalt pour down torrents of rain, hailstones, and burning sulfur and they shalt know I am the Lord thy God!”

“Damned Bible thumpers,” Max said darkly as he buttoned Mae into her lobster costume and arranged the seaweed circlet on her head. “Don’t even quote it right.”

She watched the preacher and his mob through a chink in the sideshow booth, uneasy yet fascinated. But despite the preacher’s ranting and dire warnings, the afternoon show had gone off without a hitch, the midway and the tents packed out, the populace of Ashton happy to divide their patronage between two circuses. The midway continued to offer rides and high-priced junk and carnival fare during the break between shows, while North rounded up the elephants to take them to the river for a much needed drink and cooling down.

The smaller elephants were skittish enough being youngsters, North having to nudge them lightly with the ankus to remind them to behave. Madelaine followed them, docile and patient, ignoring the gawking crowd shoving and jostling for a better view. The afternoon had grown hotter, the humidity stifling. Half the circus company had decided on a swim as well to cool off before the evening performance, forming a mini parade down to the water. A few of the acrobats turned cartwheels and flip-flap handsprings, while Max and Mae and Eric followed Madelaine in the small pony cart, well hidden. They’d find a more secluded spot upstream. The crowd would be too fascinated by the elephants drinking, spraying each other, rolling in the river, to notice them. When they weren’t in their costumes and on display, Mae knew, they might as well have been invisible.

The muddy road down to the river was chock-a-block, women in fancy hats wielding umbrellas to shove their way through gangs of workmen in dirty overalls, Negro farm hands elbowing fat shopkeepers and bankers, children riding on their fathers’ shoulders. Everyone had come to gawp and gape and stare, providing as much a sideshow for the circus company as it was for the spectators.

Eric and Max sat in the rear of the pony wagon, mopping their sweating foreheads while Mae peeped through the wooden doors just behind the driver. She saw the mayor and his family, decked out in their Sunday best, the smallest of his boys trying hard to tempt Madelaine with a peanut held straight out in his chubby hand while his sisters recoiled, squealing in real or pretend fright. To the boy’s delight, the elephant obligingly took the peanut from him, the tip of her trunk as nimble as fingers.

She saw the preacher and his band of female parishioners, a black scarecrow surrounded by scrawny white chickens, still brandishing a Bible over his head, shouting hoarsely. “No true Christian can follow Our Lord Jesus Christ and then be found in a circus, that den of iniquity, wicked purveyors of drinking and dancing, gambling and adultery!” White flecks foamed in the corners of his mouth, while the women around him rolled their eyes in ecstasy.

She saw a man step out from among the worshipers, a half-eaten apple in his hand, the smoke from a lit cigar dangling from his mouth making him squint. She saw him tease Madelaine with the apple, waving it just out of her reach, until she stretched out her trunk eagerly, her mouth opening in anticipation. She saw him grin, switch the apple for his cigar, and toss it into the elephant’s mouth. And laugh.

For a moment, Mae felt the earth hesitate, everything gone still. Then Madelaine screamed, not her normal trumpeting but a cry of pain so deep Mae felt as if her own lungs were on fire. The elephant backed up, swinging her head frantically from side to side, ears flapping. The driver stood and swung his whip at the huge haunches pushing the pony to one side, then jumped off as Madelaine rammed into the wagon, tilting it dangerously. It teetered for a stomach-wrenching moment, then came down hard enough for a wheel to come off and throw Mae through the doors onto the now-empty driver’s seat.

Mae saw Madelaine spit out the cigar, now chewed into shreds, then whack her trunk hard against the man who had fed it to her. The impact threw him several yards, where he landed on his back. Stunned, he was struggling onto his elbows as Madelaine bore down on him, his eyes going wide just before she lifted one massive foot and slammed it onto his head. His skull exploded like a ripe watermelon, bloody brains squirting out in a grisly pulp.

The crowd screamed and ran, barging into one another mindlessly, slipping in the mud. The four young elephants bolted in the confusion, knocking North over as well. An old man, no shirt under his coveralls, white beard stained with tobacco juice, fired a shotgun into the air. As the crowd split away from him in panic as well, he pumped the shotgun and fired it again, this time into Madelaine’s side. She trumpeted, more startled than hurt, lashing out blindly with her trunk, turning around in a circle, mashing the dead body underfoot even further. North had staggered back upright and spotted Mae climbing down out of the wagon toward them.

“Hey, Rube!” he shouted, nearly unheard over the din of the crowd. Instantly, Max and Eric vaulted from the wagon; ride jockeys and riggers and roustabouts alike plowed into the mob, fists flailing. Mae stumbled across the rutted road to throw her arms around Madelaine’s trunk, and felt the elephant wrap it around her so tightly she nearly couldn’t breathe. Blood trickled from the bullet wounds in the elephant’s thick hide, dripping onto Mae’s arms and head. She could feel Madelaine trembling.

“My God, it’s killing her, too!” someone shouted. “Kill the elephant!”

“Round me at twilight come stealing,” Mae started to sing, breathless with fear, stroking the elephant’s trunk. “Shadows of days that are gone. ”

Madelaine exhaled, like a huge sigh from a thundercloud, then lowered her head, her trunk loosening. “Dreams of the old days revealing. ” The elephant stood still, then gently began to rock in time with Mae’s song. “Mem’ries of love’s golden dawn. ”

The Bishop pushed his way through the brawling crowd, his top hat nearly crushed on his head, stopped, and exchanged a look with Mae. She kept singing, low and steady, as the Bishop took it in, all of it, the three of them as isolated in the midst of the riot as had they been in the big top spotlit by banjo lights.

“Kill the elephant! Kill the elephant!” Mae saw the preacher, his black frock flapping around him like crow’s wings as he pumped his arms, the chanting growing louder in anger, his face contorted with rage and glee.

North stumbled into the charmed circle, nose bleeding, knuckles raw, but a glint of wild joy in his eyes that faded as soon as he saw the Bishop.

“Get the chains on her, now,” the Bishop ordered sharply.

Madelaine made no protest as North wrapped foot chains around back legs. “Keep singin’ to her, Mae,” he said.

“Childhood days, wild wood days, among the birds and bees. ”

Madelaine allowed North to chain both her front feet as well, even holding up one leg helpfully to make it easier for him to slip the shackle on, her foot still stained with brains and blood. A cheer went up from the crowd as four uniformed policemen with batons pushed their way through to where Madelaine stood submissively, her trunk now resting limply around Mae’s shoulders, sensitive nostrils blowing hot on her neck.

“Get away from there, miss,” one of them shouted at her in alarm.

She glared back at him, and held onto Madelaine’s trunk, not caring that her deformed hands were in plain view. “You left me alone, but still you’re my own,” she kept singing. “In my beautiful memories.”

“She’s safe enough now,” North said heatedly to the policeman. “So why don’t you calm these folks down before you’ve got more to worry about than this here elephant?”

The Bishop had climbed onto Mae’s wagon, balancing precariously. “Free tickets!” he bellowed. His ringmaster’s voice cut through the caterwauling, greedy eyes turning toward him, the violence ebbing. “Ladies and gentlemen! Free tickets to tonight’s performance under the big top! That’s right, all seats at absolutely no charge for the good citizens of Ashton! Tonight only! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Get them while they last, every ticket absolutely free, yellow, blue, and red, first come, first served!”

That did the trick, the rush toward the nearby circus tents and ticket offices churning up a quagmire in a near stampede.

“You all right there, Mae?” North asked her, unsure whether or not she was a prisoner inside Madelaine’s embrace, his ankus readied in one hand.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, just go,” she said, then closed her eyes, leaned against Madelaine, and sang softly. “Memories, memories, dreams of love so true. O’er the sea of memory I’m drifting back to you. ”

With the crowd thinned out, the crew and rousties quickly corralled the four younger elephants, who helped push the pony wagon back upright and replace the wheel. It took only a few minutes to get them turned back to the lot, leaving Mae and Madelaine surrounded by skittish police officers unsure of what to do, puffed up with more bravado than authority. North returned with a team of roustabouts carrying more chains, binding the big elephant’s whole body so securely she could barely walk, then led her back toward the circus, where he secured her to a log behind the colored workers’ rest tent, out of sight of the public. The local police stood watch, one at each corner like an honor guard around a coffin.

The big top was packed out for the evening’s performance, the stalls and star backs and blue stringers overflowing. Kiddies squeezed together on straw spread out in front of the general admission seats and still they pressed up clear to the hay bale rings. But it seemed both spectators and performers knew this was not an ordinary evening, the rangy cheering and laughter bordering on thin hysteria. From inside her exhibition booth in the sideshow top, Mae tried to relax, sheathed in her tight costume and going through her routine every time the curtain was pulled back to admit another lot of slack-jawed gawpers, clacking her hands together and waving her feet about in absurd parody of a lobster. She had never expected empathy or pity, long immune to the gasps of horror, nervous giggles, even the occasional lewd proposition made more to impress mates than in expectation of success. But this crowd was subdued, predatory, their eyes small and mean as they stared and sneered, bought a souvenir penny postcard, and left.

Outside, the calliope rattled through its repertoire of screamer music, band organs cranking out paper roll tunes for the carnival rides. Kiddies and women and even men shrieked in delight and fear and excitement. Candy butchers hawked popcorn, cotton candy, toffee apples, and pink lemonade while grinders reeled through their repetitive ballyhoos, right this way folks you can’t afford to miss this absolutely petrifying freak of nature, half price for the next five minutes only, be astounded, amazed, and thrilled, once seen, never forgotten.

It was a relief when Max, tattoos hidden by his oversized bathrobe, finally left the pit where he did his strongman act, and came to get her. The noise of the crowd swelled in the blowoff as they were herded down the midway and out of the circus lot, then evaporated, leaving the twilight air to be filled instead with cicada chittering. She draped her arms around Max’s neck like a sleepy child as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the dressing top. Once she’d changed out of the lobster costume into more comfortable clothes, he carried her across the eerily quiet midway to the back yard, past the pole wagons, the main cookhouse tent, the spec floats behind the horse tops empty and deserted. The gorilla rustled in his bed of hay and newspapers, “The World’s Most Terrifying Beast!” emblazoned in red and gilt over his cage, drew a torn broadsheet over his head, and curled back to sleep, snoring softly. Flags snapped atop the top poles, a horse nickered, mosquitoes whined in the humid heat. The entire company had gathered in the dressing top, kerosene lanterns flickering shadow puppets on the sidewalls.

Kleininger had already scrubbed off the clown makeup while Schmidt’s whiteface had smeared into the crags and lines of his face, his eyes old and weary. What little muted conversation there was died away as the Bishop walked into the top, still dressed in his velvet vest and tails, glass diamonds in his buttons glittering. One of the rousties quickly fetched a folding chair. The Bishop smiled wanly in thanks as he sat down heavily. He still had the ringmaster’s whip coiled in one hand, dangling between his knees as he rested elbows on his thighs, head hanging. The Bishop sighed, then looked up.

“The mayor of this fine town took a good deal of pleasure in informing me he’s sent telegrams down the wire. Every town between here and the West Coast knows we have a killer elephant. They’re threatening to ban the circus altogether if we don’t get rid of her.”

Mae’s heart sank. “But she’s not. ” she said, so softly she was nearly inaudible. In the hushed tent, a hundred eyes turned toward her, waiting. “That man. Who died. He threw a lit cigar in her mouth, it wasn’t her fault.”

“Doesn’t matter, she has to go.”

“If another circus won’t take her, we can find a zoo who will, can’t we?” For a little man, Schmidt had a remarkably deep voice, his German accent slight.

A few faces brightened with hope, quickly dashed. “If it were one of us, it would be different,” the Bishop said, shaking his head. “We know the life. But she’s killed an outsider. The mayor told me the preacher’s got the townsfolk so riled up they’re planning to drag an old cannon from the Civil War memorial up here tomorrow to shoot her.”

One of the spec girls burst out into loud sobs, clapped a hand over her mouth, and ran out of the tent.

“You can’t just let them kill her,” Mae said, and felt Max’s hand settle on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mae. I have to think of the entire company, not just one elephant. You’ve seen these people — they’re out for blood, and they’re dead set on getting it, too. If it isn’t Madelaine, who will they go after instead? How about our coloreds, strung up on light poles the way they did in Dumuth?”

The boys in the minstrel band looked impassive, but Eileen squeezed her eyes shut, shaking so hard Kleininger stood up and awkwardly put his arm around her and stared at his bare feet as she crumpled against him.

“You sideshow freaks? Maybe all of us? This entire crazy town is standing between us and the circus train; they’re not letting us go until they get their pound of flesh. This isn’t a discussion about if she has to die. The only thing to decide is how.”

No one spoke for a long time. Then North said, “Can’t shoot her. We don’t have anything big enough to do the job proper.” His lips compressed into a hard line. “And I won’t do it, no.”

“I don’t have enough potassium cyanide to poison her,” the Bishop said.

“She’s too smart for that anyway,” North said. “After today, she’s going to be damned skittish about what goes in her mouth.”

“Jumbo was killed by a locomotive,” one of the rousties said. “Maybe get two railcars goin’ from opposite ends, sort of squash her in the middle?”

The men around him looked sick. The Bishop winced. “Can’t be sure she’d set still in place long enough, too big a risk if she spooked and broke free.”

“I saw Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant at Coney Island some years back,” Eric said, then dropped his gaze as well, as if ashamed to be part of the conspiracy.

The Bishop snorted with contempt. “There’s not enough electricity in this piece-of-shit town and I’m not using our gennies for that.” He glanced at Mae, embarrassed by his profanity in front of women. “Begging your pardon.” He stood up. “These podunk white-trash hillbillies want a lynching. So we’ll give them a lynching. We hang her.”

Even Theresa, who normally had a face carved from stone, closed her eyes, tears running black mascara like molasses.

“The railroad has a one-hundred-ton derrick car in their rail yard they use to load lumber onto freight cars, strong enough to hold her.” The Bishop’s demeanor had hardened, businesslike. “We’ll do one last show tomorrow, then get the whole town away to the loading yard to watch her hang while the rest of you ready the haul. She weighs five tons; it’ll be over quick enough. So I want those trains loaded for the jump like your lives depend on it. Because they do.”

The roustabouts and riggers and canvas men nodded.

The Bishop’s face was bloodless with repressed fury. “All of you. We take this clem town for everything. Cheat ’em, ding ’em, gaff every game, clutch every ride, fleece every damned one of them. I don’t care what it takes, don’t leave them a dime, not a nickel, not two fucking pennies to rub together. We burn the lot, understood?”

This time, the Bishop didn’t apologize for his profanity, jammed his top hat onto his head, and stalked from the tent.

It was the grimmest, and shortest, show they’d ever played, the barrists going through their trapeze and tightrope routine like mechanical automatons, not even bothering with bows to acknowledge the applause. North had the zebras pull the big cats through the ring in their cages, making a show of snapping his whip, tugging on tails to get the beasts to snarl and roar and paw the bars more in uncertainty than ferocity before trotting them back out of the big top without opening a single cage. The clowns and dogs rolled in so quickly behind him the specs didn’t realize they were getting shortchanged, not that it seemed to matter. It wasn’t the circus they’d come to see. The four elephants didn’t even perform, the Bishop having them walk with Madelaine down to the derrick car, trunk to tail in single file, to keep her company.

On the midway, shills and grifters played lightning-fast shell games and three-card monte while nimble-fingered pickpockets drifted through the crowd, lifting money and tickets and jewelry and watches. The mooches patted jackets and rummaged handbags in bewilderment while grinders kept them spinning along like leaves swirling in a rain-swollen creek. The police didn’t even need to be juiced to turn a blind eye, all of them down at the rail yard guarding Madelaine.

In the sideshow, the marks were run through ten-in-one shows in record time, so hastily most weren’t aware there wasn’t actually much to see; Theresa had substituted an assortment of pickled punks and devil babies floating in jars of formaldehyde for her act while she got her small animals safely packed up. If anyone recognized Mae as the woman who had sung to an elephant, there was no flash of surprise in their dull, vacuous eyes.

Then the show was over, and the circus lot emptied in minutes, all of Ashton along with thousands more who had swarmed into town for the execution sprinting to the rail yard at the far end of the town. They poured over boxcars, climbed onto locomotive engines, scaled water towers, shimmied up telegraph poles like a swarm of ants.

Mae knew the Bishop would string it out as long as he could to give the rousties time for the teardown, tents and stick joints and gennies and rides dismantled, the animals herded, the equipment loaded onto wagons and hauled to the circus train as fast as possible.

Mae had accepted a ride in one of the tiny pony carts with an elderly caller. When she reached the derrick, Madelaine had already been chained to a rail, the big elephant shifting back and forth fretfully, head down, trunk hanging limply. A few hundred yards down from the track, a steam shovel hissed and clattered as it dug a deep pit, several dozen railroad men shoveling out a muddy grave.

North strode across the rail yard, big shoulders hunched under a plaid shirt, suspenders hanging off his hips. He helped Mae down from the pony cart, the old caller’s hand on her waist to keep her balanced.

“You shouldn’t have come, Mae.”

“She should have at least one friend with her,” Mae said, surprised herself with how hot her throat felt. North looked away, his face reddening.

The Bishop listened as one of the lot manager’s boys whispered in his ear, then nodded without a word to the pair of rousties standing by Madelaine. One drew a thick chain around the elephant’s neck while the other fitted the end to a steel ring. In the expectant silence, the derrick operator started the winch, drawing the chain up tightly. Madelaine stopped rocking, then — as if she believed this was just some new trick she was expected to perform — she heaved both front feet off the ground and stood upright obediently on her back feet. She lifted her trunk and curled it in a meticulous salute to her forehead, holding her pose as if expecting applause. None came. Mae bit her lips to fight back tears.

The derrick operator kept rattling the chain upward, taking up the slack. Madelaine began to struggle as one back foot slowly lifted as well.

Mae had heard audiences burst into enthusiastic applause when a tightrope walker fell to his death, mistaking it as part of the act. She had heard them laugh and cheer mindlessly when a clown accidentally caught on fire, so badly burned he never worked again. But nothing she had ever heard before matched the viciousness, the sheer brutality in the shout that went up as Madelaine began to buck, her body arching when all four feet came off the ground. The elephant’s mouth gaped open, her tongue as pink as a tea rose. Urine snaked down her back legs, darkening the gray skin, splashing onto the railing. The entire derrick shook as she twisted on the end of the chain while her eyes rolled white under dark lashes. The chains creaked under the strain, a strange crackling and popping as Madelaine’s own weight tore ligaments from her bones. It took several minutes, far longer than Mae had thought possible, before the thrashing grew weaker, the elephant’s body slowly slackening until Madelaine hung limply, only the slightest of tremors as she pirouetted on the end of the chain.

The Bishop let her hang for another half an hour after the last quiver had stopped, and the last of the cheering finally died away, the crowd, bored, melting away. As the derrick operator lowered her body back to the ground and the rousties unhooked her, the Bishop put his hand on the elephant’s head. Behind him, a photographer held up a Kodak camera and snapped a picture. He bleated in protest as Billy North wrenched the camera out of his hand.

“Get out of here before I shove this thing down your neck.” North punched the camera back into the photographer’s chest, growling as the man stumbled away.

There was no one to record the tractor as the same chain that had hung her was hooked to one leg to drag her several hundred yards to the massive pit. She tumbled in, and it took only a few minutes for the steam shovel to pile the muddy earth back into the hole, the tractor tamping it down flat. Mae waited until the machinery had clanked its way back to the rail yard, then hobbled toward the grave. She glanced up in surprise as the Bishop suddenly took her elbow.

“What are you doing, Mae? We need to leave now.”

Guiltily, she withdrew a handful of paper flowers she’d gleaned off one of the carnival stands and hidden under her coat. “For Madelaine.”

“Don’t be stupid, girl,” the Bishop said roughly. “It’s just an elephant.” But he didn’t stop her from placing them on the newly turned earth.

The mayor waited for them by the train, straw bowler hat making a red mark around his forehead. The Bishop helped Mae onto the steps of the married sleeper car, Max catching her by the hands to lift her the rest of the way.

“We’ve passed an ordinance,” the mayor said, “banning circuses in Ashton. We don’t want to see the likes of you back here again.”

The Bishop laughed, the harshness of it making the mayor step back. “You have no need to worry on that account, sir,” the Bishop said. “There’s not a circus anywhere on earth that would ever come within a fifty-mile radius of this. town.”

The Bishop walked to the caboose, and remained standing on the platform as the train pulled out, leaving the mayor fuming in its wake. The conductor blew the whistle in one long, unbroken wail until the last clapboard buildings fell behind, lost in coal smoke.

They put a few hundred miles between themselves and Ashton before the next morning. When they finally stopped in a cornfield far from any station, Mae knocked on the side of the Bishop’s sleeper car. He didn’t respond, so she turned, about to leave, then heard a child crying from inside. She had to lift herself up by the rails and open the door, but was inside before the Bishop could exit the infirmary and block her way. He wore a white apron with sleeves over his suit, blood speckled at the cuffs.

“I’m rather busy at the moment, Mae,” he said. “Can it wait?”

She peered around him, getting a glimpse through the curtain, enough to make her push past the Bishop. A small child wrestled against the straps holding him down to the table, but in that clumsy manner of a patient not yet completely sedated, a linen mask tied across his face and the smell of chloroform in the air. Surgical instruments gleamed from a tray, linen bandages laid out beside a pan of steaming hot water.

“That’s the mayor’s son,” she said, recognizing the chubby boy who had fed a peanut to Madelaine.

“No, no. You’re mistaken. Just another orphan who’s run away to the circus.” The Bishop took her by the elbow firmly, steering her toward the sleeper’s door.

“What are you doing to him?”

“Giving him the future he wants.” It took every ounce of strength she possessed, but Mae shook him off. He stepped back, as if resigned. “Rosie will be big enough to wear Madelaine’s old howdah next season. All that’s needed is someone who can fit into it.”

As the meaning of his words dawned on her, she felt her knees threatening to buckle. “But you’re not a doctor, not a real one! You’ll kill him!”

“Ah, but I am a real doctor. Trained and certified with the best surgeons in Harley Street. I’ve cut hundreds of legs off lads barely old enough to shave while the Chinese fired so many shells we worked nearly blinded by ash and smoke, the fusillades so loud we had to shout to be heard.” His eyes had gone soft, memories turned inward, but there was little mercy in them. “Missionary nurses reading scripture to dying children as the hospital burned around us. Beds soaked with blood and pus and shit while we prayed and cut and prayed and cut. ” He blinked, as if awakening, then smiled at her kindly. “You have to go now, Mae. I’m very busy.”

“Please, sir,” she whispered, pleading. “Please. Don’t do this. What has that poor boy ever done to deserve this?”

He steered her down the steps, making sure she had her footing before he straightened in the doorway of the carriage.

“What have any of us? Everyone pays, Mae. Everyone. There are no free tickets in life. You should know that.”

He shut the door, this time locking it, while Mae collapsed on the broken rock of railroad ballast and wept.

THE FIREBRAND

by Priya Sharma

Henry Ellard, aged eighteen, can’t believe that he’s just witnessed three people die, only hours ago.

One of them was Rebecca Saunders. The Firebrand. How he loved to watch her as flames danced across her outstretched hands.

Henry strikes the pink head of a match against the side of the matchbox. There’s the flare and the familiar smell as sulphur and phosphorus combine. He passes a finger through the flame.

Bearable, he thinks.

Henry tries to hold his finger in the flame but fails. He throws the match into the ashtray and watches it burn to a shriveled stick, his scorched finger in his mouth.

Three deaths. What combination of murder, suicide, and accident has he seen?

The first time he saw Rebecca was as he wandered through the crowd. She stood, her sequined costume winking in the sunlight, handing out flyers. A remarkable woman, able to withstand flames and who looked right at him and smiled as though he were the most handsome man she’d ever seen. She reached out and touched the livid purple birthmark that covers the left side of his face with a fingertip.

Equally remarkable is that she’s died in a pyre that’s consumed both her and Leo Saunders. Henry could hear the man roaring from the heart of the inferno. The thing Henry doesn’t understand is that Rebecca didn’t scream. Not even once.

“Henry?”

He looks up to see a waitress standing over him. Her gaze flicks from his eyes to his birthmark. “I’m Katherine. From your history class.”

“Oh, hi.” He’s chosen this café to avoid such encounters.

“I work here,” she adds, as if an explanation is required.

Henry tips his face away from her to hide the unsightly port wine stain. The gesture makes him look reticent at best, dismissive at worst, but it’s instinctive.

“What are you having?”

“Black coffee, please.”

Katherine hesitates, as though she has more to say. He wants her to leave him alone. It’s too complex, trying to work out whether her friendliness is genuine, mockery, or from pity when his mind is so full of the recently deceased Rebecca, Leo, and Christos Saunders. He lights another match and stares at the flame until Katherine walks away.

Henry Ellard, at sixty-four, feels indignant that he’s had to start afresh. His new house has no claim to his history. It’s not where he embarked on or ended family life. It’s not where he and Katherine raised their child or where Henry had a heart attack, pain crushing him to the floor.

The house does have charm though. It’s at the end of a lane, single storied, with a veranda that wraps around the whole building. There’s a galley kitchen and two bedrooms, although the spare one’s never used. The lounge window overlooks the woods. The trees are company. The room’s unfit for entertaining as he’s made it his sanctuary. One wall’s covered with shelves laden with box files. The desk that was built for two dominates the room. Henry used to sit opposite Katherine, then his wife, as they marked student papers late into the night.

A single poster, an original, acts as the room’s sole decoration.

Something new and unique comes to Paradise. The Firebrand! The world’s only burning girl!

Rebecca Saunders has been rendered half woman, half phoenix in the illustration. Her costume’s pinched at the waist and her sloping tail is red and gold. She smiles, despite being on fire.

Henry always keeps his own personal copy of his book to hand. The Firebrand: Death in Paradise by Henry Ellard. His ex-wife once threw it at him during a fight.

“Your responsibility’s to us, not the past,” Katherine had shouted.

She was across the room upending files of photos, programs, and transcribed interviews. He lunged after her, trying to protect his archive of lost lives.

Henry’s book is stuffed with original snapshots, letters, and his own handwritten notes. He flicks through until he finds his favorite photo, pressed like a leaf between the pages. A cropped version’s reprinted within the book, but the original is of the whole Saunders inner circle, dressed for dinner.

This group portrait was taken against the backdrop of Paradise, a mile-long plot of land that was part fun fair, part circus, part county show. There’s Rebecca, Christos, and their dog sitting on a picnic bench. The Russian trapeze artists, Nikolai and Lara, are standing beside them. Nikolai’s arm is around Lara’s neck, pulling her close. His lips are planted on her cheek and Henry can never decide if she looks annoyed or amused. Whether they were sister and brother, or lovers, remains a mystery. The Giant, real name Jacob Stein, has dark eyes in a long face. Nancy Fotheringale, the Wax Lady, leans on his arm. There’s Rollo, the clown, face unpainted and hair slick with pomade. And Leo Saunders, of course, at the center of everything.

Henry looks at the photo, back across forty-six years, and wonders if his memories have been colored by research. These people are vivid in his mind, even though he never knew them, just orbited them during his eighteenth summer, every spare penny and evening spent in Paradise. He wasn’t a freak when he walked among them. Disfigurements were a mark of pride among this wondrous clan, like the Wax Lady’s melted face or the long, cadaverous features of Jacob the Giant. If anyone did look at Henry, he fancied they might mistake him for one of these fabulous people. So fabulous that someone like Rebecca Saunders made the thing he was so ashamed of feel like an artful embellishment.

Henry watches the interviews he recorded when he was writing his book. Although the light falls and fails, he doesn’t turn on the lamps, just lets the glow from the screen wash the room. He can hear his twenty-nine-year-old self talking to Rollo, the man in the frame.

This film version of Rollo has reached that perplexing stage called middle age, yet at forty-three he shows no sign of a sedentary paunch. He lounges on the chair like it’s a throne.

“So, why clowning?” Henry asks.

He wasn’t interested in Rollo, not really. Henry just wanted to butter him up and loosen his tongue. The man was his closest link to the Saunderses.

“Why not?” Rollo’s voice is neutral. Henry can see the danger in that neutrality that he wasn’t socially adept enough to pick up on back then.

“It’s not the most glamorous of acts.”

“No? Not dignified enough for someone of your intellect? A child’s diversion?” Rollo’s mouth contorts into a sneer. “Clowning is the most complex of entertainments. We have the greatest breadth of skills of any circus performer.”

Henry can see how he had been caught out, having to rack his brains to conjure up the man in full regalia, under the spotlight’s glare.

“I remember that you came into the big top standing on a zebra’s back.”

“Yes.”

“And you were locked in with the lions.”

The audience had gasped, fearful when they thought he was in danger. Then Rollo turned from bumbler to lion tamer, cracking the whip with aplomb.

“That’s right. I was an acrobat, actor, I did elephant and lion work, I was a bareback rider and a high wire walker, among other things. But clowning is more than that. It’s Greek, don’t you think?”

“Pardon?”

“Clowning. It’s comedy. It’s tragedy. It fulfills a basic human need. Did you know that priests and clowns served the same purpose in ancient Egypt?”

“No, I didn’t.” Henry’s voice is small. The clown’s no fool. Henry musters up all he knows about clown taxonomy to try and redeem himself. “You led the troupe as an auguste, not a blanc?”

Blanc, the white faced, dignified straight man of the act.

“Auguste is more interesting.” An auguste clown’s face was a riot of color that exaggerated the features. Rollo wore a matching shrunken suit that exaggerated his size. “It’s a better character. A troublemaker.”

“How did you know the Saunders family?” Henry was keen to steer Rollo toward the subject.

“They took me in. His mother, Lil, did gun tricks. Leo and I grew up together. I was hanging around the Minolta State Circus after I ran away from an orphanage.”

“You ran away to join the circus.”

Listening now, Henry’s face burns at his own glib attempt to lighten the mood.

“To join the circus,” Rollo repeats, his face set hard enough to smash Henry to pieces with a look.

“You knew them well then. You were almost family.”

“They were my family,” Rollo corrects Henry, “the only family I’ve ever had. Lil taught us guns. Leo and I were both crack shots. Leo was sixteen when she died. I was fourteen. Christos, Leo’s brother, was only five.”

“Where was their father?”

“Tuberculosis. Giorgio died when Christos was a baby.”

“What happened after Lilia Saunders died?”

“It was hard. As much as people tried to look out for us there’s no room for dead weight on the road. We stuck together. My real talent was for clowning. Leo did gun tricks but he wanted to build an empire, even then. He saved every penny and when he was twenty-five he mortgaged a patch of land outside the city. He named it Paradise. He asked me to go in with him at the start but I said no. Can you believe that? I told him it was too big a risk.” Rollo looks out of the window. “He was going to give me a second chance at it. He was going to make me a partner before he died. The lawyer told me afterward. All the paperwork had been drawn up. That’s life, I suppose. You don’t get to roll the dice twice.”

When Rollo looks back at him, envy and awe shine from the man’s face. “I should’ve known if anyone could pull it off, it was Leo. He knew how to sell his vision. All those factory workers and waiters. All the soldiers and sailors on leave. If you wanted a tattoo or your palm read, or to look at dirty pictures on a peep show machine, it was all there. A Ferris wheel, side-shows, and a big top.”

“And you?”

“Youngest clown ever to lead a troupe. More than that, I was Leo’s right hand.”

“What about Christos?”

“Leo had been dragging him around for years. Packed him off to college in the end.”

“They didn’t get on?”

“Growing pains, that was all. No, the real trouble started when Chris came back.”

Leo Saunders sees the girl first. She strolls without the urgency of someone in search of work, but it’s too early in the day for punters to visit Paradise.

She stops to watch Rollo, stripped to vest and trousers, as he limbers up. The man’s all muscle and steam. Sun glints off his shaven head. Even when he’s in his clown costume he can look threatening when he chooses to. Leo’s spent a lifetime pulling him out of scrapes and stopping him from brawling, a relationship that began when he caught Rollo stealing from his mother’s caravan. Lilia was about to give him a whipping but Leo had pleaded for the urchin and she’d said, “All right, but you’re responsible for him.”

Rollo rolls toward the girl like a bowling ball that’ll knock her down. He comes to a stop inches away from her face, looking down at her with a grin. Leo’s seen him do this before to make a pretty girl shriek.

She doesn’t seem startled, just gives Rollo a tight, polite smile as she moves away. That amuses Leo. Rollo’s not used to women walking away from him.

She could be anywhere between eighteen and twenty-five. Her dress is cheap, cherry-patterned nylon, the type that can be hand washed and left to dry overnight. Ugly, sensible shoes and a cardboard suitcase.

Nothing can disguise her loveliness.

“Jack,” Leo says to his foreman, “give me a minute.”

Leo, at thirty-three, has the bearing of an older man. He’s used to being obeyed.

“Sure, boss.”

Leo starts to walk over to her. He’s glad he’s freshly shaved and smells of cologne. That his suit’s been pressed.

The girl stops Nancy Fotheringale, the Wax Lady. She’s a permanent fixture in Paradise, with her own tent. Stiff and English, she drinks her tea with her little finger stuck out, now making her living by being an exhibit because she lost her post as a governess when her condition became apparent. The girl bows her head toward the older woman where most people lean away because Nancy’s face drips with pendulous tumours. She looks like she’s melting. The girl speaks and Leo’s surprised when Nancy laughs, a rare and beautiful sound.

Nancy points toward him as he approaches.

“Hello, I’m Leo Saunders.”

“Leo,” the girl repeats.

“Short for Leonides Saunderis.” He surprises himself. He never begins a conversation with an admission of his immigrant roots.

“Leonides,” her voices softens, as if more impressed with honesty than reinvention. “It’s a regal name.”

It’s as if she’s seen his heart, his fears, his insecurities and, in telling him that Leonides sounds regal, has given him back his real name.

“You’re Christos’s brother, aren’t you?”

He grins. It’s not often that he’s referred to as Christos’s brother.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Rebecca. His wife.”

Apartments line one end of Paradise. The premium on land prices has made Leo build upward, space insufficient for bungalows for all the performers and key staff. Each block has three stories and they occupy a natural bank, so they have a view of the site.

From here Leo can see the crowd spill through the turnstiles. The marauding public wear their weekend clothes, pockets of pennies to spend on shooting games and cotton candy. Leo watches their progress toward the side tents where the brave ones look through screens at regulars like Nancy Fotheringale and touring artists such as William Lloyd the Wolf Man and his cubs. The big top rises above it all, its stripes visible from the city.

Leo’s apartment doubles as an office. There’s a filing cabinet and a map of Paradise, its plots numbered and listed below. There are duty rosters, invoices, and ledgers.

Leo sits with silver picture frame in hand. Lilia and Giorgio Saunderis are dressed for their wedding. Both brandish a pair of pistols.

“I thought you’d gone to university to get a degree, not a wife.” Leo puts the frame down.

“I love her.” Christos is unabashed by love. He perches on the edge of his brother’s desk.

“Did she tell you to leave college?”

“She begged me to stay on.”

Leo sighs. “Then she’s got more sense than you.”

“Why’s everyone so angry? It’s my life. Jacob’s furious.”

“He thinks you’re wasting your talent here. That you could be a physics professor, if you wanted. He spent all those years tutoring you. He never asked me for a penny in return.”

“And I’m grateful, but it’s not what I want.”

“I promised Ma that you’d have an education and a better life than she could give me.”

“She meant well but she shouldn’t have set us on such different paths. What about what I want?”

Don’t push too hard, Leo thinks, or you’ll push him away. “Okay, what do you want?”

“To come home.”

They’re both on their feet. As Leo hauls Christos into an embrace he’s struck that his brother’s not a stripling anymore. Leo’s invigorated by the strength in his brother’s arms.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too. Let me work for you. I’ll prove myself. You’ll like Rebecca, I promise.”

Leo pats his brother’s back. “I already do.”

* * *

Henry speeds up and slows down the motions of Rollo’s face, until he finds the part of the interview that he wants. Rollo has the physiognomy of a pugilist, not a clown.

Rollo was going through a good phase at the time. The man swings between dry and soaked. Just when Henry thinks Rollo’s got his life in order, things go wrong for him. It’s always someone else’s fault. His boss or his last wife.

“Rollo, did you get on with the happy couple?”

“Sure. I was like a brother to Christos. I brought them a puppy as a welcome gift. Rebecca named it after a dog she had as a kid. She said every dog she’d had since was named after it. She was a quirky girl.”

“Tell me about Rebecca.”

“Everyone thought she was great. She was private though. What did you find out about her?”

“Not much. I’ve found a cousin but she won’t see me. Did Leo and Rebecca get on?”

“Well enough at first. I never saw them fight but things cooled after a while.”

“Why?”

“She was attractive. Leo was a red-blooded man.”

“He tried it on with her?”

“I can’t say for sure. Power turns men’s heads. They think rules don’t apply to them. Whatever happened, Leo started to see them as rivals, with Rebecca pulling the strings. Then there were questions about money going missing.”

“Why did they continue working together?”

“Leo was a subtle, patient man, even when he was angry. He couldn’t turn Chris out. He’d promised Lil. And he saw Rebecca’s worth straight off.”

“Her act.”

“Yes.”

“I saw her. She was special.” Henry can hear the ache in his own voice.

“Yes,” the clown smiles, “but you never got close enough to feel the heat. She was sublime.”

Leo knocks on the door of the neighboring flat that belongs to Christos and Rebecca.

“I’m early. Sorry.”

“Nonsense.” Rebecca’s barefoot and gracious.

“I want to apologize for the poor welcome.” He puts down a basket and hovers by the door.

“Come in.”

She hands him a tall, cool drink, beads of moisture already forming on the glass. His mouth’s suddenly dry. He takes a sip.

“Christos was supposed to get here first to break the news but his train was delayed.”

“Why didn’t you travel together?”

“I was visiting my cousin in Lauders. I understand, you know. You’ve looked after Christos all your life. He kept all the letters you sent him while he was in college. He read them when he was lonely.”

Christos, alone. Leo’s most sensitive nerve reverberates.

“I love him too.” She touches his arm. “I’ll never hurt him.”

He looks at her naked feet, her nails the pale shade of shells. “Talk’s cheap.”

“You’ll see. I’ll prove it to you.”

Christos comes out of the bedroom. It’s too late in the day for his hair to be so disarrayed. Leo looks away and is glad when he remembers his gift.

“I’ve got you something.”

Leo fetches the basket from by the door. Rebecca opens the wicker flap and picks out the quivering body and cradles it against her chest.

“Chris said you wanted one. He’s just a mutt but he’s cute. Mainly spaniel from the look of him.”

She holds the puppy up. It’s all eyes and paws.

“He’s gorgeous. Can we call him Sam? I used to have a dog called Sam when I was little.”

“Sam it is.” Christos scratches Sam’s neck. “We’ve something else to tell you. Rebecca’s got an act of her own.”

“Doing what?” Leo’s surprised she’s one of their tribe.

“I shan’t tell you.” She kisses Sam’s head. “I’ll show you.”

“Where are you going?” Rollo follows them to the big top. “What’s going on?”

Leo looks at Rebecca for permission. She’s wearing a robe over her costume. She shrugs.

Once inside Leo dismisses the sweepers who file out, grumbling that their work’s not done. Leo sits on an upturned crate, Christos beside him, but Rollo contrives to insert himself between them, an arm around their shoulders.

Rebecca drops her robe. It lands around her feet in a way that makes Leo’s heart stop and start. He glances at Christos. His brother’s eyes are shining.

Her costume’s made of rough, fire-retardant fabric, cut and stitched into a short flared dress that skims her thighs.

She holds her right hand out to one side. The flame starts as a flicker in her palm that grows. She undulates as if rolling it up her arm and across her shoulders and then lets it come to rest in her other hand. More flames appear, one then another, not just along the path the first flame had taken but on her chest, her stomach, and her legs. They move at random, growing in size.

Rebecca tosses them into the air, juggling with rapid movements that make the fireballs look more like streaks. It looks like she’s fumbled a throw and one of them will land on top of her head but Rebecca puts her head back and opens her mouth, swallowing it. In they go, one after another. Fire’s flying from her hands as if from nowhere and she gulps them down in quick succession.

There’s a pause, in which Leo thinks she’s finished, but then smoke and sparks pour from her mouth, followed by a jet of flames that shoots twenty feet in the air. There’s a flash, then it falls, covering her from head to foot, and Leo starts forward but is restrained by Christos’s hand on his shoulder.

Rebecca claps, a single sharp sound that seems to douse the flames. Done, she awaits judgment.

“What’s in your accelerant?” Rollo asks.

“That’s my secret.”

Rollo turns to Christos, who holds up his hands.

“You can’t work here unless you tell us. There are no secrets from management.” Rollo’s looking at Leo, waiting for affirmation.

“I can do more than this, Leo.”

“May I?” Leo stands close. He touches her jaw with his fingertips.

She opens her mouth and he looks inside. Not a blister, not a mark. It looks entirely normal. Nor is a single hair or eyebrow singed. He’s not fond of fire acts or the arcana of the craft. He knows the tricks. How to harden the skin with a mixture of sulphur and alum, to which some add onion or rosemary essence. Afterward they have to soak off this toughened skin with hot wine. Then there’s what they use to coat the delicate flesh inside the mouth: concoctions of more sulphur and alum, this time with soap and carbolic acid. Rebecca’s skin is soft, not callused, and she smells sweet, not like the bowels of hell. He won’t press her to tell him her secret, not yet, not if she’s not told Christos.

“You like danger.”

Leo’s seen his share of its ill effects. What happens when the wind unexpectedly shifts and immolates a performer. The awful condition, fire lung, which follows accidental inhalation of the fuel being held in their mouths. He’s also seen the longer term consequences of this game: the stained, bleeding gums and then the florid, fungus-shaped cancers of the throat and tongue that fire swallowers are prone to.

“I know the risks. You’ve not told me what you think of me.”

“You’re good. You’ve been practicing but you’re new to this game.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only to me.” Leo smiles despite himself. “It’s about presentation. We can teach you that stuff, if you really want to do it. I want you to know that you don’t have to, though. None of us expects it.”

Christos, why did you bring her here? If she were mine there’d be a house with a lawn. Or an apartment in the city with a view, just a short walk from the theater.

Anything she wanted. Just not this.

His existence seems shabby despite all his enterprise. He’s a vulgar showman grubbing in the dirt for coins.

“Are you joking? She’ll be a star.” Rollo’s praise sounds sour.

“I was born for this,” Rebecca insists.

“Then you’re going to need a better costume. And a name.”

“We’d been on the road all our lives. Leo gave us a home. Rebecca messed everything up. Afterward it all fell apart. We all went different ways.”

Henry has sat up all night, watching Rollo’s interviews again and again.

“For people who are unique you’ve proved hard to find.”

“Who have you talked to?”

“People who worked in Paradise but no one else from this photo.” Henry sees the back of his own head as he leans into the camera shot to hand Rollo the photograph. It’s the one of the group dressed for dinner.

Rollo clutches it, dumb. Looking at a past he can’t get back.

“I’ll send you a copy.” Henry retrieves it. “You stayed on in Paradise for a while.”

“Yes.”

“Until you were sacked.”

“Trumped-up excuses. They had no idea what they were doing.”

“You mean Flint’s men?”

“Flint,” Rollo sneers, “inherited wealth. His father was a match tycoon. William Flint had no business sense, didn’t know show people or the public.”

“Paradise limped on for a few years before it closed.”

“It survived on notoriety. The papers loved the story.”

Henry knows all their ridiculous theories. That the brothers faked their deaths to embezzle from investors, despite the bodies in the morgue. That Rebecca Saunders was wife of one and lover to the other and it was a suicide pact.

“I didn’t want to stay anyway,” Rollo frowns. “I left and took my troupe with me.”

Henry doesn’t correct him. He knows from looking at Paradise’s payroll records that only half the troupe followed Rollo.

“You didn’t stay a clown long after that.”

“My heart wasn’t in it anymore.” Rollo has had a long list of careers.

“You seem so happy and proud when you talk about circus work.”

“Happy? I don’t think I was happy ever again after that day.”

“What do you think really happened?”

Rollo’s eyes are so dark that Henry can’t make out the pupils.

“Leo had handled guns since he was a child. As for Rebecca, even Chris didn’t know her methods. I’ve never understood it.” Rollo shakes his head, a man perplexed. “Not at all.”

Night. Revelers and gulls head home. Rebecca and Leo are out on her apartment balcony, looking down at Christos and Rollo as they collect the turnstile takings and lock up for the night. Lights are going out in the booths around Paradise. Those who don’t live on site are leaving.

“Rollo’s not enjoying Christos’s company.” Sam sits at Rebecca’s feet, eyes fixed on her in adoration.

“Do you think?”

“Rollo’s used to being close to you. And being important.”

“Rollo’s well looked after. What’s bothering you?”

“Christos has been over five years of accounts. He thinks someone’s been skimming off the gates’ take.”

“Who?” Leo holds her gaze.

“Christos says he doesn’t know.”

“You do.”

She looks at Rollo and Christos.

“Rollo doesn’t like being watched.”

“I’ll talk to Chris. I wasn’t expecting him to be so thorough. I know about Rollo. As long as he doesn’t get greedy I let it go.”

“Why?”

“Rollo can’t help himself. This stops him from doing something even more stupid.”

“That’s very understanding.”

“When we found Rollo he scavenged and stole like an abandoned mongrel. Part of him will always be unsure where the next punch or plate of food’s coming from. He’s not the thug he pretends to be.”

“No?”

“He just needs people to give him a chance. He needs family to look out for him.”

“He’s lucky to have such a family.” She says family like it’s the grail.

“You’re part of it too.”

“I’ve not been part of anything for a very long time.”

“You’ve had it tough.”

“Haven’t we all?”

Leo chuckles.

“Chris looks like our dad. Tall, handsome. Girls like that.” He regrets the words straight away. He sounds self-pitying. He knows Rebecca doesn’t give a shake of salt for looks. “He’s had a bad time. Motherless. Fatherless. A childhood on the road. But sometimes, when I look at him. ” His thoughts are tangled.

“It’s like he’s untouched by it.” It’s alarming how she unravels him. “He hurts like the rest of us but life’s not destroyed his joy or innocence. That’s why we both love him.”

Leo’s heart twists in his chest. He’s become accustomed to the sounds of their life as man and wife filtering through the thin wall. Rebecca singing, the unsteady rhythm of the shower, and, worst of all, peals of laughter followed by a silence that leaves Leo dead inside.

He can’t allow this.

Then he thinks of her at the center of the tent, illuminating the faces in the crowd.

Pernicious love. It burns us up and leaves charred husks.

And yet she warms him, through and through.

Rollo puts an arm around Christos’s neck as they walk away from the turnstiles. When Christos sees his wife and brother he shouts up to them. Rebecca waves back, her whole arm in motion and her smile wide.

“Do you think she’s happy here, Rollo?”

“Sure. She’s a big hit. Everyone loves her.”

“Even Leo?”

“He’s come around to the idea. She was a surprise, in more ways than one. But what about you, kiddo? How are you settling in?”

“It’s good to be home.”

“Of course,” Rollo ruffles Christos’s hair. “All I meant is that I thought you were looking to do something else with your life. I never figured you’d want to be part of this.”

“I liked studying but I never felt like I belonged out there. It’s so gray, Rollo. I realized how much I love it here. The only problem is that I don’t know enough about the business. I mean, Leo knows it all. Inside out.”

“Leo kept you out of things. It was what Lil wanted.”

“I know,” Christos pulls a face, “but I’ve a lot to learn if I’m going to become more than a bookkeeper.”

“Huh?”

“I’m going to need to make an impression if I’m going to be Leo’s partner.”

“Partner?” There’s a long pause. “Wow, that’s really something, isn’t it? I couldn’t be happier for you.” Rollo’s words are falling out now, one after another, “a real family affair. The Saunders brothers.”

They walk on, silent, until Christos says, “It’s important to me to be more than Leo’s little brother.”

Rollo’s reply takes a beat too long.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Leo’s a hard act to follow. He’s done everything from selling candy to performing. That’s why he’s so respected. Show people will listen to him. He and your mother were legends.”

“The double-bullet catch.” Christos sighs.

“No other family has performed it. And Leo is still the youngest ever at fourteen.” Rollo sounds wistful. “Lilia was fearless, even with her own son. No one will see the likes of it again.”

Christos is silent, swallowing every word.

Henry turns off the recording of Rollo. Something nags at him.

He opens his book. The group photo’s lodged between the pages where he left it. This time he looks at the cropped version reprinted within.

It smacks of glamour. Rebecca Saunders looks like a film star. She has a strong, pointed chin. Her hair’s scraped back despite the fashion for piled-up curls. Her mouth’s mid-laugh and her eyes downcast. Her peach skin’s lost on monochrome film. Her dark gown’s shot with silver that glitters.

Christos looks straight into the lens. Henry wants to dislike him: his narrow nose, long hair touching his collar, an arm around Rebecca. It’s at odds with Rollo’s portrait of a usurper and thief. Christos looks starstruck by love and, God help him, like an innocent.

I shouldn’t begrudge him their time together, knowing how it ended.

The dog looks straight into the camera too. Christos holds his collar with his free hand. The dog. Something about the dog.

Henry picks up the phone.

“The Gramercy.”

“I’d like to speak with Roland Henrikson. Room 136.”

He waits, the phone ringing in Rollo’s room. Henry’s kept track of him, all these years.

“What?” Rollo’s voice is thick with sleep. He’s currently on a downturn, a sad state because at seventy-eight life should be easier.

“I’ve woken you, sorry.”

“What’s the time?” He can hear Rollo fumbling with a clock. “Henry, it’s eleven in the morning. What do you want?”

“The dog.”

“What?”

“Rebecca’s dog.”

“You got me up to ask about a dog?”

“What happened to it after they died?”

“I think it got sent to her cousin, along with her remains.”

“This is the dog you said you bought them.”

“That’s right.” Rollo sounds wary.

“You didn’t want to keep it.”

“Why would I?” Rollo pauses. “I’m sorry, Henry. I’ve got a bad head.”

Henry takes bad head to mean bad hangover.

“What was it called?”

“What?”

“The dog’s name. You said she always gave the dog the same name as the one she had as a child.”

“Oh God, it was a long time ago. Bobby. I’m pretty sure it was Bobby.”

Henry closes his eyes. The back of the photo listed the group’s names, including the dog, Sam. Rollo should know that.

“Have you got a lead?” There’s the sound of Rollo gulping from a bottle.

“I’m not sure.”

“Call me if you find anything new. They were my best friends, you know.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, Henry, I don’t suppose you could do me a favor?” Henry knows what’s coming. “I’m a bit short this month. I don’t suppose you could wire me some money?”

“Do the double-bullet catch with me or I’ll find someone else who will.” Christos is adamant.

“Like hell you will.” So is Leo.

“You can’t stop me.”

“I can. You can’t perform here without my permission.”

“I’ll find somewhere else.”

Leo gives Rebecca an imploring look. “Talk some sense into him.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“She’s your wife.”

“Don’t do it.” Rebecca’s ashen.

Christos clutches her hands in his.

“Nobody will take me seriously unless I do something like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They look at you with awe,” he says to Rebecca. Then he turns to Leo, “I’m just your little brother and always will be until I prove I’m as good as you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’ll ask Rollo.”

“And Rollo will say no. I’ll make sure of that.”

“I’ll go to Jim Shaw. He knows guns.”

Leo wonders how Christos is so well informed and ignorant, all at once.

“Jim Shaw shot the fingers off a man last year.”

“He’ll have to do, if you won’t help me.” Christos walks out of Leo’s office.

“Is it true about this Shaw man?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes.”

“Do it with him.”

“What?”

Rebecca stands so close that Leo struggles to keep his breathing even.

“You’re the only person I trust to keep him safe.”

Betty Marlin, Rebecca’s cousin, basks in the sun. Her head’s thrown back and her hands folded across her middle. Henry puts her in her mid-sixties, or thereabouts.

“I hope you don’t mind sitting out here. I like the heat. Help yourself to lemonade. It’s homemade.”

Henry wishes she’d remove her sunglasses and do him the courtesy of taking him into the shade. He can’t tell if there’s a family resemblance. She’s wrinkled from sun worship, with thinning hair cut into a bob. She wears long shorts and a vest.

The plastic chair creaks as Henry sits down.

“Don’t you hate being old?”

Henry wonders what he hoped to gain in coming here, all the way to Lauders.

“I can’t stand it,” she continues. “It feels like penance.”

Her chatter’s girlish, as if age is a mask that can be stripped away.

“It’s not vanity. It’s feeling out of step with the world that bothers me.” Betty talks without pause. “I don’t understand young people. They’re so ambitious but they don’t seem to enjoy life. Do you have children?”

“Pardon?” Her sudden question wrong foots him.

“Children?”

“A daughter. She’s thirty.”

“Does that help you to understand them?”

“No,” he laughs, then realizes how he’s been sidetracked. “Thanks for finally agreeing to see me.”

“I don’t like journalists.” She takes off her sunglasses. She doesn’t even look at his birthmark. There was a time when that would’ve thrilled him.

“I’m not a journalist. I’m a historian.”

“Historian?” She slips the glasses back on.

“I was a lecturer. I retired last year. I sent you the book I wrote, The Firebrand.”

“Oh, that. I didn’t read it. And I told you years ago, on the phone, what I know about Rebecca.”

Betty’s dog has been sniffing at him. It’s a broad-chested boxer with an air of stubborn loyalty. Satisfied, it sits at Betty’s feet. Henry can see his own reflection in her dark lenses.

“The official version of events is wrong.”

“It was an accident.” The girlishness has gone.

“Rebecca took revenge for Christos’s murder.”

He leaves her with that incendiary while he takes a sip of lemonade. It’s too sharp for his taste.

“Good luck with that idea.” She leans over and pats his hand in a way that offends him. “See yourself out.”

She gets up and goes in.

The dog escorts Henry to the gate. On a sudden impulse Henry says, “Sam.”

The dog’s tail thumps the concrete slabs and then it gets up and trots on the spot, excited at this sudden familiarity.

Rebecca named it after a dog she had as a kid. She said every dog she’d had since was named after it.

Henry goes back up to the house and stands on the porch, blinded for a moment by stepping from light to dark. Sam goes ahead through the open door, claws clipping on the wooden floor.

Henry listens. There’s the whirl of a fan and a radio. He goes inside.

“Rebecca?”

Betty’s there. Waiting.

“Nobody’s called me that in a long time.”

Two walnut cases. One their mother’s and the other their father’s, each containing a pair of guns. They are the Saunderis legacy and they make Leo queasy with horrid fascination. He’s never more afraid than when one’s in his hand.

These guns fed and clothed us when we first came to this country. Never sell them. You’ll always have a living.

“It’s not too late. I can do a single-bullet catch.”

Christos is pale and excited, on the cusp of imagined glory that will somehow make him whole.

“No. We’re doing this.”

“I think we should make it an even more special night. Announce that you and Rollo are going to be partners afterward. What do you think?”

“I can’t wait. You should’ve seen his face when I was coming in on the business.”

“You told him?”

“Just about me. I was teasing him. Can you imagine how happy he’ll be when he realizes it’s the three of us?”

“You shouldn’t joke with Rollo like that. He’s touchy. I wonder why he never said anything. And why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Sorry. I was preoccupied with this. Don’t worry. It’ll make it a bigger surprise for him.”

They are at the side of the stage. Rollo’s out front, warming up the audience.

“You both look wonderful,” Rebecca says as she joins them. They’re wearing tailcoats and starched shirts. Then to Christos, “I love you. I won’t love you any less if you call it off.”

Christos silences her with a full-mouthed kiss.

Then Rebecca puts a hand on Leo’s chest, over his heart.

“Promise you’ll look after him.”

“I promise.” A life of promises to women, Leo thinks.

It’s time. Brothers stand side by side.

“Remember you’re not aiming for my head,” Christos jokes.

There’s a roar as they run on. The spotlights fly about and then settle on them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!” Leo’s voice booms through the tent that’s been arranged with a stage at one end. Care’s been taken about the positioning of the benches. Nothing puts off punters like a stray bullet into the crowd. Even a painted wax bullet can kill a man.

Leo lowers his voice to draw the audience in.

“What you’re about to see has only been done four times. The last performance was by myself and my mother,” he pauses to give her back her proper name, “the famous Lilia Saunderis.”

It’s Christos’s turn.

“People have died doing bullet catches. My brother and I will perform a double-bullet catch for one night only. You’re going to witness history, a feat performed twice by one family!”

Leo steps up.

“We’re trained professionals. Don’t repeat this at home. If you’re of a nervous disposition we advise that you leave now.”

Rebecca brings out a single case. She’s dressed as the Firebrand. Her costume glints in the light. Leo’s chosen his mother’s guns.

“We’ll need a volunteer from the audience.” The spotlights are set swinging. They whirl about the audience. A drum rolls and there’s a hush. Christos drops his raised arm and the lights land and shrink to reveal two faces at opposing ends of the tent.

“Come on down!”

The first is a woman, dressed in a cotton smock and clogs. She looks overawed, blinking in the light. Rebecca has put down the case of guns and goes to meet her, smiling like she’s welcoming a friend.

“Madam, what’s your name?” Leo enquires, taking her hand. Her skin is rough and red from country living.

“Sally.”

“Thank you for your help, Sally. Would you mind waiting here for a moment while we meet our other volunteer?”

Rebecca holds his arm. It’s a man dressed in work boots and a shirt. He has an everyman face, essential in a shill, a circus man that Leo trusts. He’s not willing to chance his brother’s life on a real volunteer. Bad luck that it would be some wisecracker, the sort who’d load something else into the gun for a laugh.

“And your name?” Christos asks.

“Jack Milner.”

“Thank you, Jack. Do you know guns?”

“A little.”

“These are Delfontaine’s Rangers.”

“If you say so.”

The audience laughs. Rebecca carries a tray over to them, aloft on one hand. On it there are a pair of bullets and a pocket knife.

“Now, Jack, would you do us the honor of marking these two bullets so that we can identify them later?”

There is a pause while Jack scores the bullets’ casings with the knife.

“Now, Sally, I want you to take a good look at these as you’re going to see them later.” Leo hands her one bullet and waits, giving her time to examine it.

“Happy? Good.”

Christos takes the second bullet from Jack, repeating the ritual. Leo watches, pleased with Chris’s sleight of hand. After Sally’s inspection, they’ve both swapped the bullets, replacing them with fake ones on the trays.

Leo hates this part. The feel of the real bullet that he’s palmed and hidden in his mouth. The taste of metal filings that cling to the case.

“Now, Jack, we’re going to ask you to load one bullet into each gun.”

Jack the shill obliges, putting the fakes into the gun barrels.

Here it comes. Leo and Christos stand back to back like duellists at dawn. There’s a drum roll. They each count fifteen paces. They’ve been drilled by Rollo until their timing’s perfect. He’s even done target practice with the brothers.

They turn. Leo takes aim. Both of them have been careful to consider angles.

Leo squeezes the trigger. The sound deafens him temporarily. Something’s wrong. Christos looks at him, bewildered. There’s a slow trickle of blood from the hole in Christos’s forehead. It gathers in his eyebrow and falls in heavy drops. He staggers and then pitches backward.

Someone, maybe Sally, screams.

“How did you know?” Rebecca’s in the lounge. Henry stands in the doorway.

“A hunch. I remembered that you always called your dog by the name of Sam. It got me thinking.”

“How astute.” It doesn’t sound like praise.

“I saw you and Leo burn.”

“You were there?”

“Yes. I was only eighteen. You should be dead.”

“Come and sit down so we can talk.” Rebecca’s voice softens.

“Is Leo alive too?” Anything’s possible.

“No, Leo’s dead. You saw it yourself.”

“I saw them take your body away.” A charred corpse laid on the tarpaulin.

“Why have you pursued this?”

He can’t verbalize it. “I came to see you as often as I could.”

Rebecca’s look is both amusement and bemusement.

“You’ve fallen in love with your own fantasy. That’s about you, not me.”

“I need to know what happened.”

“You weren’t part of it. You were just a spectator.”

It rankles that he has no claim to her tale.

“I’m a witness.”

“You’re a pompous ass.”

She isn’t the sweet girl of his imagination. She has no truck with romance. He wants to shock her into revealing the truth.

“Your husband was murdered by his own brother and I think you burnt him to death to get revenge.”

“It was an accident.”

“It was a live bullet. It’s all in the book.”

“I didn’t read your book and I don’t believe it. Leonides would’ve cut off his own arm before he hurt Christos.”

“The bullet they found at his autopsy was real.”

“What possible reason would Leo have?” She stares at him.

“He found out Christos was robbing him.”

“Christos wasn’t a thief. And Leo wasn’t a murderer. Who told you that?”

“Rollo.”

She rocks back and forth, roaring with laughter that dies in her throat as fast as it starts.

“I might have known that he’d do for all of us in the end. He was the one with the light fingers.”

“What do you mean?” This rapid revisionism makes Henry weak. “Leo trusted Rollo. He was going to make him a partner.”

“Leo was going to make Rollo and Christos partners. It was a mark of the man that he overlooked Rollo’s thieving and treated him like a brother. Where did you get the information for your book? Rollo? He was an inveterate liar and crook.” Her derision’s on her face. “You should’ve known better, professor.”

“I don’t understand. The bullet was fired from the gun they found on the floor.”

“Did you know there was a second set of guns?” Rebecca doesn’t give him time to digest this. “Rollo was backstage. He could have fired his gun in time with Leo and then swapped it in the confusion.”

“Rollo?”

Rollo. He thinks of the interviews.

Leo and I were both crack shots.

Rollo. With his insinuations about the Saunders brothers. That one was a thief and the other a lecher and a murderer. And Henry’s believed Rollo, who’s always on the make, always touching him for money, because there was no other way to get close to Rebecca.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Did Rollo buy you a dog?”

“No,” she looks perplexed. “Leo did.”

She’s telling the truth. She has no reason to lie to him; she doesn’t care one iota for what he thinks. Henry can feel the mocking weight of his book in his pocket. He’s not recorded history. Not even memory. He’s been a scribe for lies. Rollo’s not just a liar. He’s a killer.

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

Henry can’t meet Rebecca’s eyes.

“How are you still alive?”

“I’ll show you.”

He follows her into the hall. There’s a door beneath the stairs.

“Stay,” she wags a finger at Sam. Then to Henry, “Shut the door behind you. I don’t want Sam down here. He’ll get upset.”

A bare bulb lights their descent. The basement’s bare. She turns to face him.

“That’s quite a birthmark to carry around.”

Rebecca’s direct. The statement carries expectation. She expects something in return for what she’s about to show him.

“When I was a child my father took me to a specialist about my face. I remember how Dad looked when the doctor told him that nothing could be done.” Henry’s surprised that of all his memories this is the one he’s seized upon. It’s been just beneath the surface all this time. “The only time he ever touched it was when one of his friends made a wisecrack. Dad took me home and scrubbed my face as though it was an ink stain that could come off.”

The words rush out of him. “When my daughter was born and I held her in my arms, I was so overwhelmed by her that I couldn’t imagine anything that would make her seem less than perfect to me.”

After the divorce, things between them had become difficult. Henry can’t recall the last time he spoke to his daughter. He wishes he’d tried harder.

“The first time I saw you, Rebecca, you reached out and touched it.” He puts his fingertips on the stained side of his face, recalling the moment.

“I don’t remember. You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So you should be. I’ve not brought many people luck.” She snaps her fingers and a single flame appears. “I’ve never talked to anyone like this. Not even Chris or Leo. I wish I had.”

Her whole fist’s burning. She lifts it like a torch. The light reflects in her eyes. “Fire’s a funny thing. People think we’ve tamed it but they have no idea. It turns on you when you least expect it. When I saw Christos lying there, it got out. I was so shocked that I couldn’t stop it. Leo must’ve thought something had gone wrong.”

“What are you?”

Small flames gutter around her like a cloak.

“I don’t know. The first time, I burnt up my lover in a fit of lust. When I woke up I was entwined with his corpse. I had to crack my charred skin off the new flesh beneath. Every time I allow myself to fully burn up, I’m a woman of twenty again. I’ve survived cancer and two heart attacks this way. And being fireproof saved me at Salem. I was the corpse that wouldn’t burn down to bone. I clawed my way out of a mass grave.”

She’s eternal, elemental. Henry steps back. She’s roaring now. He can feel the heat on his face.

“The real trick’s not being a human bonfire. It’s what I do with myself afterward.” He thinks he can see a smile within this pillar of fire. “I always leave my effects to my cousin and I’m never in my coffin when it’s buried.”

The light bulb shatters. She’s the only light in the darkness. Then the flames die as if she’s sucked them back inside herself.

“Rebecca?” He’s scared she’ll answer.

“Take Sam with you,” she says in the lull before the sudden flare that fills the room. The blast blows Henry off his feet. He turns his face away. The flames pass overhead and then recede. He can smell his own singeing hair. She’s an inferno. He crawls to the stairs. Fire’s licking the walls and creeping along the ceiling beams. He can hear Sam, barking and flinging his stocky body at the door.

Henry snatches at Sam’s collar and heaves the snapping, straining animal outside into the quiet dusk of the suburban street. It takes all his strength to keep hold of Sam as he collapses on the tarmac, arms around the dog’s chest. The fire is fast. Henry can see the warm glow through the windows as it feeds, then something inside the lounge explodes. The window shatters.

Henry has to leave now, while he can. People are coming out of their houses. He goes, dragging Sam into the coming darkness and silence, back to feeling like he always has, alone, waiting for her light.

Henry’s already awake to hear Sam barking. He doesn’t sleep well anymore.

Life’s nothing but silence and darkness.

He turns on the bedside lamp. The newspaper is still on the nightstand, folded at the page that carries Betty Marlin’s obituary, the final flourish of Rebecca’s preparations for her latest death.

His body creaks and groans as he goes to the front door and opens it, letting Sam run out into the black woods away from him. Henry sits on the step and waits, worrying that Sam won’t come back. He does, eventually, sniffing and pawing at him.

“Hey.” He rubs the loose skin on Sam’s neck.

When Henry peers out between the trunks there’s nothing. Not a glow or a flicker to betray her. She’s not coming for him after all. He realizes the worst of it. That he’s just a footnote and Rebecca has turned the page.

The leaves are coming in, good and green. Henry likes this time of year. He’s decided to stay in the house at the end of the lane, with its view of the trees. Sam likes it here.

He’s been on the verge of making the call so many times. Today, he tells himself, I’ll do it today.

He picks up the phone.

“The Gramercy.”

“Roland Henrikson, please. 136.”

The man clears his throat.

“I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Henrikson’s dead.”

“What?” He thinks of Rollo’s face filling the screen.

“I’m sorry to give you such terrible news.” The man waits. All Henry can think is that he’s courteous despite the seedy hotel where he works.

“Can I ask how?”

The man clears his throat.

“Please tell me.”

“I’m sorry. His body was found on a building site. Someone set him on fire.”

Leo can’t move fast enough. Christos’s legs have stopped twitching.

You’re the only person I trust to keep him safe.

Rebecca leans over Christos. Leo can’t tell if she’s screaming or not. Everything sounds muffled to him, even the shrieks of the crowd. He doesn’t understand. His aim was true. He wants to tell Rebecca it was an accident. Not even his desire for her could make him hurt Christos. Or her.

Rebecca looks up, wet faced. Then she bursts into flames, a rapid progression that’s uncontrolled. This isn’t her act. By the time he reaches her she’s a bonfire. She’s not just engulfed, as he’s accustomed to seeing her; she’s consumed. Rebecca’s burning up.

He takes off his jacket and tries to smother the flames but it’s too late. The fire’s too great. There’s nothing for it. Leo puts his arms around her, marvelling that she still has the strength to try and push him off.

It hurts at first. His skin sears but he won’t relinquish her. There’s insufficient smoke to choke him. Let it come. His sordid corners cry out to be purified by fire.

Rebecca’s embrace is hot. Hotter than the center of the earth. Hotter than the surface of the sun. She’s holding him close now and he wishes he could see her face at the heart of the blaze. There’s no one now but the two of them.

Love, Leo thinks, how it burns us up.

WORK, HOOK, SHOOT, RIP

by Nick Mamatas

The high-striker — you know, that game with the sledgehammer and the bell? — was gaffed. But the belly gaff was out of whack, so when the carny running the game pressed his stomach against the gaff button, it got stuck, and nobody even came close to winning. Every able-bodied man in Scranton, PA, was thereby an official Sissy, no matter how hard or accurately they swung the hammer. Worse, the carny running it was a new hire, a real First of May, so couldn’t talk his way out of it when even the local football jock — and the son of a leading member of the Keystone White Citizenship Association — failed to make the meter climb past Puny Weakling. There was a small panic, threats of a fight — the carny called out, “Hey, Rube!” but nobody came to back him up — and so the carny bailed the counter and ran to the woods, the football jock on his heels with the carnival’s sledgehammer in hand. “The beef had left the awning,” as an old-timer, which Jeff Gordon, owner of Jeff Gordon’s All-Star All-Comers, might say. The carnival’s official patch — whose job it was to make nice with the cops, or make fast with the bribes — was officially out for the evening, and the police were officially in and handing out citations, mere moments behind a wave of the whispered excuse “Baby needs milk!” from carny to carny.

Fraud or battery? That was the choice Jeff Gordon was given by the local constabulary. An officer was rounding the backside of the All-Star All-Comers trailer, poking at it with his truncheon like the whole setup — the trailer and the wrestling/boxing ring that opened up out of it like a Murphy bed onto the midway — was gaffed. Gordon was pacing the cop, not saying anything. Then the cop ran into the Black Raja, in mask and cape.

“And what are you supposed to be?” the cop said. “The Black Negro?” He laughed at his own joke. The Raja looked down at the cop through the eye slits in his Zorro mask, and said nothing.

“The Black Raja,” Gordon corrected. “Our star attraction.”

“So tell me, Mr. Black. I mean, Mr. Raja. Do you engage in unsanctioned, nonpermitted fights, or fixed matches?” The cop had landed on the classic question: is pro wrestling a shoot, or is it a work? Are you really dressing up in panties and booties and beating one another up, or is it all just a show? The cop tucked his truncheon into his belt and pulled out a pad and pencil. He brought the graphite point to his tongue and flipped open the pad with a flick of his left wrist.

“I exhibit my grappling skills,” the Raja said, his voice like a truck. “I perform with fellow professional wrestlers, and with members of the community who wish to understand the nature of scientific wrestling via a hands-on display.”

The cop lowered his pad and squinted his eyes. “Where are you from, anyway?”

“Hehehe,” Gordon said, sliding between the cop and the Raja. “Why, the Black Raja is from the black hole of Calcutta itself! He struggled his way, with nothing but the power of his limbs, and an understanding of the human joint system, from the depths of squalor to the heights of the world championship in just eight years!”

“World champion, huh?” the cop said. “So, if I were to ask your Raja for some identification, he’d produce an eight-year-old passport from the old Indian Empire, stamped by the viceroy and governor-general and all that.”

Gordon found his patter leaving him. This cop was an unusual one — he was more with it than his big white pie face suggested. The Black Raja stepped in. “I can do exactly that. I do not normally carry a passport in my trunks, but you are welcome to pat me down now.” With a flourish of his cape, the Raja revealed his body — skin taut and leathery over well-defined muscles. The cop looked a little pudgy next to him. The pad went back into the belt and the truncheon was slipped out. The cop twirled it by the leather loop, casually.

“I’ll just have to come and observe the exhibition of grappling skills this evening, then.”

“So we can stay open?” Gordon asked, too excited for his own good.

“This evening, gentlemen,” the cop said. And he left without giving Gordon a citation.

Gordon glared at the Black Raja. “Kalamatas, why the hell did you have to go and live your gimmick and tell him that you had an Indian passport? How are we going to get a reader that looks like that?” he said. A reader was a fake ID. So many words for bullshit in the carnival business. “You know they’re going to drag us in — on fraud charges or battery — and you’ll need ID.”

The Raja only said, “Don’t worry about it, boss.”

This particular carnival was a real fireball show, so crooked it never even used the same name twice. Poor ol’ Jeff Gordon was stuck with his real name on his trailer, and as carny wrestling was being displaced by Gorgeous George and the DuMont Television Network, there wasn’t much other truck and traffic for Jeff and his crew. He could no longer even show boxing, though there was a white pugilist, dukes up, painted on the side of his trailer.

All he had left now was the Black Raja, and Johnny the Plant. So many layers of kayfabe — fakery, or ake-fery, or plain old bullshit — so hard to keep track. Kayfabe was the key — never let anyone know that wrestling, and everything about it, from the origins of the wrestlers to the outcome of the matches, was a lie. Fake wrestling was harder than the real thing; that’s why the boys always called it work. Always keep kayfabe up, even if you had to wrestle for real — to shoot—to keep the marks bamboozled by the worked matches. The Black Raja had always told his bosses, at All-Star All-Comers, at Midwestern Entertainments Inc., and Big-Time Pro Wrestling, that his name was Kalamatas — that’s how deep into kayfabe he was. Once in a while, back when he was touring the territories and showing up on local Saturday morning TV, the brass would have a bit of an education, and stick him in a toga and call him Atlas or Ajax the Great.

But mostly Chattopadhyay was the Black Raja. An Indian pretending to be a Greek pretending to be an Indian. So he did have an Indian Empire passport, with the photo of his younger self, before the cauliflower ear and smashed nose, staring out into the world. And he had another secret as well. He could actually fight. Work or shoot? Fraud or battery? Chattopadhyay could pick and choose.

The carnies had a meeting in the beer tent about the afternoon’s heat. Almost all the joints had been shut down, for either safety violations or fraud charges. All the carnival had left was the big ol’ simp heister of a Ferris wheel, the dodge-’em cars, the usual cheap shit food from the butchers, and the penny balloons for two bits each from the rubbermen.

Chattopadhyay wasn’t at the big meeting. He was working out with Johnny the Plant. “Hey, Greek,” Johnny the Plant said. “Should I say from over yonder, or from down the holler? Should I even say anything? I mean, can the police arrest me for lying?”

“Just practice the spot,” Chattopadhyay said. He took a long step, scooped Johnny the Plant up, and slammed him to the grass. Johnny the Plant whumped, but was all right. Chattopadhyay was a real pro. “Good. And make sure you say the last town’s name right.”

“Wilkes Bar?”

“Wilkesberry,” Chattopadhyay said, rolling the r. He picked Johnny the Plant up by the wrist, spun the arm, and tripped him. Johnny the Plant landed hard onto his face, then rolled over with a smile.

“You look like an amateur,” Chattopadhyay said. “Good.”

That night at the far end of the midway, around Jeff Gordon’s All-Star All-Comers trailer, a small but hot crowd gathered. It was a sultry summer night, fireflies and the sticky smell of beer and candy everywhere. An improvement over the usual cow-shit stench of Scranton. The trailer was open, the Murphy bed ring open, the lights on, and a nice tip of gawking gillies in dungarees — true fans of the Sport of Kings — were standing on the grass around the ring.

“Five minutes!” Jeff Gordon addressed the tip, his lungs practically busting the buttons on his red-sequined evening jacket. There were plenty of police in the crowd, in plain clothes, and a lot of other big men milling about, but he didn’t bother to rewrite his bally for the evening. “You’ve seen such shows before — dare any of you step into the ring with our champion wrestler? Go five minutes without being pinned. without being horribly injured! And you will win one hundred dollars, guaranteed and backed by gold!”

The ring was empty. Chattopadhyay was wrapped up in the blackout curtains behind the ropes, sweating as he did every night.

“But our man is different!” Gordon went on. “The Lackawanna County Sheriff’s Department has declared the grappler we have with us tonight too dangerous! After an evening of destruction and devastation at our last engagement, you will not be allowed to step in the ring for five minutes, even with all waivers signed, a nurse for a wife, and an undertaker for a brother-in-law.”

The hick chuckles subsided after a moment. “Tonight,” Gordon began again, “and tonight only, you’ll need only last three minutes. in a nonsanctioned match that no referee bonded by the state of Pennsylvania would dare officiate! Risk your lives, against. ”

He ran a finger under his starched collar, then flourished with his arms.

“The Black Raaaaja!”

Chattopadhyay stepped out from behind the blackout curtain, and swung his matching black cape ostentatiously. He shrugged it off and struck a pose, flexing his pecs and biceps. The crowd hooted and booed appreciatively. Through the slits in his Zorro mask he sized up the likely competition from amongst the tip. It was the usual mess of underfed shitkickers and laid-off coal miners whose lungs wouldn’t keep them upright for more than sixty seconds.

And the Klan.

How can you spot Klansmen, when they’re not wearing their hoods? Chattopadhyay could tell. It went beyond the certain self-satisfied swagger men have when they’re large and walking down to ringside with a group of their friends. There were signs, subtle ones. The fellow with his hand tucked into his pants, but with three fingers sticking out uncomfortably. The muttering of “thirty-three. ” followed by the countercall of “six.” And as Gordon continued his patter, the Klansmen shouldered their collective way to the apron, and grew very interested in Chattopadhyay. That was the final tell. Chattopadhyay’s skin tone and physique and accent often just confused the cracker townies on the circuit. But the eyes of the Klansmen blazed.

Blazed, at first, with confusion, like those of everyone else. But whereas most people just ultimately decided to keep Chattopadhyay at arm’s length, Klansmen kept careful track of the races of man and all their terrible attributes. But what was Chattopadhyay — a villainous Sicilian, a savage Comanche, some atavist subhuman Jew from the deserts of Palestine? Or a tainted quadroon, as they call a fellow with one Negro grandparent on the southern circuit? They had to know, and individually, every man before the ring apron made their decision. Their eyes still blazed, but now with hatred.

No, not hatred. Anticipation.

Chattopadhyay was on automatic, with his usual posing and gnashing of teeth. He pulled off his cape and threw it behind him into the back of the trailer.

The Klan was a carnival in its own right, Chattopadhyay thought. Lingo, hand signs, a code of honor of sorts. And almost always capable of paying off the cops, unlike the outfit he found himself working for in these later days of his career.

“Are there any challengers at all?” Gordon demanded to know. “Or shall we mark it down in the record books, yet another victory for the Black Raja via collective forfeit?”

“I’ll do it,” Johnny the Plant said. He jumped right on to the ring apron and with a practiced misstep, stumbled and grabbed the ropes. The crowd laughed and booed and someone shouted, “Go on home to Mama!”

“Yinz don’t understand,” Johnny the Plant said. “I’m from Wilkes- Barre!” He said it right, and the hecklers quieted down. “I seen what this man can do! He hurt my paw and my best friend last night, and I followed him on down here to Scranton. I’m going to give him a licking!”

“Go on home and lick yer mama!” someone — probably Gordon throwing his voice — shouted. Chattopadhyay, now the Black Raja in every sinew and muscle, put his hands on his hips and laughed a bellyful at that. Ha ha ha ha ha!

“Ring the bell!” Johnny the Plant shouted, and he slipped between the ropes. Gordon grabbed a ball-peen hammer and plunked the old school bell twice and Johnny the Plant walked right into the Black Raja’s boot and doubled over. He geeked himself then, nice and light to start the bleeding. The Black Raja wrapped his thick brown arms around Johnny the Plant’s torso, slammed his boots against the canvas, and gut-wrenched Johnny the Plant onto his back. Johnny the Plant bounced off the apron and howled and grabbed at his own ass like his tailbone had been shattered. He shook enough that his geek opened up and he started bleeding from the forehead.

Behind Johnny the Plant the Black Raja picked himself up and held out his arms, fingers splayed wide. He moved in for the kill. The Black Raja planted a knee between Johnny the Plant’s shoulder blades, wrapped his thick arms around Johnny the Plant’s neck, and clamped down.

“Go niyazuts,” he muttered to Johnny the Plant. Johnny the Plant went nuts, arms swinging, legs thumping off the canvas, tongue out, drool and spit flying. The Raja stood, bringing Johnny the Plant with him, then dropped him back to the canvas with an extra-loud thump, landing on top in a pinning position. The ring announcer counted aloud, “One, two, three!” and then rang the bell himself.

The Black Raja stood up, dragged Johnny the Plant up with him, and then reared back and punched Johnny the Plant right in the chops, punctuating the strike with a stomp to the canvas. The crowd booed again, and Gordon hammered a beat on his bell.

Now it was time for the finisher. The Raja grabbed Johnny the Plant’s left foot, placed his leg against the back of Johnny the Plant’s knee, and then twisted Johnny the Plant’s leg. Johnny the Plant howled and begged. Raja stepped over and cranked Johnny the Plant’s foot, then got back into position, and did it again, and again. The townies erupted at the sight of the spinning toehold, and finally Johnny the Plant screamed, “Uncle! Uncle!” When the rage of the crowd finally drowned out the bell, the Raja dropped the leg, stepped up to the audience, and took a graceful low bow. Johnny the Plant crawled to the apron and rolled out of the ring, favoring his tortured leg.

Most nights, that was the first act of the show. Despite the All-Comers name, it was a rare gilly that would get between the ropes after witnessing the beating Johnny the Plant took. Normally, Black Raja retires, and the still-bleeding plant stalks the midway, pounding his palm with his fist and working up his courage for a rematch loudly and publicly. An hour later, Johnny the Plant brings a new tip back to the ring and manages to get a few licks in on the champ before the Raja takes him down and hooks him with yet another crowd-pleasing spinning toehold.

Tonight though, when Jeff Gordon said, “Just barely a minute! A spirited effort by the young lad who saw what the Raja had to offer and followed us down the trail forty miles, but he leaves no richer. but infinitely wiser. Would anyone else like to test his mettle against the Black Raaaa—” He was interrupted.

“Jah!” said a huge white man that even Chattopadhyay hadn’t previously spotted. He must have joined the tip during the match, and thanks to his friends in the Klan, he had gotten all the way up to the ring apron. They’d set themselves up and then parted like the Red Sea for him. The big man pulled himself up onto the lip of the ring, his strong arm bending the ring rope as he gained his footing. “I’ll fight this Hindoo! This. Black Negro!” he declared, and the crowd roared.

Gordon shot Chattopadhyay a look. Chattopadhyay nodded, then turned and focused on his opponent. The big man wasn’t one; he was a big kid. Maybe a college boy, corn fed and on a football scholarship, with a familiar face.

He looked just like the cop, but huge. Everyone in the tip seemed to know him. The kid took off his shirt to reveal a blacksmith’s physique — a huge barrel chest and cannonball biceps.

Here’s something to know about wrestling. It’s all about leverage, and angles, and being game. Every hold has a counter, and all else being equal the man who keeps his wits about him wins.

Here’s something else to know about wrestling. A good big man beats a good little man, almost every single time. College boy was big enough that he didn’t even have to be all that good. The cop had been a normal-sized man, half a head shorter than Chattopadhyay.

His wife must be fucking enormous, Chattopadhyay thought.

Gordon rang the bell. Work became shoot. Fraud transformed into battery. A flash tackle and college boy was on top. He rained punches down on to the Black Raja, trying to get a little claret going. Finally, the scarred-over skin on Raja’s head burst open and the blood started to pour. That’s when the Raja grabbed the college boy’s wrist, jerked it forward, swung his freed leg over the boy’s torso to get him into a scissor hold.

College boy crunched up and slid an arm behind the Raja’s neck, not to crank it but to whisper. “We’re gonna burn you out, so just lie back and count the fucking lights. My daddy and his friends just wanted to see the show first.” Then the college boy tightened his grip and went for the can opener neck crank, driving Raja’s chin to his chest.

Raja smiled. The college boy was strong, but not too smart. He let go of the scissor hold, and the pressure from the can opener all but vanished. He bumped the kid off him with a hip thrust, rolled to his side, planted a hand on the kid’s ass and shoved him onto his face. Raja took his back. This would be easy.

Except that the college boy did a press-up, then got to his feet, with the Black Raja hanging off his back like a child. The crowd howled with glee, and someone screamed, “Jack him!” and the boy did, smashing Raja under him.

Gordon, still outside the ring, reached under the bottom rope and slapped the mat twice but Raja jerked a shoulder up. Gordon was eager to slap the mat a third time anyway, to ring the bell, to make a mad dash for the shotgun under the ring if he needed to, but something stopped him.

The Black Raja stopped him, with a glare. Chattopadhyay was gone.

College boy didn’t try to rock his opponent back into a pinning position; he just pushed down on Raja’s knees and turned, looking to sneak in a few punches. Which is what Raja wanted.

Raja snaked his right arm under the college boy’s armpit and behind his neck, the other over the boy’s left shoulder. A three-quarter nelson — he owned the boy’s upper body now. The boy could take a pin, and get humiliated in front of the town. Or the boy could try a neck bridge, and Raja would just hook, making the hold so painful that the boy would have to submit.

Raja shifted his weight and drove the boy’s shoulders toward the mat. But college boy was smart after all. He put his fists together behind his head and flexed hard. Raja felt his grip being pried open. The boy thrashed and was free. He planted a knee on the Raja’s belly and sank near three hundred pounds into it. One paw swallowed the Raja’s neck. The boy’s right hand was a fist, held high, ready to come down.

Chattopadhyay thought it looked like the moon. The Black Raja was gone.

He wondered if he was going to die.

Here’s something to know about Chattopadhyay. Raja is a gimmick. Kalamatas is a gimmick. Chattopadhyay wished he was a raja, dressing in gold, riding in a palanquin. Sometimes he wished he was just a simple Greek moron, herding goats and spitting olive pits onto the table.

What was Chattopadhyay actually? He was a little boy. Chattopadhyay was placed in an akhara—like a gym, or a monastery dedicated to breaking bones — by his parents at age four, and did the work wrestlers do. Up before the sun to perform a thousand squats and a thousand dand pushups. Twenty-five matches in a row, real matches, with his fellow students. Endless swinging of Indian clubs, sometimes while wearing a stone gar nal around his neck to build up his bridge. As the gym’s own boy, he’d cook the food and clean up the messes and jerk off his teachers, who were barred by the traditions of the sport from handling themselves or lying with women.

Then came the war, and the Indian Army, the Italian campaign. Then on to London, which smelled like a fire, and on to Canada on his hard-earned passport. It was only a single midnight truck ride in the bottom of the truck to get him to the United States, where a man could make a living wrestling — especially a man who knew how to shoot as well as work. When Chattopadhyay wanted to win, he could pin pretty much any longshoreman or pituitary gland case the brass put up against him. That’s how the promoters used him, to cut young workers down a peg when they made the mistake of asking for more money, or threatening the boss with their big canned-ham fists. In the lingo of the field, Chattopadhyay was a stretcher. His job was to get in the ring and hook them but good, to make his opponents realize that wrestling was real, even when they were paid to fake it.

Mostly though, Chattopadhyay counted the lights after putting in his pantomime offense. Nobody was going to put a championship belt on an Indian man, even if he wore a turban, or a Native headdress, or a sequined mask, or a Roman tunic. One night, after Strangler Frankhauser mouthed off in the locker room, Chattopadhyay decided to shoot. The Strangler was a fat old man with a fused ankle and thanks to his brother the promoter held the Midwestern state title. Chattopadhyay played heel and spent most of the match sweating it out under Strangler’s armpit, then grabbed an ankle, flipped Strangler over, and hooked the leg hard with a toehold.

Strangler had two choices: listen to his ankle break, then his kneecap pop, then his groin tear; or he could just roll onto his back. The ref that night had two choices too: count to three, or blow kayfabe and let eight hundred paying customers and the WEO-TV 44 camera operators and everyone else out there in Televisionland know that professional wrestling was a work. Ah, work, just another word for bullshit.

Strangler Frankhauser rolled over. The ref counted to three. The camera operator zoomed in for a close-up. Chattopadhyay — what had been his gimmick at the time, anyway? The Savage of Borneo? Chief Pow-Wow? — held the belt high.

Back in the locker room, it took six guys to pry it out of his hands and dump Chattopadhyay, a bleeding wreck minus three teeth, out on the edge of town. Television was over for him, forever. So he signed up with Jeff Gordon’s All-Star All-Comers, and wrestled the same exact match, night after night. He let himself get soft, let himself do the dumbest spots for the dumbest rubes in ten states.

But that little boy knew how to live. He could work, he could shoot, he could hook.

And he could rip.

Ripping is hard to train. You can’t live-drill it, unless you want a crippled sparring partner. But Chattopadhyay knew how to do it.

He’d practiced it on goats, since the age of eight. Under the watchful eyes of his teachers.

He kept up the practice, even in America. He’d known a man in Pittsburgh with a small herd. That man’s name had been Kalamatas.

And now, under the college boy, with his breath fading fast, he reached up till his fingers found the collarbone. And he ripped it out of college boy’s chest.

There was a sound like a wave. Then a shotgun blast, and the smell of powder. The last thing Chattopadhyay saw that night was the sledgehammer from the high-striker coming down on him.

There’s no carny wrestling these days. And there are precious few sideshows, but there’s one nameless carnival known to travel the Pennsylvania-Ohio circuit, and it has a sideshow. Jeff Gordon’s All-Star Plights of Humanity, that’s what the sign reads. And there’s a painting of a man, green with outstretched arms that end in blobs of purple putty, on the trailer front too.

But there’s no such exhibit as that green man. The All-Star Plights of Humanity is a pure geek show — not a birth defect or a hairy doll to be seen.

Gordon’s dead and buried, and Johnny the Plant runs the geek show.

He’s got two prize geeks. One’s called Mr. Whiplash. A promising young college boy who made the near-fatal error of drinking and driving while listening to jungle music on his car’s AM radio. He sits in a stool, dribbling onto his lap, a long and very realistic- looking bone protruding from the flesh of his chest. Multiply concussed during the postmatch riot, the college boy wasn’t one anymore. College boy wasn’t much of anything, anymore. He could dress and feed himself though, so Jeff Gordon had taken him on.

The other Plight of Humanity is the Human Dent. He’s an older man, and he can even talk, though for the most part nobody can understand what he’s saying, but it sure ain’t English. Where his left temple used to be is just a huge gouge. Some say that Mr. Whiplash ran this poor man down, and that’s how they both ended up geeks, sitting on a raised platform, four feet apart, on separate stools.

And there’s even proof that the story is a true one, ladies and gentlemen. Get too close to Mr. Whiplash on his stool, reach out to touch the shank of bone to see if it’s legit, and the Human Dent will turn his head, stop his chilipepperese mumbling for once, and growl in an accent that sounds almost British.

“Hands off! He’s mine!”

AND THE CARNIVAL LEAVES TOWN

by A. C. Wise

The first piece of evidence appears on Walter Eckert’s desk in a locked office to which he has the only key. It is wrapped in brown paper, neatly labeled with his name, no return address. He unwraps it with wary hands.

Cheap plywood, as if from a construction site wall, pasted with a handbill-sized poster. It could be advertising any event around town — a rock band no one has ever heard of, an avant garde art exhibition no one will ever see — but it appears to advertise nothing at all.

The paper is grayed. Darkened by soot, slush, city smog. Carved into the bottom right hand corner of the wood is a date — October 17, 1973—a date currently forty-one years, one month, and fourteen days in Walter’s past.

The image: A clown in whiteface, black crosses over his eyes, tilted slightly so they resemble Xs. A conical hat. Pompoms in black against the whiteness of his baggy uniform. The clown cradles an infant’s skeleton in his arms.

The skull is human, but subtly wrong, enlarged. There is a hair-thin fracture, widening and darkening as it runs back toward where the skull meets the spine. Out of the camera’s view, one can only imagine the clot of darkness where the fissure disappears, the fragments of bone, caved in beneath a terrible blow. The rib cage appears human as well, but unnaturally small in comparison to the skull.

Below the waist, the skeletal remains are not remotely human.

Walter Eckert has investigated almost everything in his time— domestic violence, cheating partners, insurance fraud, arson, petty theft, and even murder. He has never encountered anything quite like this before. Cold case. Two parents, one child. House, abandoned. Cups half-filled with coffee. Beds, immaculately made. Clothing, neatly hung. Refrigerator, humming and full. Television, left on.

The house remains; the evidence of daily life remains. The Miller family is simply gone.

Walter isn’t certain what motivated him to look up the case. It wasn’t even his, back when he was on the force; he inherited the file from his partner, Don. Walter should be actively pursuing new clients, sleazily patrolling social media for rumors of infidelity and foul play. But there’s something about the poster, something about the date. They remind him of something, two seemingly disparate events that lodge in his mind and refuse to let go. So instead of seeking new business, Walter chases down the cold trail of business over forty years old.

A carnival enters town in the fall of 1973. The Millers are a seemingly happy family, living the American dream. The carnival leaves town, and the Millers are gone.

Their house is left in perfect condition. The only remarkable thing is thirteen-year-old Charlie Miller’s room. The posters of his favorite baseball players have been turned to face the wall; his baseball cards have been removed from their plastic sleeves and dealt out across his bed, face down. In his closet, his stuffed animals — artifacts of a younger age — have all had their eyes removed.

Three days after the Millers disappear, a group of kids gathers in an empty lot to play. Midway through the game of tag, the dust in the lot blows slightly to the west and uncovers the remains of two complete adult skeletons. The bones are aged, colored faintly as though with years buried under desert sands. The remains, lying side by side, holding hands, are eventually identified through dental records as Jasper and Anita Miller.

Charlie Miller is never found.

The second piece of evidence comes into Walter Eckert’s possession much as the first: Appearing in his locked office, part of his life as though it has always been there. It is a flat, gray canister, holding an old reel of film. Walter is at a loss until he remembers the storage locker in the basement of the building. He finds the key in his desk, descends into the chilly, ill-lit space, and digs out the old film projector left behind by his former partner, Don. The man never threw anything away, and it seems Walter has picked up his habit.

The film is black and white, jittery, and popping in the way old movies do. The camera fixes on an empty room, which contains only a surgical operating table. A man enters the room, walking from the left side of the frame toward the right. He strips out of his clothes, folds them neatly upon the floor, and lies on the table, face up. He wipes his palms against his legs, licks his lips, and blinks.

His fingers twitch restlessly at his sides; his eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. He never looks at the camera. The film continues to skip and pop, phantoms skating through the scene, flaws in the medium or deliberate splices, Walter can’t tell.

Another man enters from the left of the frame and stops in front of the table. He looks at the camera full on and smiles. He wears a white surgeon’s robe, but no mask or gloves. His motions are jerky and exaggerated, like any actor in a silent film. He reaches to his left, just beyond the frame. His arm returns with a scalpel held in his hand. He shows it to the camera, letting the blade glint as much as it can in black and white. This done, he makes a single, precise incision in the chest of the man on the table. He draws a line, in stark black against gray-white, from the man’s clavicle to his pelvic bone. And so the surgery begins.

For the next fifteen minutes of film, the surgeon dissects the man upon the table, who appears conscious the whole time. His fingers twitch once more, drumming the table before he clenches them still, and with their stillness, holds his whole body rigid. The cords of his neck strain, his mouth set in what might be agony, or a wild, delirious grin, but he makes no attempt to leave. The surgeon slits open the man’s arms, his legs, his cheeks, and each one of his ten fingers and toes. The movement of the blade is straight and true every time. Blood is wiped meticulously away after each pass of the knife. The skin is peeled back, pinned. The surgeon’s eyes gleam and the crook of his mouth never wavers. There is no soundtrack, but one can imagine the movements set to a jolly tune.

When there is only bone left, the skin and muscle vanishing by degrees between the lapses in the film, the surgeon once more reaches to the left of the camera frame, and returns with a silver mallet. This too gleams in the lack of light. The bones of the man lying upon the table are systematically and utterly shattered, one by one.

The surgeon leaves the frame, but perhaps not the room. It is impossible to tell. Perhaps he waits, breathing, just out of the camera’s view.

Another minute passes with the camera fixed securely upon the ruins of what was once a man.

After that minute is done, the surgeon reenters the frame backward. From there, the film proceeds as though it is being run in reverse, though when Walter checks, the projector is still running as it should. The surgeon raises the mallet and the bones are restored; he runs the knife up from pelvis to clavicle and the skin is healed.

At the end of the film, the dead man stands up from the table. He does not reclaim his clothes, but he takes the surgeon’s hand. Together, one smiling, one shaking, they face the camera and bow. Still holding hands, they exit the frame.

The camera remains steady on the empty room for an additional thirty seconds. Within the last five seconds of film, a date flashes across the screen: December 14, 2015—a date three months and seven days in the future of Walter Eckert, who watches the scene over and over in a small, poorly lit room smelling of stale coffee and cigarettes, smelling of noir cliché and whiskey, smelling of, above all, fear.

The pieces of evidence don’t match. Walter isn’t even certain they are evidence yet. Only Walter’s mother insists they are and they do.

Walter’s mother is psychic, or claims to be. She even had her own 1-800 number once upon a time. His childhood memories are littered with phone calls landing like exotic birds at all hours of the night, lost souls seeking counsel and hope, weeping and giddy, desperate to be told exactly what they want to hear.

Holding his breath so it wouldn’t be heard, Walter listened to his mother listen to Jeannie from Paramus asking about her job. He listened to John from Denver worrying about his health, Kirk from Sault Sainte Marie wanting to know if he’d ever find true love, and Tina from Havertown who played the lottery every day and was willing to pay his mother $2.99 per minute for lucky numbers.

December 14, 2015, is still two months and twenty-seven days in Walter Eckert’s future when his mother calls from her nursing home to tell him the pieces of evidence, the film and the photograph, are connected. There are two things Walter never discusses with his mother — his work and his dreams, which are usually about Twin Peaks and who really killed Laura Palmer.

Walter has never entirely believed in his mother’s psychic powers, but when she calls him as he’s staring at the photograph of Charlie Miller paper clipped to the cold case file, a shiver traces his spine.

He hasn’t told her anything about the Miller family or the cold case file currently sitting open on his desk. He hasn’t said one word about the two pieces of evidence, not even that they exist, but she knows and she tells him they are connected anyway.

Just before he hangs up, she says, “There’s more. Lemuel Mason. The name came to me in a dream. Find him.”

After he hangs up, Walter slips the Miller file into his briefcase. He puts the picture of the clown, pasted to the section of plywood, and the reel of film into his briefcase, as well. Following what he would call a hunch and his mother would call a prediction, Walter ventures out into the blustery September weather and goes to the local library to do some serious and irrational searching.

Virginia Mason, a resident of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, from 1863 to 1887, wife of the Reverend Lemuel Mason, was generally known to be a pious woman. She aided her husband in his ministerial duties, and was much loved in their town, known for organizing women’s charity drives and bake sales with all the proceeds going to support Mr. Clement and his one-room schoolhouse. The great tragedy of her life, as far as the town was concerned, is that she never bore the reverend a child.

So the stories say.

So some stories say.

But there are other stories, too.

There are stories of a certain tree where the devil was said to appear, and of Virginia, walking at night, restless and unable to sleep. Stories of Virginia growing large although her husband was away, conducting missionary work in Peru. Stories, contrary to the tutting of the townsfolk over the Masons’ childless life, that Virginia was indeed delivered of a babe. But what babe? Was it born sad, mad, twisted, and deformed, as rumors claimed? And who was its sire?

Other tales say Reverend Lemuel Mason was never a missionary and, devoted husband that he was, he rarely left his wife’s side.

What can be confirmed by public records is Virginia Mason died at a young age. Or, at least, that a stone sits on the outmost edge of the churchyard, indicating she was given a Christian burial. Her cause of death is unknown. Some terrible, wasting illness is suspected, as Virginia was little seen by anyone but her husband in her final days.

Lemuel Mason mourned deeply. Some good folk of his town, when they came upon him unexpected, heard him talking to Virginia, even after she died. On occasion, he was also heard talking to a child, rocking it in his empty arms and singing lullabies.

Some rumors suggest the desecration of Virginia Mason’s grave. But they are only rumors.

There are wilder stories still, of Virginia Mason’s body found in a tree, with only scraps of cloth clinging to its bones, and wisps of hair adhering to its skull. The body was found wedged in a crook of the tree, arms and knees raised to wrap around a conspicuous absence, just the size of a child. The remains were discovered three days after Virginia Mason was supposedly buried — not long enough for her to decompose to such a state, if those were indeed her bones.

Two months after the stone was raised in the churchyard bearing Virginia Mason’s name, words in white chalk appeared upon the tree where the bones were found: Who put Ginnie in the tree?

Whatever the truth, this is a publicly recorded matter as well, appearing in the local Pottstown newspaper: three months after Virginia Mason died, Lemuel Mason vanished.

No trace of his fate was ever discovered. He was never seen again.

A day before he vanished, the carnival entered town. The day after his absence was noticed, the carnival left town again.

* * *

It’s impossible to tell whether the grainy, black and white image of Lemuel Mason accompanying the news story of his disappearance shows the same man depicted in the black-and-white image of the clown cradling a child’s deformed bones. The greasepaint is too thick. It could be anyone lost in all that whiteness, with black crosses over their eyes.

Who would even think to compare the pictures? Walter would not, unless his mother had called him to say the name Lemuel Mason, which came to her in a dream. He would not, if the paper reporting Lemuel Mason’s disappearance had not also contained a note regarding the “funfair” leaving town.

The pieces of evidence are connected, Walter thinks. It is not an advertisement; it’s an invitation.

“It’s coming back,” a voice just behind Walter says.

He twists around in his chair to hide his startled jump. “What is?”

The librarian is slender, nervous, like a young colt. Her hands flutter in the direction of the newspapers spread in front of him — stories of carnivals, the carnival, as Walter has come to think of it, coming to town and leaving town. The librarian’s hands settle, falling to clasp and twist in front of her.

“The carnival,” she says. “I’m sure I saw it somewhere.”

She lifts the top paper from Walter’s pile, the local paper from today, and scans it briefly, frowning, before replacing it.

“Maybe I imagined it.” The librarian shrugs, but her frown lingers. Her expression is one of someone who has misplaced an object they were holding just a moment ago, an object they could swear they never set down.

The same finger of dread that touched Walter when his mother called touches him again. He resists the urge to grab the librarian by the shoulders, shake her, and demand she tell him everything she knows about the carnival.

As evenly as he can, trying on his most disarming smile, Walter Eckert meets the librarian’s eyes and asks, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

The third piece of evidence is the oldest thus far. It is not a piece of evidence yet, but as he digs deeper, following tenuous connections and unexplained coincidences, Walter will encounter a glossy, full-color reproduction in a museum catalog, and file it as such.

The original is under glass at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It is a shirt found among the grave goods of a nomadic steppe warrior, believed to have lived in the early 1200s, during the time of Ogedei Khan. It is remarkably well preserved. There are words stitched into the fabric, in a jumble of languages, as though each part was stitched by a different hand.

The words tell a fairy tale about a tame flock of crows and a girl who trained them to do tricks and follow simple commands. Like all good fairy tales, it is laced with darkness of the most brutal kind. The girl, who is only known as the daughter and never given a name, asks the birds to do something for her after she has taught them all the tricks she knows. She asks them to pick the flesh from her mother and stepfather’s living bones.

The crows obey.

And, hungry, wicked birds that crows are, once they are done, they devour the nameless girl’s eyes, too. It is not clear whether they do this as punishment, or as an act of mercy. After all, who would want to walk around with the image of their parents’ flesh-stripped bones fixed in their skull until the end of days? None but the most heartless of creatures, carrying feathers where their heart should be.

After the crows swallow the girl’s eyes and everything she has seen, they lead her away. It is never specified where. The story only says that for the rest of her days, the girl made her way through the world by following the sound of her tame birds’ wings.

No other versions of this fairy tale have ever been found, despite the natural tendency of stories to travel far and wide, much like crows. How it came to be stitched onto the shirt of a steppe warrior, no one can say.

At the end of the fairy tale there is a date, unfathomably far in the steppe nomad’s future — June 17, 1985.

“It’s not the same carnival, of course,” the librarian, whose parents named her Marian, thus guaranteeing her future career, says.

She toys with her salad fork as she speaks. She’s shy, Walter has learned, but he’s also learned the second glass of wine, currently warming her cheeks with a delicate glow, has given her more of an inclination to talk.

“It’s a carnival. I went to it. one. when I was little. My father took me, after my mother left.”

Marian hesitates, and Walter feels as though he should say something, but he doesn’t know what. After a beat, Marian goes on.

“I don’t remember any of the shows. I must have been really young. All I remember is holding my father’s hand and being convinced we would find my mother at the carnival, and bring her back home.”

Marian blushes. It’s the most she’s said all night. Walter breathes out, and only then does he realize he’s been holding his breath. He finds himself leaning forward, as though his proximity will draw out more words, but it has the opposite effect. Marian reaches for a bread stick. Breaks it into pieces, but doesn’t put a single one in her mouth.

Walter leans back, trying not to let his disappointment show. The next thing out of his mouth surprises him.

“My mother is a psychic,” he says.

His fingers twitch, and he hides the motion by reaching for his glass. He can’t remember the last time he told anyone, and it’s not what he meant to say. The cynical part of him wonders if he’s manipulating Marian, giving her a piece of himself in order to keep her talking. But why? It’s too late for Charlie Miller and Lemuel Mason. He’s never been one to obsess over unexplained mysteries. Some things simply are, and cold cases don’t pay the bills.

But December 14, 2015, is still in the future, and there’s a possibility, maybe even a hope, that it is in his future. So he has to know.

Marian raises her head, her expression wary as though she suspects Walter is making fun of her.

“I’m sorry.” Walter shakes his head.

Marian’s expression softens.

“Don’t be.”

Then, in another move that surprises them both, she reaches across the table and touches his hand. It’s a gentle thing, brief, just a tap of her fingers along his bones, there and just as quickly gone.

Guilt comes like a knife. A rift opens in Marian, and Walter sees a wanting in her that goes all the way through. Suddenly, he doesn’t care about the carnival. Suddenly, Walter wants to tell Marian about holding his breath, pressing the phone to his ear, and listening as his mother dispensed fortunes. He wants to tell her a true thing, an apology for a deception he’s not even sure he’s made. The need wells up in him, bringing memories so sharp he is there again.

Rain pats against the window, streaming down and making odd shadows on the wall. Walter clutches the phone, holding his breath, wrapped in a communion his ten-year-old mind doesn’t have the language to understand. But he knows, deep in his bones, that he and his mother and his mother’s client are all connected. The rain and the telephone lines make a barrier, separating them from the world. He is essential in a way he can’t explain. If he breaks the connection, if he breathes out and lets on that he’s there, his mother’s prophecies will never come true.

The sensation is so real and overwhelming, Walter can scarcely breathe. Here and now, he is still holding his breath, listening to the whisper of words down the line. It terrifies him. He swallows deep from his glass, washing the memories away. They’re too big. He tamps down the impulse to speak, far, farther, until it is gone.

He will not ask Marian about her father, or the hitch in her breath when she said the word mother. He will not tell her about his own life. And with this decision, a new impulse wells up in Walter, one he knows he will not be able to resist. Before the night is through, he will show Marian something terrible; he will make her afraid.

Because he is afraid.

For years, his job has shown him how easily people can fall apart — friendships, relationships, even all alone. Humans are fragile. If he opens himself to Marian, if she opens herself to him, they will become responsible for each other, and that isn’t something Walter wants or needs. And, paradoxically, he is afraid precisely because he isn’t responsible for anyone and no one is responsible for him. December 14, 2015, is in the future, but what if it isn’t in his future? What if he isn’t essential and never was, only an observer, trapped on the outside?

Marian looks at him strangely and Walter realizes his hand is shaking. He sets his glass down, regrettably empty, and reaches for his water instead, swallowing and swallowing again. Even so, his throat is still parched when he speaks.

“Do you know anything about the Miller family? They lived in this area back in the seventies. They disappeared.”

As he says it, Walter knows it is the wrong thing to say. Something indefinable changes, a thread snaps. Marian tucks her hands back in her lap. Her shoulders tighten.

“My neighbor, Mrs. Pheebig, knew them.” Marian looks at her hands, her voice edged. “She’s ninety-one.”

“Does she have any theories about what happened to them?”

“No.” Marian has barely touched her pasta, twirling and twirling the noodles around her fork. Her plate is a minefield of pasta nests, cradling chunks of seafood, surrounded by rivers of sauce.

“Mrs. Pheebig told me everyone in the neighborhood suspected the parents were abusive, but no one said anything because people just didn’t talk about that sort of thing back then. I don’t understand how anyone could stay quiet about something like that.”

Marian finally lifts her head, and it’s almost like an accusation. In the rawness of her gaze, Walter finds it difficult to breathe. The terrible thing coming for him, for both of them, is almost here. Walter’s head pounds. He looks at Marian, and she’s nothing human.

She’s running ahead of him. Her eyes are inkwells. Her skin the finest kind of paper. The whorls of her fingerprints smell of the dust particular to libraries, the spines of books, the rarely touched yet time-stained cards of the archaic catalog, bearing the immaculately typed numbers of the Dewey decimal system. She is a prophet, an oracle. Somewhere, buried deep in her bones, are the answers to all his questions.

Because it had to be one or the other, kindness or cruelty, Walter reaches out to catch Marian before it’s too late.

“Can I show you something?”

Marian puts her head to one side, considering. For a moment, Walter has the sense of her looking right through him, knowing he’s dangerous, and weighing risk against reward.

“All right.” Marian reaches for her purse.

The bill settled, they walk two blocks to Walter’s office. He flicks the lights off, switches the projector on, and watches Marian watching the film. Walter doesn’t know what he expects, what he wants — a companion, someone to share the burden? Confirmation that he isn’t mad, someone to say, yes, I see it too? His pulse trips, watching the play of light reflected in Marian’s eyes. Despite the horror on the screen, her expression doesn’t change. She says nothing. Only her fingers curl, tightening where she leans against Walter’s desk. But even as her fingers tighten, she leans forward slightly, waiting.

This is it, Walter thinks, without ever knowing what it might be. The air shifts, and for just a moment the scent is salty-sweet, popcorn and candy apples, and it tastes like lightning.

Whatever it is sweeps past him, leaving the aftertaste of electricity on his tongue. The date flashes across the screen, and Marian’s expression finally changes. Her mouth makes an O, and she raises a hand to cover it.

“What.?” Walter says. And, “No.” He reaches for her, but it’s too late. When Marian brushed his knuckles, that was the moment to take her hand.

“Wait,” he says.

Marian is past him, her shoulder striking his so he’s off balance. He follows just in time to see the cab door slam.

There are puddles on the street, reflecting stoplights and neon, and the night smells of freshly departed rain. The cab pulls away in a cloud of exhaust and ruby-burning headlights. The faint sigh of a calliope hangs in the air. Walter raises his hand, but the cab doesn’t slow. What was he thinking? What has he done?

Walter returns to the library the next day. He asks after Marian, and the young man at the desk presses his lips into a thin line before telling Walter Marian isn’t here today. But he cuts his eyes toward the frosted glass office door without meaning to as he says it, so Walter scribbles a note on the back of an old circulation card, before shoving it into the young man’s hands.

“Just give her this for me, will you?”

It’s only two words: I’m sorry. Walter stations himself at a table, surrounding himself with books and drifts of paper. After twenty- three minutes, Marian emerges. She is polite, but closed. She brings him books, helps him find articles buried deep in the archives room, but doesn’t linger. He watches her, but the wild creature of paper skin and inkwell eyes has vanished. Slipped around a corner. Disappeared. Gone.

Perhaps he imagined it all. Perhaps he’s made a fool of him- self and hurt a woman who wanted nothing more than a friend.

“Marian. About last night. ” he says, as she lays a heavy tome of town records beside him.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Marian’s lips press into a thin line identical to the one worn by the young man behind the desk when Walter asked after Marian. Is there a school that teaches librarians that expression?

Walter’s hand hovers in the space between them. He lets it drop even before Marian turns. The subject is closed.

Confused, uncertain, Walter retreats behind his own wall. Stories of the disappeared and unexplained surround him like birds coming to roost, like carnival tents rising from the ground.

There is the story of three men and seven women vanishing from their retirement home, leaving in their wake doctors and nurses who can only speak backward from that moment on.

There is the story of an opera, performed only once, telling of the beheading of St. John at the request of Salome. The lead singer walked off the stage halfway through the final act and was never seen again. The lighting rig above the orchestra pit detached while the baffled audience was still trying to sort out whether the departure was part of the show, and the conductor was instantly killed.

There is a bone pit in Pig Hill, Maryland. An ossuary in Springfield, New Hampshire. The entire town of Salt Lick, Indiana, which, in 1757, simply disappeared.

Walter studies. He combs news articles, conspiracy websites, birth and death records. He consults any and every source he can. He doesn’t know whether he’s chasing something, fleeing something, or trying to hold something back.

Walter dreams, and sometimes he’s trying to catch Marian, sometimes he’s trying to outpace her, and sometimes, he’s running scared.

This is what Walter Eckert knows from the research he’s done: There are never any advertisements of the carnival coming to town. There are only stories reporting where it once was before it vanished, packed up, moved on.

This is what Walter Eckert knows deep in his bones: If you are not invited, you cannot attend. You will not be invited unless you would give up anything, everything, to have the carnival steal you away.

This is what Walter Eckert doesn’t know: Does he want it badly enough?

From January 1983 to May 1985, Melissa Anderson, one of the top accountants at Beckman, Deniller & Wright, quietly embezzled nearly two million dollars from her employers and their clients. On the sixteenth of June 1985, Beckman, Deniller & Wright received notice of an impending IRS audit.

On the seventeenth of June, Melissa took the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor of her office building, and climbed the fire stairs to the roof. She removed her jacket and folded it neatly by the door. She slipped off her shoes and placed them beside her jacket. In her stocking feet, she climbed onto the building’s ledge. The wind tugged her blouse and hair. She looked down at the traffic on Market Street below.

In that moment, she could conceive only of the fall. Her muscles forgot how to turn around, walk to the door, descend the stairs. Elevators didn’t exist. If she wanted to get back down, she’d have to jump. And she was terribly afraid.

She told the wind, “I don’t want to die today.”

Perhaps the distant notes of a calliope reached her. Perhaps it was simply the way the birds turned, a scattered flock of pigeons appearing much larger and more sinister as they banked away. Or it was the scent of popcorn. Candy apples. Sawdust. The flicker of lights lining a fairway.

Whatever it was, Melissa remembered how to turn around. She climbed from the ledge and tore the delicate soles of her stockings as she crossed the roof to reclaim her shoes. She put her jacket back on, rode the elevator to the ground floor, and instead of returning to her desk, she walked three blocks to the university museum.

Melissa Anderson did not return to work the next day. Or the day after.

On the twentieth of June, the car carrying the IRS auditors to the firm of Beckman, Deniller & Wright was struck by a city bus. The driver and all three passengers were killed.

The next day, the carnival left town.

How long does it take to fall in love? Seven minutes? Five hours? Two months, fourteen minutes, twenty-six days?

Walter catches his gaze drifting to Marian as he reads of the lost and disappeared and it gets harder and harder to look away.

Maybe it isn’t love. Maybe it’s only that he missed her when she was sitting across from him, so distant he couldn’t bear to take her hand.

Maybe it’s only that he knows he lost her the moment he asked about the Miller family instead of telling her about the hushed, connected world of held breath, psychic predictions, telephone lines, and rain.

The fourth piece of evidence. Well, no one’s really counting anymore, are they? There is a postcard of a standing stone in Ireland, carved with Russian characters. There is a blurred Polaroid showing a body frozen into a chunk of ice, scribbles on the back in pencil indicating there exists forensic evidence dating it from the 1760s, though its brow is sloped like a Neanderthal’s. There’s a handwritten set of coordinates leading to a planet no one has yet discovered. All delivered in nondescript envelopes, no return address, bearing Walter’s name.

Whatever the evidence, it is always the same. The carnival enters town, the carnival leaves town. People disappear.

As the clock ticks over from December 13 to December 14, 2015, Walter Eckert wakes in a panic. It’s Marian. Marian is gone. Of course she’s gone. Because the invitation was never meant for him.

Frantic, he drives to her apartment — an address he shouldn’t have, because she didn’t give it to him, but which wasn’t particularly hard to find. He told himself just in case at the time. In case what? This, he thinks, hunched forward, windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the rain. He parks catty-corner to the curb, leaves the car door hanging open, takes the stairs two at a time. He pounds on Marian’s door, not expecting an answer, and eventually he kicks it in.

The windows are open. Rain blows in and dampens the sill. The air smells faintly of mildew, as though it’s been raining in Marian’s apartment for a very long time. She could be out, visiting friends, on vacation, at a Christmas party, but Walter knows she isn’t. He goes through Marian’s apartment, room by room.

The clothes in her closet and her drawers, the towels in her bathroom, the bed sheets, the curtains — every bit of fabric in Marian’s apartment has been carefully knotted and left in place.

Under the scent of mildew is the lingering odor of lightning and popcorn.

And Marian is gone.

On New Year’s Eve a stray firework ignites a blaze that burns the library to the ground.

“Follow her.” Walter’s mother calls him in the middle of the worst ice storm in memory.

It’s New Year’s Day plus one. His mother’s voice is slurred. It’s dark, and Walter can’t work out whether it’s from ice coating the windows or the time of day. His bare feet kick empty bottles as he fumbles toward the bedside clock and its ruby light.

“Mom? I can barely hear you.” Walter’s tongue feels thick, as though he’s trying to shape words in a dream. Maybe the dwarf will show up soon and tell him how Laura Palmer really died.

“Go after her,” his mother says. Walter grips the phone.

“I don’t know how. Mom?”

There’s a hush like static. Like a secret world of rain. Like ice freezing on the telephone line sealing up his words. His world.

“Go.” His mother’s ghost voice is buried under a fall of not-snow. The line dies. As it does, instead of a dial tone, Walter hears the murmur of a calliope.

It is January 4, 2016, and Walter awakes from a dream.

It must be a dream.

It is a dream because he enters the carnival with no invitation, only the evidence in his hands — the poster, the shirt, the film, the postcard, the Polaroid, the notes. He is allowed in. Even though none of the invitations are for him. They are for Charlie Miller and Melissa Anderson. They are for Lemuel Mason and Marian. But not him.

Unless, taken all together, they are. Evidence numbers 1 through To Be Determined — case files, half-vocalized conversations, newspaper articles, microfilm, archives, cigarettes smoked, and alcohol consumed. Perhaps these are Walter Eckert’s invitation to step right up, come on in.

It hurts. And Walter will never admit this.

What has he been chasing?

It has to be a dream.

* * *

Walter passes through the turnstile, evidence clutched in his hands — the photograph, the film reel, a reproduction of the shirt, the standing stone, the Neanderthal man. He holds them out to a blank-eyed boy at the ticket booth who waves his hand and makes the gate standing between Walter and the carnival disappear.

Walter steps inside.

The boy, no longer blank eyed, runs ahead of him. Walter follows, hurrying to keep him in sight. No older than thirteen, the boy is naked, loping on hands and knees between tents staked into the dusty ground. Skinny. Faint bruises trace the ladder of his ribs, the knobs of his spine. Walter almost remembers the boy’s name. But every time he opens his mouth to speak, it slips away.

Down narrow ways. Between tents pulsing with breath, buzzing with the sound of tattoo needles, humming with the burr of electricity and the importance of a honey-producing hive. Walter is utterly disoriented.

There!

When Walter catches sight of him again, the boy wears a wolf’s head in place of his own — muzzle frozen in a snarl, glass eyes reflecting the glow of the pale fairway lights.

Fried crickets served here. Ten for a dollar, all skewered up neat and crunchy in a row.

Skin of mice. So nice. Peeled fresh and heaped with shaved ice. Drizzled with any flavor syrup you want.

Try your luck, Ma’am-Sir. Prizes no worse than your heart’s desire! Careful what you wish for. At-any-cost is a steep price to pay.

Walter almost loses sight of the boy again as he ducks into a tent. Walter follows.

Seats rise in concentric circles from the center ring. A spotlight, dusty-dim, pins the boy, who throws his head back and howls. The sound is muffled inside the echo chamber of the wolf’s skull.

In the spotlight there is no mistaking the bruises — dark purple scars that will not fade numbering his ivory bones.

The boy crouches and the light snaps off. Wolves, real wolves, who bear no human skin, creep between the seats, which are full now. The rabbit-masked audience holds its collective breath, leans forward. The wolves ignore them, dripping slow between the seats. Trickling down. The boy curls in the middle of the ring. Skinny, scarred arms wrap around the taxidermied wolf’s head. He waits.

Walter can’t bear to watch.

He flees.

And stumbles into another tent with a single man, a clown, spotlit in the center of the ring.

The clown stands behind a table, stitching. His eyes are downcast, covered in crosses. He works with infinite care, unpicking seams and redoing them, crooning softly all the while. A lullaby. The needle goes in, the needle comes out. The thread is a form of weeping, one that won’t smear his makeup, joining rust-colored bone to gleaming fish scale. The child’s skull is exaggerated, swollen. A hairline crack runs from brow back to somewhere Walter can’t see.

There are other tents, other exhibits. A woman rides a bicycle. Her legs churn the pedals, turn them insistently. Blood flows. Walter traces it from the wheels to her heart, to her legs, to her arms, and back again. Her skin is translucent. The bicycle, too.

A flock of crows follows her around the ring. If she slows, the blood will stop moving. If she slows, the birds will swallow her eyes.

Walter runs, on and on. Faster through the carnival: through the fortune-teller’s tent where tarot cards chase his heels like fallen leaves, past the world’s strongest man, the living skeleton, the ring toss game. He is looking for something, someone. A woman whose eyes are inkwells, whose spine is a card catalog, whose skin holds the tales of a thousand library books lost and burned. He needs to tell her he’s sorry; he needs to take hold of her hand.

But all he finds is a snake woman — half mechanical, half flesh and blood, selling lies for twenty-five cents a go in a sawdust-filled ring. All he finds is a surgeon with a silver mallet and a scalpel in his hand. A band of seven old women and three old men, playing flute and drum, xylophone and horn, with each other’s bones.

The exhibits are endless. They smell of popcorn. Cotton candy. Lightning. Eternity. Walter keeps running, but he never arrives anywhere. There is always another corner, some trick and fold of the carnival, keeping him close but at bay. After all, if there’s no audience, no one there to observe just outside the ring, how can the show ever go on?

It is a dream. It must be a dream. It doesn’t matter that his boots are sitting beside his bed in the morning, caked with dust when he left them neat and clean on the mat beside the door before going to sleep. It doesn’t matter that his hair smells of greasepaint. It doesn’t matter that his palm remembers the touch of a librarian he didn’t have the courage to reach for across a table spanning the gulf of a thousand years.

Once invited, once the invitation is turned down, it will never come again.

It has to be a dream.

Because right now, Walter’s entire world is made of wanting. If he really went to the carnival, he would still be there, wouldn’t he? If they invited him in, asked him to stay, dear god, why didn’t he?

And more importantly: How will he ever get back there again?

CORPSE ROSE

by Terry Dowling

Not counting the viewports in whatever Apollo CSMs were attached to it during its short active life, Skylab only had the single window in its main wardroom. And when the mission crew finally departed in 1974 and the first US space station was officially abandoned in space at last, the light of Earth shone through that window for more than five years before the station fell from orbit in July 1979, lighting a chill silence broken only by the vagaries of temperature and the occasional peppering of microparticles against the hull, sounding in whatever unvented gases remained, in many ways the noises most human habitats make. For a time Skylab became the newest kind of haunted house, though all stories of the face peering in that solitary window — and, worse yet, peering out — are merely that, stories, with no possible basis in fact. But peering in or out, it is one of the world’s oddest supra-urban myths: this notion of a face in the wardroom window of Skylab before it fell and, yes, as it fell.

— Heinrich Fleymann

The day Jeremy Scott Renton turned eleven, a circus ran away to join him.

Not all at once, mind, but the thirteen members of the Corpse Rose Heirloom Carnival and Former Circus (to give it its full name) came to check him out and give their approval, arriving secretly in their ones and twos, never making a fuss, never drawing too much attention. They stayed long enough for the troupe to gather once more, doing the usual mufti work in bars, stocking supermarket shelves, cleaning swimming pools until they had finally assembled, all thirteen, then confirmed him as theirs and them as his, and went their various ways again.

Every single one had to approve, of course, theirs being one of the seven great lost and hidden carnivals of the world. Things were done differently in the Heirloom Carnivals, or the Sly Carnivals as they were sometimes called — and the Corpse Rose Heirloom Carnival and Former Circus followed the old protocols to the letter.

As for Jeremy Scott Renton — Jem to his friends — he wouldn’t learn that it had happened at all for another twenty-five years, eleven days after a carefully placed operative persuaded both a doting grandmother and fond older sister in Perth that a round-trip ticket on the Indian-Pacific and a week at Cottesloe Beach would be the perfect birthday gift for a thirty-six-year-old grandson and younger brother just back from five years with the Australian Design Council in London. The Indian-Pacific running from Sydney to Perth via Adelaide was one of the remaining great train journeys in the world, all 2,698 miles of it, and it seemed like a grand idea.

Jem had five weeks’ leave owing and was glad to spend part of it with his west-coast kin before settling down to his new posting. He thoroughly enjoyed the Sydney to Adelaide leg of the journey and had every expectation of enjoying the longer haul across the vast Nullarbor Plain as well. Outback Australia was one of the no-time, slow-time places of the world and, by association, so too was the inside of the Indian-Pacific when it made that crossing.

It was when the train made its customary stop at the not-quite-ghost-town of Cook, 513 miles northwest of Port Augusta in the middle of the Nullarbor, population anything from four to fifteen on an Indian-Pacific day, that what had been set in motion twenty-five years before reached the end of this particular recruitment phase, and the next part of the old Sly Carnival spell that had planted the seed of an idea with grandmother and sister was engaged.

Jem was standing with a hundred or so other passengers by the trackside stalls and pull-up shopfronts, stretching his legs in the heat and glare and examining the souvenir tea-towels, velveteen cushion covers, and other handcrafts with half a mind of getting something for his Gran. The long blast of a car horn made him look up to see a battered old Jeep Cherokee arrive in its cloud of dust, making him immediately think that some last-minute passenger was joining the train.

Jem noticed two things then: the weathered, thirty-something brunette in work shirt, jeans, and boots who climbed out from behind the wheel, a tall, solidly built woman — statuesque was the word — and the motif on the vehicle’s door: a coffin with a bright red rose laid across it, with maybe half a dozen words underneath.

It was that motif — coffin and rose inside its faded rondel — that did it, triggered an all-purpose compulsion spell, what’s called an obligato in the old Sly Carnival speak.

When the Indian-Pacific pulled away twenty minutes later and the town settled back into its usual silence — just the murmur of the tea-towel brigade packing up and the sound of crows and currawongs out on the flats — Jem was standing beside the track, and more than happy to climb into the Jeep alongside the woman and set off into the northwest.

He wasn’t thinking too clearly right then, but it was his first official contact with the Corpse Rose Heirloom Carnival and Former Circus.

They were ten minutes along a dirt road stretching across land as flat as a table when he finally drifted back.

“How did you manage that—?”

“Mally,” she said, warmly enough. She had a tanned, pleasant face, a good smile. “Short for Millicent Quinn, at your service. We’ve got tricks we can use.”

“I’ll say. I don’t feel pissed off but know I should.”

“Part of the package. You can get even later.”

“Figure you won’t let that happen. So where we going again?”

Mally gave him a long hard look. “Usually we just say you’re going to a carnival for a day or so, and leave it to what we call an obligato to keep it foggy for the sake of a quiet drive out. But Mr F. said you’d probably be special, and I could make up my own mind. We’re going about a hundred miles or so.”

“So the name on your door there? The Corpse Rose Heirloom Carnival and Former Circus. What’s with the Former part? How does that work?”

“Once the animals are gone a circus automatically becomes a carnival. That’s what Mr Fleymann says, though there’s no single ruling. Gipsy carnivals do it different. Taureg carnivals.”

“Are there Gipsy carnivals? Taureg carnivals?”

“Hard to say. Put up a tent. Tell a fortune. Juggle some balls. When does it become official? Sometimes there’s a clear business plan. Sometimes it’s just passed on.”

“The heirloom part.”

“See. You’re getting the hang of it already. Mr F. did pick well this time.”

This time, Jem noted, but wanted to keep it light, get his bearings. He wasn’t in the train anymore. Something extraordinary had happened yet didn’t feel like it. He knew that should bother him as well, his lack of concern, but felt no alarm whatsoever, which, somewhere back in there, was dimly, remotely troubling. It had to be what Mally had said, part of the package.

Jem went along with it, sat scanning the distances. “So, hey, look where we are.”

“Exactly. Can’t think of a better thing for making a body really see the world than flying at three thousand feet or spending time in a desert.”

“Unless it’s spending time at a carnival in a desert.”

Mally struck the steering wheel in agreement. “Right you are, Jem Renton!”

“Or maybe flying over a carnival in a desert in the middle of nowhere. That’d really make you curious, really make you want to go down and check it out.”

Mally’s grin held but she gave him another hard look, as if he had just said something profound, then went back to playing her own part in keeping it light. “Works for us, Jem. Never short of people dropping by.”

“So why out here?”

Mally kept her eyes on the road. “Now that’s the question. Part of it’s about words. Names for things. Where they come from. What they mean. How you say them.”

“Like Heirloom.”

“There you go. Used to be the name for an important family entitlement. Something passed on in trust. From the word for a tool, an instrument. Ask Mr F.”

“Right. And Corpse Rose?”

“What it says. Plant a rose bush on someone’s grave and you get a very strong-smelling rose. Very sweet. Beauty from corruption. A special fragrance with a hint of carrion, some say, but that’s nonsense.”

Jem considered that, then gathered his thoughts enough to ask: “Mally, why am I here?”

“Can’t say too much, Jem, but some people have a special gift they’re never aware of. The thirteen in our troupe, well, it’s our job to find these gifted ones, set up ways to bring them to us and use that gift while it’s good and strong. They enable us, see, let us do what we do.”

“And I have this gift? This power?”

“Right.” And she told him how he had been chosen all those years ago, appointed, seconded, whatever it was, making it seem casual but no doubt proceeding according to a careful script.

Jem sat smiling and nodding in the pleasant buzz of wheels on sand, sun on his face, and accepted it all. These sorts of things had to happen all the time. People just never knew.

But he made himself keep at it. “So once they’ve found someone, what do these old Heirloom Carnivals do? Apart from running away to join people.”

Mally grinned again. “Like that, do you? Well, for a start we keep some things to ourselves. We appreciate things done right, using the old traditions. There’s at least one Sly Carnival on every continent, tucked away, making do, getting by, can you believe it? Lots of friendly competition.”

“And what? They stay hidden?”

“Enough people find them.”

“You’re not telling me much.”

“Just what so many words do, Jem. Don’t tell you much. Make you go deeper. But you’ll see for yourself. Not long now.”

For the rest of the drive it was just flat horizon in every direction under a hot blue sky, long sweeps of red earth, stretches of sand and salt pan, scraps of saltbush and bluebush on what modest dunes and ridges there were. Then there was a crusting of something off to one side, a few uncertain shapes that grew to be a clustering of tents and vehicles near what might have once been a watercourse of some kind.

Mally pulled up, opened her door, and jumped out. “I’ll go find Mr Fleymann and tell him you’re here,” she said, and set off amid the tents.

Jem sat a while listening to the day, watching the spot where she had disappeared. It occurred to him vaguely that he should call his Gran and Lucy, though he felt little urgency about that. Still, he was missing from the train. When he did try Lucy’s number there was no signal, hardly surprising, so no way to check in, check facts, confirm terms like Heirloom and Corpse Rose, the rest of the world for that matter. And Mally had taken the keys. He really was cut off from everything.

Except this.

Jem didn’t like the feeling it gave him. It made him decide that, since Mally hadn’t actually told him to stay in the car, he’d take a look around. If this was all he had then he’d have it.

He opened the door and started toward the tents. As far as he could tell there were maybe ten in all, three impressively large, the size of modest family homes, the rest no larger than the average one-car garage. No real fairway running between either; it was much more haphazard than that, more a series of narrow alleys snaking between guy-lines to where some well-used caravans, a few vans, and two weathered SUVs were parked.

Jem studied the scene, listening for voices. The tents stirred in the afternoon breeze, bellying now and then so the entry flaps showed glimpses of darkness. Sand hissed against the canvas. Stays thrummed a little, but as the softest, listen-or-you’ll-miss-it sound.

It was starting to spook him, though Jem told himself that thirteen in the troupe didn’t mean they were necessarily on site. Maybe they were off in a town somewhere or sleeping out the hottest part of the day. The effect was of no-one-at-home quiet, but he sensed he was being watched all the same, that if he turned quickly enough he’d see someone before they pulled back out of sight, maybe catch them peeping out of tents.

At least Mally’s Jeep was still where she had left it. At least there was one other person besides himself.

Had been.

So where on earth was she? Going to find Mr Fleymann, she’d said. Surely no finding was involved, although, going by what she’d said about words, maybe there was.

We appreciate things done right.

Jem shook his head, worried by how easygoing, how unworried he kept feeling about all this. He’d been abducted, tricked, conned. Things were seriously wrong, though it all seemed harmless, no big deal.

And maybe they wanted him to get a sense of the place on his own, check out the different tents, see which ones he’d try. There weren’t that many. That had to be it.

Part of the package.

He moved toward the caravans, taking the alleyway with at least four tents opening onto it. They all had signage of some kind, wooden display boards above the entrance flaps, though most with words so faded he could only make out the nearest. THE WAIT, it said in bleached gold on weathered blue, which made him chuckle since that was exactly what he was doing. Still, hardly the name for your usual fairground attraction.

Maybe the Tauregs and Gipsies did better.

Jem was summoning up the nerve to enter, actually reaching to lift the flap, when Mally appeared at the entrance to the last tent in the row, the big one nearest the vehicles.

“Jem, over here! Come meet the boss!”

He waved in acknowledgment, as if he were the one who had chosen to interrupt his train journey and pay a visit. He stepped over guy-lines to the largest tent of the lot, probably the closest thing to a big top the carnival had. There was no signboard above the entrance this time.

When Jem stepped inside he saw two masts supporting the canopy, though, again, there was no sign of Mally. It was frustrating, annoying somehow — welcome feelings after the buzz of the drive out from Cook. The world was slowly becoming real again, his again. He blinked, kept allowing that he was being tricked, not seeing people who were right in front of him. The space looked completely empty but for a large display case between the masts, an old waist-high museum-style thing on four wooden legs, the size of a kitchen table, glass top and sides lit from above by a powerful spotlight that created a dazzling pool of light where it stood.

The obvious thing to do, the only thing really, was go see what it contained. Which had him smiling again. All part of the show.

The case held a model of the carnival itself, miniature versions of the tents, caravans, and vehicles, even Mally’s Jeep, showing the alleys running between, the adjacent sand flats, the tiniest tufts of scrub. The spotlight was like the blazing sun outside, and Jem could even imagine the tents stirring ever so slightly in an impossible breeze. It looked so real that it made him wonder if he’d be shown in the diorama if he stepped outside again, which meant he’d have to be out there for it to happen, of course, which meant he could never be in a position to see it. But that was the sense he got, that he’d be shown, that it was all shown in miniature here: a lizard scurrying by, a bird flying through.

“That’s us,” an elderly male voice said, and Jem looked up into shadow to see Mally standing with a tall lean man in an off-white three-piece suit, one that looked bleached and quaint as if made of canvas or sailcloth. It had eccentric pleats and odd little tucks and ruffles like compressed fans, even a rolled cravat of the stuff at his throat.

Mally gestured grandly. “Jem Renton. It’s my great pleasure to introduce our Ringmaster and Master of Ceremonies, Mr Heinrich Fleymann, originally of Gutenberg. Mr F. as we call him.”

“Good to meet you, Jem Renton,” Mr F. said. “It’s been a while.”

Twinkling dry was the right term for him, Jem decided as they shook hands. Dry skin, dry voice, all with a sheen spilling from the eyes, which in themselves looked dry. An old painting of a man, complete with an explosion of white Mark Twain hair and wearing a raw canvas suit waiting for colours, highlights, flourishes.

Obligato courtesy came easy. “I’d say thanks for the invite, Mr F., but I had no choice in that.”

Mr Fleymann spread his hands. “Sorry to say. But we’ll set things right.” His words held only the slightest trace of his German ancestry.

Jem found it easy to play along. “I thought weird carnivals came in on trains.”

“Well, we’re Down Under, see, so it’s all ass-about. We join you. You come to us on the train.” Dry voice, dry smile stretching back, bushy white hair catching the light.

“So why am I here? Mally said I have a hidden power you mean to use.”

“Straight to it, good. You check out the attractions on offer. We have nine tonight. You get to pick three.”

“Pick as in try those tents?”

“Pick as in they’re your three. You try them all. Think of it as partly a fortune-telling thing.”

“That’s what my gift’s for? Lets you read the future?”

“Most surely does. Lets us determine the future, if we’re lucky. It all depends on what choices you make. Life’s about choosing. No point otherwise.”

Jem remembered what Mally had said about words and wondered what Mr Fleymann wasn’t saying. That was the game here. “You picked me. Joined me. How does that work?”

“Checked you out. Laid the old Sly spell, part of it in Perth with your gran and sister, part when you reached Cook. Other folk drop by, see the tents, decide to check us out. That’s the gravy. We chose you. Makes all the difference.”

“But you’re still not saying why.”

“Hey, no, sir! We’ve waited years for your visit. It’s our reward for all the effort.”

“You’ve chosen others? Visited others?”

“We have. We did. We do. Constantly. Got people out scouting right now.”

“Finding new blood.”

“Not our choice of words. Some duds, some misses, but all considered it averages out. It’s how we do what we do.”

“Come on, Mr Fleymann? You’ve got me here. Just what do you do. I don’t see any trade dropping by.”

“Not today, Jem! Not tonight. Tonight you’re here! It’s your turn. You’re the main attraction! We perform for you. Not just anyone can make us cross half a continent scouting.”

“I just visit the tents?”

“Pay each of the nine a visit, yes. Meditate. Reflect. Choose your three. They’ll be the ones we use.”

“For a fortune telling.”

“At the very least. For whatever comes.”

“Mally says there are thirteen in the troupe. Will I get to meet the others?”

“They wouldn’t miss this for the world. Though, like I say, we got some off scouting. Half-Bottle Johnny and Swallowed Girl can’t be here, and one of our two Kabuki Crows sends his apologies.”

“Finding my replacement if I don’t cut it.”

“Your successor whether you do or don’t. It never stops. They find someone, we shut up shop and go check them out like we did you.”

“And if I refuse?”

Mr Fleymann’s face locked. The smile gleamed above the fan of his cravat, hinted, promised.

“Then we lose out this time. You lose out.”

“You have that spell thing going. You could force me.”

“Not how we like it to be. Keep that as one of our Get Out of Jail Free cards. We all get them. Even you get one.”

“You’re serious?”

“Old rules. You could guess our secret name, our special name of power. Every Heirloom Carnival has one. Some visitors get lucky. Most don’t. That lets you cut and run.”

“Can’t be too obvious.”

“Has to be in plain sight.”

“So I’ve seen it already?”

“Most likely. But best you choose your three. Spend time with them, then come tell us. Have a bit of a debriefing on what you’ve understood. Answer a few questions.”

“Then I can go?”

“How it works. Jeremy Scott Renton goes scot-free. He’s off our books.”

“But with no memory of having been here.”

Mr F. snatched dazzle from the spotlight, grinned like a brand-new scimitar. “Still deciding about that. But, hey, Jem, you’re looking tired. Why don’t you go have a nap till later?”

“Thanks, Mr F., but I’m not—”

The third part of the obligato kicked in then. Jem collapsed where he stood, and Mally was there to catch him, every bit as strong as she looked.

When he woke it was evening and he was lying on an old car seat alongside one of the SUVs. To his left the western horizon was a band of gold over a vast blackness, sweeping up to become crimson passing through aqua into richest indigo overhead, already filling with early stars.

To his right the tents were so many jewel boxes, Chinese lanterns, shifting cabinets of light, sides stirring in the breeze off the desert. Daytime drab had become evening miracle, the easy magic of carnivals and circuses everywhere. The heat was going out of the land, but seeing the softly glowing shapes stopped Jem minding too much.

They had deliberately planned it this way, of course, provided the comfortable shift, the right segue from one mode to another. All the tents were illuminated internally, Jem noticed; all had lanterns atop poles by their entrances, a few left dark, most lit to show their signboards. There were people about too, not Mally or Mr F. as far as he could tell, but others, the rest of the troupe, doing last-minute errands, taking their places. There was music playing as well: pipes, Gipsy violins, some light percussion, probably a recording rather than live musicians but muted, far off, entirely appropriate.

In spite of the circumstances, Jem felt genuine excitement, obligato effect or otherwise, though again with a stab of something else behind it, also muted and far off, which, in another time, another place, might have been panic. But he felt excited was the thing.

And here was Mally, wearing finery of her own: the cheekiest, flimsiest, most unlikely ingénue shift that clung to her full body way too well.

“Aren’t you cold?” was all he could manage.

“Surely will be. But, hey, I’ve been in jeans all day. This is playtime! And time to start your tour.”

“What, I just go wandering?”

“Take your time. Any order you like. It’s all about you now.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’m part of the performance, ninny. Off you go.”

Jem had thought there’d be more to it, more fanfare, more of a fuss. But he stood and stretched, then started for the nearest attraction, half intending to do a clockwise circuit.

The first tent he reached was warmly lit but empty, its lantern and signboard dark. After peering in at the single mast and the small patch of desert under a single yellow spot, he moved on to the next in line.

This one’s lantern showed a single word on its signboard: TIMEWISE, and the smiling long-jawed man in straw boater, plaid jacket, slacks, and the shiniest shoes to one side of the entrance immediately greeted him.

“Evenin’, guv. Welcome to the show.”

“I just go in?”

“Do as you please, guv.”

Jem entered the warmly lit space, saw the single yellow spot illuminating a wooden stand a bit like a lectern. Its only feature was a single throw switch set into a vertical board at the top. The labels ON and OFF were marked clearly in black letters on white.

“What do I do?” Jem asked. “Throw the switch?”

“Do nothing, if you’ve a mind,” the man said. “Or throw it. Some do. Some don’t. Makes some folk feel things are happening if they do.”

“There’s no wiring.”

“There’s always wiring, guv. Could be hidden in the stand, under the sand. Could be a placebo. Makes some folks feel good to throw it. Empowered, you know.”

“But they waste time deciding.”

“Clever, but there’s more to it. They stand to get forever. We’re dripping with clocks. Got ’em all over us. Fingernails growing. Hair. Whiskers. Hunger. Lots o’ clocks. Constant reminders. It’s a Yes/No. Throw the switch! Stop the clocks! Maybe that’s it.”

“Live forever!”

“Free of time! Absolutely!”

“But the heart is a clock. That’d have to stop too.”

“Got me. It would.”

“So much for forever.”

“We’re all just hydrogen atoms being clever, mate. Being this or that. We all go there.”

“That’s the forever?”

“Surely is.”

“No choice at all really.”

“None I’d make. But face it. Some people are thoughtless, careless. Don’t know why we have seasons. Why planes fly. This is for them. You always get some.”

“So you’re culling.”

“Trimming the bush.”

“No thanks.”

“Come back anytime.”

Jem left the tent, moved on to the next. Its signboard read MUM ON THE SOFA, and there was no one by the entrance this time. But when Jem looked inside he saw exactly what the sign promised: a woman in her late sixties wearing a house dress and apron sitting on a sofa knitting and watching an old-style television set. The sound was turned right down, the screen showed only static, but the woman seemed to be watching it intently until she saw him. Then her eyes lit up and she smiled broadly.

“Come in, dearie! Big night ahead. Set a spell. Plenty of room.”

Jem stayed where he was in the entryway. There was something in how the woman’s eyes had brightened too gleefully, in how her grin had spread and locked in the flickering light of her TV, so much like Mr F.’s. Overdoing it, but intentionally, he suspected, and Jem had the sudden notion that if he sat down beside the woman, started watching her white TV snow, he’d never get up again.

“Maybe later,” he said. “Lots to do.”

“Always is,” the woman said, sounding genuinely disappointed.

Jem moved on, passed another empty tent — same lonely spotlight, same spread of empty sand and scrub — then found himself outside one of the larger attractions.

SKYLAB LAND, the sign read, and when Jem stepped inside he saw four tall box pedestals, two to each side of a throne-type chair toward the rear. On each rested what looked like a piece of old grey-white insulation paneling, presumably meant to be scrap salvaged from Skylab when it came down in the late seventies. The figure on the throne was tricked out in what was meant to be a spacesuit of the stuff: incongruous pieces glued and wired over an old ski suit, complete with a makeshift helmet. The pitted and frosted faceplate concealed the wearer’s face entirely.

As Jem moved between the pedestals, the figure stirred, started his spiel. “Skylab was the United States’ first space station.” It was a male voice, one that sounded a lot like Mr F.’s in fact. “Set in place in 1973, abandoned in 1974, completed 38,981 orbits, finally fell to Earth in August 1979. NASA meant to go back, have one of the newfangled space shuttles move it to a higher orbit and reuse it, but that never happened. The station came down. This attraction celebrates its homecoming.”

“That’s it?” Jem asked.

“That’s it. You’re welcome to examine the exhibits.”

Jem glanced at the scraps of metal and plastic, whatever they really were. “Are they genuine?”

“Can’t say. I just wear this, give the spiel.”

“Maybe another time then. Other sights to see.”

“Always are.”

Jem stepped outside to find the sky completely dark now, all traces of light gone from the western horizon. Without a midway to give him his bearings he became disoriented, found himself in the alley he’d been in earlier in the day, facing the signboard reading THE WAIT.

Now the flaps were fixed back. Warm light shone from within. The stocky man by the entrance had an impressive handlebar moustache — fake surely — and wore a showman’s purple velvet suit with embroidered lapels. He immediately assumed his role.

“Evenin’, Mr Renton. I’m Grips Aston, and this is—”

“The Wait.”

“Surely is. Step in.”

Jem ignored the invitation, again settled for what he could see from the entrance. In the middle of a space the size of a family living room, a spotlight illuminated a single bentwood chair.

Jem laughed out loud at the absurdity of such a payoff. Truth in advertising again at least, like MUM ON THE SOFA, though hardly an attraction. Sit in the chair, become the exhibit.

“You’re welcome to take a seat,” Grips Aston said with not a touch of irony, voice as smooth as driftwood left in the ocean just long enough. “Rest a bit. Big night ahead.”

“Have to check out all the attractions. You know not to slow me down.”

The big moustache twitched. “Jem, let a guy do his spiel, okay? I’m meant to say it to anyone who shows up.”

“Even specials like me?”

“Especially specials. It’s only temptation if it works, right? And I’m a genuine Aston. Old circus name down under. Give a guy a break!”

“Another time, Grips.”

Jem stepped away, tried the next tent along. Again the signboard was blank, the lantern on the pole dark. When Jem peered in, he saw just the central mast, the solitary spot, a sad scrappy patch of sand, its exhibit long abandoned or, as Jem thought about it, waiting to arrive. Another kind of truth in advertising really, the promise of other days, other possibilities, that or a memorial for what had once been.

Jem felt an odd emotion building, realized it was quite possibly dread, though dread as a concept, dread without the fear. What was he missing? Things were going on that he wasn’t tracking properly.

He kept on to the next attraction in the alley, taking care with the guy-lines and tent-pegs, and it occurred to him for the first time that simply taking care not to stumble was keeping him focused, kept him paying attention, as if to offset the remaining effects of the obligato.

THE THOUGHTFUL GLASS OF WATER this latest signboard read, and as Jem reached it a middle-aged woman in pink tutu, fishnet stockings, and black Doc Martens, hair coiffed in the most striking fuchsia dreadlocks, made as if to hold the already open flaps aside, gesturing to the feature within: a wooden pedestal with a single glass of clear fluid resting upon it.

“Time out, luvvy!” she said in a passing imitation of a Cockney accent. “You can pee behind the vans whenever y’like, but we need other kinds of refreshment, right? Dinner’s later, all of us together, but for now drink your fill.”

“Why the ‘Thoughtful’?”

“People ponder it like you’re doing.”

“Any takers?”

“Rarely. But they don’t get the prize.”

“There’s a prize?”

“Made you thoughtful again, see. Working already. Quench your thirst.”

“It’s my first time round. Maybe later.”

“Right you are. Press on.”

Jem did so, determined to get it over with. How long he’d been at it he had no idea. It was full night now, the sky filled with stars, streaked with the occasional tektites rushing down.

The next signboard read THE MERMAID, and this time it was Mally by the entrance, still in her flimsy evening finery.

“You know the drill,” she said as Jem stepped inside.

He’d expected someone in a tank, one of the women in a mermaid getup, so what he saw threw him: a large plasma screen showing stars, space, the glowing curve of the world as if seen from low-Earth orbit. Not a still either, he realized, but possibly recorded footage from a station like Skylab had been. In the soft lighting of the tent the effect was powerful, like looking through a window.

“Mally, I don’t get the connection. Where’s the mermaid?”

“I keep asking myself the same thing,” Mally said.

Jem sighed, tired of the trickery, of how off kilter all this was. Why couldn’t they just say what they wanted, spell it out? Let him be on his way?

But there were so few exhibits to go. Without a word he continued along to a signboard reading THE CHEERFUL EXCHANGE OF GASES, whose “attraction” proved to be just as frustrating, as elusively annoying as the rest, nothing but a small tree in a terracotta pot, one of those topiary things like a green ball on a stick. It stood on a low pedestal inside plastic dust-curtains arranged like a makeshift shower stall.

A man in his forties, looking like a pastor in a black suit and plain white shirt, waited inside the entrance, and gestured grandly toward the booth. “Put your head inside, brother, and take a breath of God’s clean air the way it was intended.”

“Just take a breath?”

“Easy in, easy out, friend. One of the Lord’s sweetest gifts. Clear your head. Won’t take but a moment.”

Jem said nothing, just turned and left. Two to go. Only two.

Maybe the obligato was wearing thin. He was feeling unsettled, anxious, vaguely frightened now, more and more aware of how wrong it all was, though the next signboard distracted him a bit. THE ISSUS TRIP, it read, which immediately had Jem recalling his high-school history classes, and how Issus was the town in ancient Turkey where Alexander the Great had defeated some Persian king or other. Curiosity had the better of him. What could it possibly be this time?

Inside he found two large art prints side by side on easels, each under a warm yellow spot, and both dealing with that historical event. A mature-aged woman in spectacles and worn dove-grey suit immediately stepped forward like a museum curator or matronly tour guide.

“On the left we have the Alexander Mosaic dating from around 100 BCE,” she said, “originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii but presently in the Naples National Archaeologica Museum. It shows Alexander the Great and Darius III in conflict at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE. On the right you see Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1529 painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus, long regarded as that artist’s best work and presently in the Alte Pinakothek museum in Munich.”

That concluded the presentation, though the woman remained to one side as if ready to answer any questions her visitor cared to ask.

Jem studied the prints for a minute or so — the mosaic with Darius in his chariot, the Altdorfer with its grand view of mighty armies locked in battle — then said, “Thank you,” and went outside, feeling incredible relief when he saw that the next tent along was the two-masted one, the big top.

Was this the final exhibit, the ninth, or had he missed one?

When Jem stepped inside, he found it as empty as it had been earlier in the day. There was just the display case under its fierce white spot. Warm yellow elsewhere, dazzling glare for this single display.

He went and studied the miniature again, found it just as unsettling as before. It was too realistic, as if waiting to move yet confined by these glass sides. It made Jem feel like he was a god peering down, which brought the immediate “Russian Doll” reaction that such a god might be looking down on him. That had him glancing upward instinctively, peering first into the terrible glare, then beyond that fierce core of light to what lay in the shadows to either side: dozens, hundreds, thousands of masks, faces, fixed there, staring down, a vast audience.

Jem blinked, strained to make sure what he was seeing.

Then Mr Fleymann spoke. “So, Jem, what’s it to be? Which three will you pick?”

Jem looked down to find the whole troupe gathered about him, about the display case: Mally in her shift, the woman in the tutu and Doc Martens, the pastor in his dark suit, the curator woman, all of them.

“Is this one included?”

“Of course. If you need more time—”

“I’m ready,” Jem said, and realized he was, that he could choose, had already done so.

“Shoot then.”

Jem hesitated only a moment, getting the exact names clear in his head. “Right. My choices. Skylab Land, the Mermaid, and the Issus Trip.”

Mr Fleymann grinned. Mally did. There were immediate smiles on the faces of the troupe, not just of happiness and excitement, but what looked like genuine relief as well.

Mr F. raised a hand, smoothed his cravat in a nervous gesture. “Now think carefully, Jem. You chose Skylab Land, the Mermaid, and the Issus Trip. Very revealing for us here. Very useful given our specialty. But if you had to pick one of the three, just one, which would it be?”

Jem thought immediately of the Alexander Mosaic. “The Issus Trip. No idea why.”

It was like everyone started breathing again, Mr F., Mally, the whole troupe. There were more smiles, more excitement, sheer relief.

“Good choice!” Mr F. said. “You’ve turned out to be everything we wanted you to be, Jem.”

“What did you want me to be?”

“How we operate, sorry. How we have to operate. All the Heirloom Carnivals.”

“Please. What have I just done?”

Mr F. stretched his arms wide in an expansive, almost hieratic gesture. “You’ve just helped us move ahead. Enabled our next target.”

Now it was Jem who went very still. He understood nothing, but sensed that something awful had just happened.

Mr F. could barely contain his delight. “Good thing you didn’t pick THE WAIT. Many do. Looks so easy.”

Jem made himself stay with the flow. “Just sit there till you get the joke, hey?”

Mr Fleymann’s eyes flashed with a fierce delight totally without mirth. “Sit there till you realize that’s all you’ll ever do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wordplay again, Jem. How it seems. How it sounds. How it is for us. Names of power every one. That’s what we trade in here.”

And the grin locked, held. It was a grimace that nudged.

Get it? Ged it?

The Weight.

Jem felt a rush of horror. “You’re joking.”

“Try it when we’re done if you’ve a mind.”

“It looks so innocent.”

“So can a throw switch with an electric current running through it. So can a glass of acid looking like water. Need to think a certain way about things.”

Like why a carnival would set up in a desert.

That thought flashed through Jem’s mind, even as he pictured the humble setup of THE WAIT. How many people never left that chair? Had never been able to? Took their ease. Felt the pressure come.

“Come morning—”

“Wouldn’t find much. It’s exponential.”

“The other exhibits—?”

“Have ways of biting.”

“My three?”

“The only ones that are genuine. The rest kill. You passed the test.”

The implications overwhelmed Jem. The faces on the canvas just now. Visitors dropping by.

“Surely there’d be investigations. Missing person reports.”

“Always are. They find nothing. We have ways.”

“But why? It can’t be just trimming the bush.”

“Much more, Jem. We’re back to words again, see. Names. Ways of saying, seeing. If trees are solar engines exchanging gases, and people are living furnaces, burning away day and night, making more living furnaces, what does that make a carnival like this one? The Heirloom Carnivals? The Sly Carnivals?”

“Not just entertainments, distractions?”

“Try harder. Go deeper?”

“A machine? A device? A means for catching souls? Making a hell on Earth?”

“Too corny. Too clichéd. Harder. Deeper.”

Jem tried to grasp what Mr F. wanted. Completions? Ways of resolving something? He didn’t want to say.

Mr Fleymann read that hesitation. “Ever heard of the face in Skylab’s window?”

“The what?”

“You picked all our space features.”

“A face in Skylab’s window?”

“Our favorite urban myth. Favorite conspiracy theory so far. Too much time on your hands in space. Lots of boredom. Lots of astronaut humour you never hear about. Pranks among the different mission crews. The Skylab 3 crew leaving dummies wearing flight suits for the final Skylab crew to find, stuff like that. Somewhere in there is talk of a face peering in the single wardroom window, Al Bean seeing it but staying mum, figuring it was just a reflection, rogue optics, then Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott seeing it, which later had them quizzing the other crews, but all agreeing to keep it to themselves. No use drawing bad psych ratings, screwing up reselection eligibility or their pensions. But somehow it got round, somehow it became a face peering out, of course, which became the face peering out when the station fell.”

“Skylab Land!”

“Go on, Jem. It’s your pick. Finish it!”

“Where exactly did Skylab land?”

“That’s the way! Let’s have it!”

“We’re in the debris field!”

“Most certainly are. This is where she came down — all the way from Esperance and Balladonia up to where we’re standing right now.”

“Then your spaceman. That getup!”

“Who knows exactly? Parts of the Multiple Docking Adaptor or the Apollo Telescope Mount. Bits of hull, who can say? We’re not about to call NASA and have them verify what’s what.”

“But the faceplate—?”

“Glass burns up pretty quick, Jem. That may not be any part of the actual window.”

“But—”

“Let’s continue, shall we? This is your test, remember. THE MERMAID?”

“That view from space. It can’t be Mer-maid. It has to be Mir-maid, for the Russian space station Mir that came down in the late nineties!”

Mr F. beamed his approval. “Well done. In March 2001, to be exact. Following some interesting mishaps: a fire in February 1997 and a major collision with a supply ship a few months later, temporary loss of contact with the station at the end of 2000. But we miscalculated, didn’t allow for the extent of official efforts to control reentry. She came down in the Pacific east of New Zealand. We only managed to secure the tiniest fragments.”

“Then the ISS in ISSUS! The Issus Trip has to be the ISS, the International Space Station!”

“Bravo, Jem! You’re a true paragon! Worth a thousand drop-ins.” And in his near-manic delight he gestured up to where the imaginary audience watched, the faces on the inside of this largest tent.

And no obligato could keep that thought from Jem’s mind.

“These tents! Your suits! — ” He tried to speak it.

“Oldest tradition among the Heirloom Carnivals, yes. Something worthwhile passed on. Probably comes from the steppes of Russia long ago, but who can say?”

Jem looked up, again saw beyond the terrible glare of the spot to what lay in the spread of shadow: dozens, hundreds of masks, faces, fixed, peering down. Faces on the canvas. Faces made of canvas!

Canvas made of faces!

The display case miniature the bait, a distraction to keep candidates looking down, looking in, looking away. This is what had happened to those who failed in their choices, the uninvited, the unsuccessful ones. Those tents, all deadly, all capable of biting.

This was how the Heirloom Carnivals replenished themselves, added to themselves, repaired, maintained, made new tents, new suits.

Mr Fleymann may have regretted his exuberance, though it seemed that he always revealed how it was like this. “One Sly Carnival specialises in the sinking of great passenger ships. I’m sure you remember a certain White Star Line vessel meeting an iceberg, and can recall a rather more recent disaster off Isola del Giglio. Another works at upsetting Royal Houses and world governments. Our specialty is bringing down balloons, aircraft, and, more recently, space habitats — the first haunted houses ever to be off the planet. A real cachet in that.”

“What becomes of me?”

“We keep you on a bit longer. Use your services again.”

“Again? Why, what have I done?”

“Enabled us, Jem. Given us the power to begin work on our next target. You could be invaluable. Who knows what else you’ll help us do?”

“Unless I guess your secret name. Some do, you said. It’s likely I’ve seen it, you said.”

“Correct. We keep to the rules.”

Everyone had gone still again, holding, waiting.

Jem looked down at the case, at the tiny world contained there, trying to grasp what he’d seen amid the misdirection, the deflections, the wordplay, desperately seeking a Get Out of Jail Free Card, some ultimate name of power that compelled obedience.

Maybe it was in old carnival lore, old circus customs, like “Hey, Rube!”—the old carny cry for calling for help in a fight, a special Mayday. And Mayday itself — a distress call in all kinds of emergencies, from m’aider—come help me! — in French. Things meant things. Words mattered here. Things half-heard. Misdirection.

Like Skylab Land!

The Mermaid!

And Mr Fleymann! Flayman indeed! Power in names.

Mum on the Sofa. Couch Ma! Cauchemar! Nightmare.

And Mally Quinn, for heaven’s sake! How could he have missed it? Mallequin! Mannequin!

He looked down at the glare and the dazzle, the tiny world, at everything the world was here. The only world.

Corpse Rose!

Could it be? Of course.

That name! That name of power!

That was it! He knew it.

He said it out loud, blurted it, said it a second time.

“Dammit!” someone said, possibly Mally.

“Bugger!” muttered someone else.

Mr F.’s grin held, but the light went out of it like sand sliding around stones. Just the grimace remained, leached and horrid. Finally it relaxed, broke apart.

“Well played, Jem. But no matter. You’ve set us on our way. Tomorrow, the International Space Station will have a small but annoying toilet blockage, and one of its lesser windows will get the first signs of pitting. Nothing major yet, and a bit theatrical, I know, but it made the folks in Washington and Moscow very nervous when those faces appeared in their station windows. More nations involved with the ISS. Harder to hush up. It’s time to bring the house down, but we’ll make sure it’s haunted first.”

“What happens to me?”

“Get Out of Jail Free, lucky boy. You were everything we hoped you’d be.”

Jem woke leaning against a tree in the dusty main street of Cook, legs thrust out in front. Someone was talking to him, a tall weathered brunette who kept glancing at her watch, clearly had things to do.

“Train’s in tomorrow,” she said, then indicated the old man standing next to her. “Pete says you can sleep on his verandah tonight. You’ll be fine.”

Jem fought to get his bearings, remember everything, anything, watched the woman walk over to a Jeep Cherokee, climb in, and start the engine.

“Heat stroke’ll get ya, young fella,” the old man said. “Like the lady says, you’ll be fine in a day or two.”

Jem managed to stand. “Say, Pete, did you see a sign on that Jeep’s door? Name of a property or something?”

“Never did. Mally’s pretty much a loner. You see somethin’?”

“Not sure. For a moment I thought I saw that old name from the Bible. Lazarus.”

“Wasn’t he the fella that rose from the dead?”

Jem watched the Jeep driving off amid the dust. “At the very least.”

LAST OF THE FAIR

by Joel Lane

Coming home on the number 11 bus, Mark noticed there was a fair in Fox Hollies Park. It wasn’t the usual scrawny local thing with two electric roundabouts and half a ghost train. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rides: just a scattering of tents in a hazy orange light that somehow didn’t reach the centre. There was no sign on the gates. A thin October rain scratched at the canvas walls. Odd time of year for a fair. Blurred images pulled at the corner of his eye: a tangle of snakes, a flying eagle, a woman with an angelic face. He thought of Carmel. Their date that afternoon, in a rough Kings Heath pub, was the first time they’d kissed. Next time, he supposed, they might go to bed. It worried him. Some music was playing in the park, but he couldn’t make it out. The bus passed a shop whose upper windows were broken.

The angel stayed in his mind that night. Her neck was bent back; her expression was ecstatic but not peaceful. Mark thought it was an imitation of a painting he’d seen in the Birmingham art gallery, a Rossetti portrait of a woman experiencing some kind of sacred vision. Again he thought of Carmel — her straight dark hair falling over her pale face, her eyes closed as their tongues met in a silent argument. His hand strayed to the smooth ridge of bone above his left nipple, rising to a crest and then falling back into his side. He’d been wearing a loose shirt, she probably hadn’t seen. And she hadn’t gone to his school, so she wouldn’t know about the names. She’d gone to a better school, was at college now. But she didn’t talk to him like he was an idiot. There was a blend of loneliness and fear in her eyes that made him desperate to touch her.

Mark bit his lip as his hand slipped down to his warm belly, his crotch. The rain tore at the windows, like a dog with a bone that no longer had any flesh to lose. The word “bone” stuck in his head and he couldn’t hold onto himself. Frustrated, he rolled over and thought of a house full of broken glass.

The next evening, he went back. The old man at the entrance charged him a pound for admission. It was warmer than the previous night; the ground was still wet. Music was playing from somewhere: “Fairground Attraction,” that song with the annoying stop-start rhythm. The tents were lit up, but there hardly seemed to be anyone around. The smell of mustard and fried onions hung in the air. Mark paced from tent to tent, looking for the angel. What kind of fair was this? The signs didn’t give much away. One showed a man enfolded in his own silver wings, the next a mass of worms feasting on a small creature. Then he glimpsed the ecstatic face on the side of a pale tent. The sign was a pair of hands: one curled up, the fingers scarred and distorted by fire or birth; the other normal, the fingers elegant and smooth. And a single word in red: HEALING. There was a rank smell in the doorway, but he pushed through the fringe of canvas strips.

A middle-aged woman at a desk looked at him as if he’d come to sign in. “Twenty pounds, love.” That was all the money he had. It was meant to last him the week, but he handed it over. “Just go in and sit down,” she said. The space beyond the desk was dark, but he could make out a wooden chair in front of a murky glass screen. Was this just a video? Feeling they had set up the whole thing just to mock him, Mark sat down. The smell was worse here, a mix of something chemical and something animal. No doubt these tents had rats. He shivered. Some music was playing inside, but he had to strain to hear it. The sound was dreamy but repetitive, like rave music slowed down. The speakers were behind him. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out what was behind the screen. It was dancing.

A human figure, more or less. Apparently naked. Had to be a woman, though her body was so deformed he couldn’t be sure. Her hands were knotted into swollen fists. Her back, even allowing for the clumsy dance movements, was twisted out of shape. She had three shrivelled breasts. No area of her skin was free of scars and blemishes. Her sleek hair partly obscured her face, but he could see the eyes and mouth were too small and completely dark. What was between her legs didn’t even look human. The music was making him feel drowsy, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the terrible dance. And then whatever light there was faded. He reached out to touch the screen, to reassure himself there was glass between him and the dancer, and felt nothing.

A hand gripped his shoulder. “Wake up, it’s over.” The woman from the desk. She’d got the wrong person, it wasn’t over, he had business here. For a moment Mark wondered who he was. “Time to go.” There was nothing behind the screen. When he stood up, his erection made it difficult to walk. He was grateful for the poor light. Had they drugged him? The smell was worse now, or maybe he’d added to it. Nauseated and angry, he stumbled through the canvas strips and out into the park, which wasn’t different enough from the tent to reassure him. His excitement faded fast as he walked, then ran, to the exit and home through the orange-lit streets, heaps of black bags almost blocking his way, the stink of days-old rubbish, the ammonia reek of seagulls and rats from the city dump a quarter-mile away, darkness clotted in broken windows and narrow passages to the trading estates behind the houses. Tears blurred his vision, though he had no idea what he was crying about.

When he got home, his father was watching TV. The living- room smelled of Special Brew. Mark grunted hello and rushed through to the bathroom, which was part of a ground-floor extension. He stripped off clumsily, his hands frozen though it wasn’t cold, and switched on the shower — but before he could get into it, he was on his knees in front of the toilet bowl, rocking back and forth. His mouth filled with sour bile, but he didn’t vomit. At least it gave him an excuse for crying. For bitter reassurance, his left hand crept to the ridge of bone between the shoulder-blade and the ribs. It wasn’t there. He felt with his other hand, then looked in the grimy mirror. It had gone. He didn’t know what to feel. The shower was so hot it stung him all over, left him itching. He went straight to bed and curled up as small as he could, hands on shoulders, face digging into the pillow.

Thoughts of her woke him up. The screen dissolving, her abnormal breath in his face. Three nipples pressing against him. A wet ruin down below. He bit his lip as he came, then reached for a tissue, cleaned himself, then crushed the damp paper in his fist. Waste to be crushed and burned. He could do that, they couldn’t stop him. Now he was whole, he could do what he fucking well liked. She had it coming. The other bitch too, the procurer. He’d go back and end it. No one would blame him. He reached for his lighter, a cheap plastic job from a garage, flicked it on, and stared at the orange flame with its dull blue heart. Then he lit a cigarette and sat in the dark, breathing smoke. Marlboro. Carmel smoked the same brand. It was a sign. Finally he dropped the stub in the ashtray, lay back down, and felt peace creep over him like a blanket.

His father was drinking every night. Sometimes it made him late for work. He needed a woman. That was what you did if you were normal, you loved someone and married them. His mother had left a couple of years ago, gone to live in West Bromwich on her own. Mark didn’t know what was wrong with her. At least there were no more arguments. They used to keep him awake half the night, screaming at each other. Then he’d sleep and dream the house was on fire.

The fair looked like it was packing up. Blank-sided lorries were parked in the central area; some of the tents were already gone, though others were still open for business. Mark wondered what else might be on offer here. Too late to worry about that now. He patted his zip-up jacket, the pockets over his chest: two cans of lighter fluid wrapped in pieces of rag, each a small bomb that could burn down the thing’s tent. That morning at the job centre, as the rain had whipped its grey sheets against the building, he’d remembered the showers after games lessons at school. The staring, the whispering, the awkward silences. And the names. Bonetit. The Phantom. It’s Alive. The rain was still falling, but it was lighter and, for some reason he didn’t understand, slower. The drops around each lamppost seemed to trickle down a glass wall, rather than drop through the air.

The rapturous face on the tent wall was scarred with rain. The board was still outside, and there was a dim light in the doorway. Mark slipped to one side, walking slowly around a parked van, and approached the back of the tent. He felt in his side pocket for the lighter, and put a cigarette in his mouth as a prop. He’d have to be quick. Just as he was about to flick the lighter and whip the first cloth-wrapped can out of his jacket, a dark-haired girl in a blue coat approached the tent and paused for a moment, looking at the sign. Then she walked through the entrance. It was Carmel. She hadn’t seen him.

Mark spat out the unlit cigarette and turned away, running between the lorries at the end of the park and through the gap at the end of the fence, back onto the road. He ran until the pain in his chest made him slow down, struggling for breath. Rain clawed at his face. When he reached the industrial estate near the dump, where seagulls mewed in the dark like airborne cats, he took out one of the cans of lighter fluid and unscrewed the cap, then inhaled the cold fumes. He’d last done that about six years before, not quite a teenager. A wave of nausea hit him and he staggered against the wall, fell to his knees, inhaled again. And again. Slowly, the fear eased. He could see the rain falling, but not feel it on his face.

There was nothing to worry about. He and Carmel would go to bed together, and it would be perfect. Because they would be. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and imagined the two of them making love in the clouds, high above the city’s orange crest of light pollution, their bodies locked in a silent arc, falling together like angels.

A SMALL PART IN THE PANTOMIME

by Glen Hirshberg

Ah, there’s our Africanist,” Bemis says over the rim of his gin glass, through his beard, as Jalena Russell enters the outsized office. The other four, who’ve apparently been there awhile, look up from their drinks or turn from their bored perusals of the Great Douglas Green’s legendary bookshelves. Over by the window, Alexa Frazee even nods.

Jalena stops. She can’t help it. She knows that what she hears, every time they greet her that way, isn’t what they mean, or even what they’re thinking. What she hears is in the word itself.

Africanist. Our African.

“Professors,” she says, and drops her messenger bag into Green’s ratty recliner, where it half disappears into one of the fissures in the dry leather. Its color was probably burgundy, once, but now almost matches Jalena’s skin. A romantic — Jalena, perhaps, when she’d first arrived at Eastern Montana U. — Great Plains as an assistant professor seven years ago — would have identified the smells rising from it as properly aged whiskey, decades-old conversation. What it actually smells of is mildew, old nicotine, trapped fart.

Abruptly, Rogan and Frazee, the Lit and Comp department’s one and only functioning couple, lurch from the windows where they’ve been watching the snow and move straight toward Jalena. Rogan tilts back and forth, making frothy sounds through the floppy rubber lips of her drugstore zombie mask and bouncing a hand in the sprayed-on streaks of red in her spiky gray hair. Frazee just stretches her arms straight in front of her, bracelets jangling, her surprising smile lighting up her face under her gypsy scarves. She is the only person Jalena has met at EMU — GP with a smile that bright, and the closest thing she has to a favorite, or at least a mentor.

“One of us,” they are chanting. “One of us.”

“Hey, that’s right,” Bemis says, looking up from the Wallace Stevens first edition he has carefully removed from Green’s shelves. “Hear, hear.” His beard stirs like rabbitbrush in a breeze, and it’s possible that he smiles. Then they’re all chanting, even the Great Dr. Green behind his desk, almost as if they’re genuinely happy about her promotion, or, to be fair, even care one way or the other.

“Hear, hear.”

“Congratulations, Jalena. Tenured Professor Jalena Russell.”

“Tenured Full Professor Jalena Russell.”

“One of us!” Rogan and Frazee chant. Rogan sticks out a hand for a shake, but Frazee engulfs Jalena in a jangling hug that almost feels natural, for a second. At least, it does to Jalena, who has never exactly been a natural hugger herself.

Then Rogan joins in the embrace, which just seems strange, awkward, until finally, over Jalena’s head, Rogan and Frazee kiss. Jalena can feel their elbows and hips and breasts, as well as Rogan’s rubber mask, and wants to squirm free. At the bookshelves, Bemis lowers his gaze back to his beloved Stevens. Behind the desk, meanwhile, Green leans his formidably flabby self forward over his dog-eared Faulkners like the molting mushroom he is and grunts his disgust. Instantly, Rogan and Frazee release Jalena, join hands, and spin toward him. Rogan clamps a palm on Frazee’s ass atop her tricolored skirt. Frazee smiles, and Rogan glares through the eyes of her mask.

“You’re both going to hell,” Green murmurs, with no heat, as though reciting a line.

“And you can’t come,” Frazee says.

At the window, Darlene Parrott lets the curtain settle and leans her short, blond hair against the wall. Her face is so pallid and tired, she looks like an old, framed portrait of herself. For Halloween, atop her usual gray sweater and darker gray woolen ankle scraper, she has tied a yellow scarf with cat faces on it. She pushes her pince-nez up her nose.

“It’s still snowing,” she murmurs.

“And it’s going to snow,” Bemis says — almost sings — and the rest of them groan.

Green slaps his palms on his desk. “Bemis, if you insist on quoting Mr. Stevens and his blackbirds at us, you’re going to have to put my book back where you found it.”

“Philistines,” Bemis mutters. “And there’s only one goddamn blackbird.”

Even Parrott lets a smile — or a reflection of everyone else’s smiles — flicker on her pale face.

“Any kids out there yet, Darlene?” Frazee calls, snatching the gin bottle out of Bemis’s hand. She pours Jalena some in one of Green’s moose-head shot glasses.

Parrott leans between the curtains again, peering down at the entrance to the Humanities building, where the MFA students none of them teach — this being the Lit and Comp end of the hall, where the rhetoricians and studiers of story lurk in their quieter offices, as far as they can get from the tellers of story — have constructed their contribution to the annual Clarkston, Montana festival of haunted houses. All they’ve managed is a thatched hut this year, draped in black crepe paper and black paint. Inside, grad students in black sweatshirts and face paint have tucked themselves among the shadows, waiting to slither up from the floors or climb down off the walls, whisper in a little kid’s ear, maybe cop a feel from a classmate.

Before she came to Clarkston, Jalena had heard tales of this day in this place, had been told it was a reason for staying, cause for celebration that she’d won her first tenure-track posting on the northern plains instead of the Texas Panhandle or southern Indiana industrial wasteland. But her Montana Halloweens have proven a disappointment, to the town even more than to her, as far as she can tell. There are fewer haunted houses every fall, more evangelical Christian postings decrying the holiday. More frat parties where obsessively ripped boys in Tarzan loincloths swing out of their reeking rooms to sweep up drunk coeds in nurse or hot-witch costumes.

“Fewer little ones every year,” Parrott says, the tenor of her voice even flatter and sadder than the one she uses in conversation or class. “Where do they go?”

“Have Stanton’s grandkids been by, at least?” says Green, through a mouthful of the Saltines he keeps next to his gin in the bottom drawer of his desk. According to Frazee, he’s also got a box of photographs in there that he has never let any of them see. There are no pictures on his desk or the walls.

“Dean Emeritus Stanton?” Jalena asks.

When Frazee laughs, her arms jangle, and her gypsy scarves ripple atop her dark curls like light on a night river. She is the happiest compositionist Jalena has ever met.

“Don’t look so shocked, Professor Russell. The man was Halloween hardcore.”

“I heard he hates this place.”

Bemis stirs enough to reclaim his gin bottle. “He hates the university. The glorified vocational school our budget cuts have left us with. Not Clarkston.”

“Clarkston, too,” says Green, cracker chunks spilling down and into his flannel shirt front. “Now, anyway. Without the university, what’s to like about Clarkston?”

Frazee puts an arm around Jalena’s waist, the gesture casual and easy, and again, Jalena wonders how and where and when people learn to do that.

“Back in the day?” Frazee says. “When the whole town did this holiday right? So long ago that Dean Emeritus Stanton could still bend down with both knees? He and his wife constructed this huge maze every year in their front yard.”

“Made of straw.” Rogan sounds angry, as usual, though she appears to be smiling under the mask. “A crawling maze. I used to go through it scared to death.”

“It was full of centipedes and spiders. Real ones.”

“I hate spiders,” says Jalena.

Frazee just smiles wider, which seems wrong, somehow, not like her, though Jalena couldn’t have said why.

“Yeah, well, I told you. Hardcore.”

It’s Green, this year, who does the honors, bangs his glass down on his desk and splashes gin all over his Faulkners. His white, flabby wrists squeeze through the buttoned cuffs of his shirt like toothpaste through crumpled tubes.

“To David,” he says, “wherever he is.”

“To David,” the rest of them echo, the rhythm precise, practiced, instinctive, even Rogan answering right on cue, though she generally makes it a point of honor to respond to nothing else Green ever says.

It’s like the Lit and Comp program fight song, Jalena thinks, even as she raises her glass along with them, feels her mouth move over the name of this person she knows nothing about except that he vanished, years ago.

“To David,” Parrott says, just after the rest. Then they’re all knocking back gin, except Frazee, who can no longer drink. She sips her seltzer, lets the smile fade off her face.

“Wherever he is,” she says.

“Such beautiful inflections,” Jalena says, quietly. “Or are they innuendoes?”

“Hey, hey!” Bemis perks up, refilling his glass just so he can tip it at her. “No wonder we gave you tenure. I told you you’d come around to Wallace Stevens. I could tell the moment we hired you that you were a woman of taste.”

At the desk, Green half groans, half burps, like a bullfrog. “Lord Christ. That’s all we need. Our Africanist’s ways of looking at a blackbird.”

“One of us,” Frazee starts again, adding a halfhearted zombie arm wave, and stops. “Very possibly the last of us.”

That is all too true, Jalena knows. For once, EMU — Great Plains seems determined to get ahead of an educational movement: the one to end tenure. And that makes it all the more likely that for better or worse, and for the foreseeable future, she’s staying here, now. One of them: these people she’d been sure would finally be her people. Her friends, colleagues. Lovers, maybe. What, in any English department she’d ever seen or been part of, had led her to believe that?

“Wait, that’s right,” she says abruptly, and puts down her glass. The gin tastes foul in her mouth, burnt cinnamon over old flowers. “I’m tenured. I’m official. And that means—”

“That you’re officially fucked,” Rogan mutters. Her mask flutters with the force of her breath.

“—that you have to tell me,” Jalena finishes.

For a second, they look baffled.

“The David Roemer story,” she reminds them. “You told me, on my very first Halloween here, that when and if I got tenured, you’d. ”

What stops her? Not the look on any of their faces, but the way they exchange the look, passing it around just ahead of her gaze like something they’re hiding behind their backs.

“She’s right,” Rogan finally says.

“She is,” Green agrees.

Green and Rogan. agreeing?

But Frazee steps forward, bracelets jingling, right to Jalena’s side. As though shielding her?

“Jalena neither wants nor needs to hear that story. Ever.”

“Don’t speak for me,” Jalena can’t keep from snapping, despite the fact that she trusts Frazee, or almost does. “And yes I do.”

“You don’t,” says Parrott.

Amazingly, Bemis has come off the wall, and he’s almost steady on his feet. His smirk seems to be for Frazee, though he doesn’t quite look at her. “Of course she does, Alexa. Who wouldn’t, after all?” Already, he’s shrugging into his overcoat, the only one Jalena has ever seen him wear, with the lining leaning out of the filthy green fabric as though peering between buttons. “It’s time, after all. We did promise.”

“Goddamn it,” says Frazee, “this isn’t funny.”

“We’ll take my truck,” says Bemis, pulling on gloves, and he’s gone from the office.

With startling speed — so quickly that Jalena hardly has time to process that it’s happening — they’ve all donned their coats and scarves and moved across the English hallway, down the linoleum steps under the bare-bulb lights, and out onto the quad. Her colleagues have formed a sort of phalanx around her, are hustling her into the night, which is warm for the end of October. Snow swirls around their uncovered heads but vanishes before it hits the ground. Firefly snow. They pass the haunted MFA hut. Inside it, some kid — a little girl, judging by the voice, too young to be in there, and Jalena wonders what her parents could be thinking? — lets out a shriek, then a laugh. The grass all over campus is dead and brittle from yet another summer of lots of lightning and no rain, and it crackles under Jalena’s boots. The buildings are utilitarian concrete blocks, haphazard in their very occasional architectural filigrees — Doric columns outside Business-Econ, a flashing light sculpture by the student union — and about as college classic as parking garages. And yet, this place feels closer to home than anywhere she has lived since she left South Carolina for college. Maybe anywhere, ever.

Her colleagues are moving with surprising speed; even Green huffs along behind, like a rhino escaped from its pen.

“Hey,” Jalena says, trying a laugh.

“Come on.” Frazee has Jalena by the arm. “Let’s get this over with. Maybe we need this.”

Jalena doesn’t know what this is, exactly, or who we are, for that matter. And she trusts Frazee less than she thought, doesn’t like everyone closed around her, sweeping her along. The Great Plains moon blazes too bright, as usual, and too low on the horizon, like a searchlight on a prison tower. Apropos of nothing, she thinks of her drunken mother — dead before Jalena even got the scholarship that freed her from the Piedmont — hanging sheets outside their glorified shack. Up on the splintering, nail-spiked wooden boards that pass for a porch sits Jalena’s drunken, unemployed ex-poet father, who will die in a drunken car wreck hours before he was meant to hop the train Jalena had paid for to come see her graduate magna cum laude. He’s clicking discarded oyster shells in time to the Jessie Mae Hemphill groove on his one-speaker boom box. She can hear that groove, still, and those clicking shells. In a way, she supposes she misses those sounds. It has never before occurred to her that she could miss one single thing about South Carolina.

Not until they’re all the way across the quad and have reached the edge of East A Faculty Lot do Parrott and Rogan step aside and allow Jalena to see where they’re going. Bemis has already reached his truck and opened the back of the bed. In disbelief, Jalena watches Parrott—Doctor Darlene Parrott, ten-petal evening star cultivator, closet Rex Stout fanatic, sound-poet scholar, poster professor for academic spinsterhood — crawl right up and settle against the steel siding and hunch into her coat. Her thin, birdlike face disappears into her cat scarf too quickly for Jalena to see if she’s smiling.

“You’re kidding. Right? We’re riding in that?”

“Like the football team,” Frazee says. “Cruising the strip.”

“Like the whole badass front line.” Rogan’s whoop sounds almost strangled through the mask. She half helps, half drags Jalena up into the bed.

Turning, wondering vaguely how they’re going to manage, Jalena starts to offer Green her hand. But of course, Green won’t be riding back here; he’s already clambering up in the cab next to Bemis.

Eastern Montana. Where even academic men think they’re men.

The motor starts, the metal bed vibrating beneath Jalena’s feet. Her colleagues have already settled in their spots, so quickly that Jalena wonders if they’ve actually done this before.

“Better sit,” Frazee says, grabs Jalena’s wrist, and tugs her down.

Then the truck judders out of the lot, off campus onto West Main. The wind — feeling much less warm, downright freezing once they’re in motion — roars over the top of the cab and through them. All at once, Jalena breaks into a laugh. A real laugh, one she hasn’t intended or considered first.

“I haven’t done this since I was. ” she starts. Then she grins. “I’ve never done this.”

She expects Frazee to grin back. But Frazee, seated to Jalena’s right, only shivers and nods. Parrott, on Jalena’s left, actually pats her gloved hand like a grandmother or a nurse.

As they hit the center of town, Bemis slows. The truck crawls past the Beast of Burden Pub, which serves the town’s only microbrew, and the Prairie Dawg, which is just a flat-out, get-drunk bar. Then the Double Ice sundae stand by the train station. During Jalena’s first Halloweens here, every one of those places was packed from twilight on with screaming, costumed revelers fresh from haunted houses or gearing up for the darker, scarier late-night haunted houses. Everyone telling stories. Shouting and laughing. And there are still people out tonight. Some. The church crews have strung themselves out on either side of Highbottom Road like a picket line, passing fliers to drunk college kids, waving signs. As Bemis’s truck rumbles past, one sweet-faced, wrinkled old man holds his picket high so Jalena can read it.

“And you will know what Fear is. ” There’s a verse number, too, though Jalena doesn’t catch it, and she doesn’t recognize the quotation.

North of the church crowd, she sees the usual clusters of drunken college kids, though if anything, they seem more subdued than on ordinary football Saturday nights, clumped around streetlamps, holding out hands or tongues for the snow as it evaporates around or on them. There are very few families. The oversized CLARKSTON CENTER PEDESTRIAN DISTRICT: 25 mph STRICTLY ENFORCED sign outside the Prairie Dawg has been shot full of holes. Red ribbons dribble from the holes, as though the sign is bleeding, or licking the air.

“Okay, that’s cute,” Jalena says. “I guess.”

Then she catches sight of Leo Hutchinson under a streetlight. Leo is her favorite current grad student. Even tonight, he’s wearing the white shirt and tie he dons for every single day of class, like no other boy from the Montana Hi-Line. It makes complete sense to Jalena. Somehow, Leo survived growing up black and small and scholarly and not gay — it would have been easier for everyone, more comprehensible, if he were—and escaped the Hi-Line. Of course he would want to remind himself, every day, that he was no longer there.

But now, Leo gapes, stares, as his entire doctoral advisory team judders past, shivering together in the bed of a pickup. The moment is mad, magical.

“You know,” Jalena blurts, “I kind of love this.” She feels a burst of gratitude as startling and cold as the wind whipping by. And it isn’t just gratitude; she’s also amazed. I’m here, she thinks. I’m tenured, and I’m staying. And I’m on an adventure.

“God, David loved this,” Parrott murmurs, gesturing at the street or the air.

The truck turns, and just like that, Highbottom is gone, and everything and everyone left that makes Clarkston a unique place disappears along with it. They rumble down the frontage road that parallels the freeway, past the brand-new Walmart and the Costco and the used-truck lots toward the edge of town.

“David Roemer,” Frazee says.

“That fucking moron,” says Rogan, but not the way she would have uttered those words about Green. Or to Green, for that matter.

Almost like she misses the guy?

“We can still stop, you know,” Frazee says, and Jalena turns to find her looking at her hands, pushing rings up and down her long, thin fingers, which still twitch, sometimes, years after Frazee claims she last had an actual drink. “I can make Bill stop and let you out. He’ll listen to me. There’s no reason for this, except his need to. ”

Her voice trails away. Jalena shudders as the wind whistles down the throat of her jacket and through her suddenly insufficient sweater. She glances at Parrott, who just looks entranced by the moon, and shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’m. excited, right? Or, I should know about this, anyway? Shouldn’t I, if I’m staying here? Since I am, I mean? You all seem to—”

“He came many years ago,” Parrott murmurs, in her classroom voice. “David Roemer. When we were, all of us, young, or younger.”

Jalena is surprised that she can hear Parrott so clearly over the wind. She also understands, now, why students sometimes compare her voice to a ceiling fan. There is something insistent, and mournful, and soothing, in Darlene Parrott’s sort of quiet.

“And pretty early in his time with us, he got word of our favorite local legend. The Dark Carnival.”

“Mr. Dark’s Carnival,” Rogan corrects. Her mask flaps, and she yanks it flat.

“I’ve never liked that ‘Mr.,’ ” Parrott hums. “It’s out of rhythm.”

“But it’s what it was called. You can’t just change it because—”

“I can.” Parrott’s smile is sudden, private. “I teach poetry.”

Rogan grunts, and Parrott continues.

“But David. He was a historian through and through. At least back then. And like any good academic, he set out to prove, once and for all, that Clarkston, Montana’s favorite story was just that: a story. Not a real thing. And then, one terrible, frigid Halloween night — in his tenure year, dear, same as you — his lover—”

“Meaning, the grad student he was fucking,” Rogan snaps.

Frazee clucks at her, reaches across the truck bed, grabs one of Rogan’s hands, and strokes it, as though comforting a skittish cat.

“He loved her,” Frazee says. “I don’t even think he realized how much.”

“He loved her,” Parrott says.

“Okay, okay.” Rogan’s eyes flash under the eye holes as the rubber skin ripples against her face.

“For Christ’s sake, take that thing off,” says Frazee, still stroking her hand.

Rogan does. Her own face, underneath, is pale but also blotched red, like a newborn’s. She pats the spikes in her hair, looks down at Frazee’s hand, and holds on.

“It’s warmer in the mask,” she says.

“On that fateful night,” Parrott drones on, “David’s lover led him out of town, onto the prairie.”

“That’s not what happened,” Rogan interrupts again. “That’s not how I heard it. I heard he found tickets at—”

“Sssh,” Frazee quiets her. She quiets.

“And far out of town, way out in the frozen prairie grass, David Roemer finally found the Dark Carnival. Or, his Dark Carnival, anyway. And he came back changed.”

“Only it wasn’t the Carnival that did that,” Frazee tells Jalena, but she’s not interrupting, not like Rogan. Her voice, in fact, is a substantially muted version of her usual, laughing trumpet blast, as though she’s harmonizing around Parrott’s melody. “That was also the night his lover died, remember. That’s what changed him.”

“One of the things,” Parrott says.

The two of them exchange that look again, their secret look. And again, Jalena experiences unspecified misgivings. Maybe Frazee is right, and she really doesn’t want in on this particular secret handshake.

“How did the lover die?” Jalena asks.

“She was murdered,” says Frazee.

“Shot,” says Rogan.

“By Roemer?”

“Listen,” Frazee says.

For a moment, Jalena thinks Frazee might take her hand, and almost wishes she would. But Frazee doesn’t. The truck turns down a wooded side street. The surrounding trees mercifully cut the wind. Instantly, the occasional noise from the freeway fades. There are small, bungalow-style A-frames and ranch homes tucked back under poplar trees on tiny lots. The houses have to be half a century old, maybe more, and yet they look temporary as trailer homes, somehow. A fluke of prairie town life Jalena still hasn’t adjusted to.

Parrott has gone right on talking. “At the funeral, David gave the eulogy. He talked only about his lover’s life. He said nothing about the Carnival. Not there. Not until the very end. And then — when he was just standing at the front of the Methodist church on Highbottom, quietly crying — he suddenly held up a packet of folded papers he’d withdrawn from his pocket. ‘I loved you, Kate,’ he said.”

“ ‘I love you, still,’ ” Frazee echoes, as though this were a poem, or a childhood lullaby they all know.

“ ‘I will follow,’ ” Rogan finishes. Her participation surprises Jalena, even before she looks up and sees tears in Rogan’s angry blue eyes.

“And when they closed the casket,” Parrott continues, “David placed those papers inside with her.”

“What were they?” Jalena asks, and now she’s surprised by the sound of her own voice: defensive, as usual, but softer, too. Or younger?

“That’s just it. No one knew. Not then. But they obviously meant something to David. Because three days after the burial, he—”

“Oh, shit, what’s he doing?” Frazee snaps, head jerking up as though she’s only just noticed that they’ve turned off the frontage road. Clambering over Jalena’s legs, shoving bracelets up her arms under her coat, she bangs on the back of the cab. “Where are you going, Bill? You’re not going there. Stop!”

But when the pickup does stop, at the bottom of a leaf-littered lawn strewn with dead dandelions and rusting toy Tonka trucks tipped on their sides in the too-long grass, Frazee leaps from the bed before Bemis has even cut the motor. He starts to open his door, and she shoves it shut and glares through the window at him.

“Bill, no,” she says. “Why? Why bring any of this up for her?”

It’s the way she says it, not what she says, that finally reveals the source of one of the rip currents Jalena has always sensed running through the EMU — GP English department, and never understood. Frazee and Bemis — alcoholics, student-centered teachers first instead of researchers, amazed modernists who still love the language like the high school book nerds they must have been — have always seemed such natural allies. And aren’t.

Because they’d been married, once. Bemis was the husband Frazee had left for Rogan. Of course he was.

I am a baby, Jalena thinks, with the same stab of self-doubt that always accompanies that thought. At thirty-six. I have a doctorate, a tenured position I spent twenty years earning, and no functioning relationships of consequence. I know and understand nothing.

Somehow, Bemis has slipped from the truck. He eases Frazee back into the leaves, which close over her feet like the dark surface of a winter lake. “It just seems like we should ask, at least,” he slurs. Gently. Almost lovingly. “Don’t you think? Since we’re really going out there.”

“Why are we going out there, Bill?”

For a moment, they stay frozen, reminding Jalena of automated figures on some mechanical tower clock. His hands on her wrists, her feet in the leaves, dark hair sneaking out the side of her scarf to fly loose in the late-fall wind. Their bodies are limned in orange from the candlelit jack-o’-lanterns lining the driveway of the little wooden A-frame across the street. They stand that way long enough that Jalena thinks he isn’t going to answer, and then he does.

“I guess I still think we owe him. Don’t you?”

He lets go and starts across the yard. Frazee lets him.

A few houses down the block, where the trees lean closer over the asphalt and the houses seem to stir on their dark lawns like tumbleweeds about to tear loose, Jalena sees a group of trick-or-treaters. There are a few parents, maybe half a dozen kids. They hurry up a driveway, through tree shadows onto a lit porch. Jalena can hear the doorbell, can see the kids’ mouths moving. But their voices stay so hushed, Jalena can barely hear their trick or treats. It’s as though they are part of that mechanical clock, too. Automated, and out on their timed, yearly rounds. Leaving the house, they pause in the middle of the street and huddle, watching the truck, waiting for them to leave. As though Jalena’s little group might pose a threat. The thought is almost funny. The Lit and Comp Crew, escaped from their university tower, out to terrorize the townsfolk on this one, terrible night.

It would be funny, Jalena thinks, if even one of her colleagues were laughing. But Parrott and Rogan are staring across each other into opposite corners of the yard they’ve parked beside. Green is a motionless, bullfrog-shaped hump in the front seat. And Frazee is still ankle deep in leaves, watching Bemis clamber up the dark steps, rap on the door, ring the bell of this particular house, which has no jack-o’-lanterns on its porch, and no lights inside or out. He picks a piece of stuck something off the screen and stares at it, then returns, slowly, across the grass, looking down at what he’s taken. As he passes Frazee, he hands it to her, and Jalena gets a glimpse. A little torn, pink piece of stiff paper.

“What’s it say?” Jalena asks when Frazee just stands there, looking down.

“Mit ne,” Frazee murmurs. She crumples the paper in her hand and stuffs it in her pocket.

“Is that some kind of—”

“Admit One.” Frazee ignores Rogan’s offered hand, clambers up, and resumes her seat next to Jalena. “Before it got ripped—used, presumably — it said Admit One.”

“To the Carnival?” Parrott gasps. Her gloved hand dives into Frazee’s pocket, pulls out the ticket. But Frazee laughs, grimly, even before Parrott smoothes the ticket in her palm.

“To the Eastlake Plaza Cineplex 6, I think. Taken 2. 9:45 showing.”

Parrott stares at the ticket, then up at Frazee. “Why was it stuck to the door?”

Frazee shrugs. “Because Maddy Roemer is starting a collection? Because she sensed we might show up, and thought she’d have a little fun?”

“Because she’s a clever, nasty little biker bitch?” Rogan says. Angrily.

Or. no. protectively?

“How about because she pulled it out of her pocket accidentally when she was getting her keys to get back in her house? What do you think about that?”

“Maddy Roemer?” Jalena asks. “He had a wife, your history professor? Was this while he had his grad student lover?”

“Sister. Maddy is his sister.”

“And she owes you,” Rogan says, in that same, adamant tone, as the engine starts up.

Frazee just looks at her hands, or the bed of the truck. “Yeah,” she says.

The truck has completed its U-turn and returned to the frontage road. The wind blasts over them again. And Rogan, Jalena sees, has tears in her eyes.

“Have you seen her, Alexa? Since, I mean?”

“Seen her,” says Frazee.

“Spoken to her?”

“To say what?”

Then all of them, even Parrott, go silent for a while. The new Walmart flashes past, closed but all lit up. Then the airport. Atop the freight terminal, billowing and flapping as the wind buffets and blows through and then abandons it, a gigantic, black, inflatable Halloween something tilts into the night, leaning almost off the roof over the road. At first, Jalena thinks it’s some sort of giant bat or a Godzilla. But it turns out to be. actually, she doesn’t know what it is. A shape, in an inflatable cowl. Like one of those Harry Potter dementors, if that’s what they’re called. Like a monster costume with the monster sucked out of it, rooted to the terminal roof like a flag.

They all stare at it. Rogan, the closest to it, actually shrinks away. “That’s new,” she says.

Then they’re past the last Clarkston buildings, veering away from the freeway onto the local access road that cuts through the plain, following the feed trucks and the moonlight west toward the far-off mountains.

“Those, too,” Frazee mutters a minute or two later, as they rocket by the second, then the third of the scarecrows, propped up on fence-post crosses next to each passing speed limit sign. Their faces are identical: white circular pillows with stitched black Xs for eyes, and no other features except clown noses. Their straw forms have been stuffed into matching overalls and striped flannel shirts that look too soft and comfortable to be work shirts.

Pajama tops? Jalena wonders, as yet another scarecrow appears in front of and then vanishes behind them, its stitched-shut gaze aimed across the road, out at the prairie. Not at them. Surely not.

“Wow,” she says, trying to pull her scarf tighter against her neck without unfolding her hands from across her chest. “Are those meant to be funny?”

Through the window of the cab, she can see Bemis and Green noting the scarecrows, too. Their heads turn sideways in time, then away in time, back toward the unspooling road ahead.

“Maybe we should go home,” Frazee half whispers.

“Three days after the burial,” Parrott resumes, as though someone has flipped a switch and triggered her again. “That’s when it really started. Alexa, you were there, weren’t you? The day David Roemer came back to work?”

“I was there,” Frazee says. Jalena expects her to pick up the story, but she doesn’t. Parrott continues.

“He came in completely covered, hair to shoe soles, in dirt. And he was waving his papers around. Those papers. You understand?”

Jalena doesn’t, at first, and then does. Though she thinks she must be wrong. “Not the ones he—”

“Yep. Those,” says Rogan.

“The ones he’d buried with his lover,” says Parrott.

“It was all pretty Dante Rossetti,” Frazee says, and Rogan snorts.

“Or Burke and Hare.”

“He showed them to us. He was already more at home with us, in the English hallway, than the people in his own department. Or maybe he just thought we were less likely to label him insane.”

“Yeah,” says Rogan, “because he figured we already were.”

“What were they?” Jalena asks. “The papers.”

“His handwritten list,” Parrott says, as yet another clown-nosed scarecrow — and another — flashes past. They look less pinned to than draped over their posts, like neighboring ranchers calling to each other across the road. Creatures of the plains.

“Handwritten,” Jalena feels herself murmur, in Parrott’s cadence.

“The list he’d compiled on the night he found the Carnival. The night his lover died. A list of everyone he was absolutely certain had been there, or claimed to have been. Not just on that specific night in that particular place, either. He’d listed everyone he’d ever heard of or talked to, in all his time in Montana, who claimed to know something about it. Mr. Dark’s Carnival, you see, it comes and goes. Moves around. That’s always been the story, anyway. ‘This is my life’s work, now,’ he told us. ‘I’m going to find them all. Every single person who’s ever so much as seen that place. And then I’m going to find the Carnival. Because that’s where I’ll find her.’ ”

“Her? Her who?”

“Ah, yes. Forgot to mention that part, didn’t you, Darlene?” says Frazee. She looks up at Jalena, her teeth chattering behind her scarf. The expression in her eyes is not friendly. And for the second time since her colleagues spirited her out of Green’s office, Jalena wonders if she’s being had. Or hazed. Or worse.

“What part?” she says.

“Just one crucial little detail. David Roemer’s murdered lover? Well, it turns out — we learned this days afterward — that she’d been killed Halloween afternoon. Roughly six hours before David claimed to have driven with her to Mr. Dark’s Carnival, and then left her there.”

“What? Are you telling me he killed her?”

“I didn’t say that. When did I say that? In fact, no one, as far as I know, has ever said that. She was killed around two o’clock, apparently, while he was still in class.”

“And he loved her,” Parrott adds.

Jalena doesn’t know how to answer or what to say. She waits for Frazee to grin, for Rogan to burst out laughing and yell trick or treat or one of us.

But all Frazee says is, “Right. Now that that’s straightened out. Carry on, Darlene.” And she goes back to burying her face in her collar and looking at her hands as the truck plunges deeper into the prairie night.

“Find the Carnival. Prove to himself what he’d seen. Find his lover. That’s what David Roemer set out to do. He was gone a lot, after that. He did show up at school, sometimes, to teach his classes. Actually, he showed up for most of his classes, at least at first. But only because most of the people on his list — even the ones he managed to find — refused to talk to him. More than one threatened to get a restraining order if he didn’t stop phoning or appearing on their doorsteps. More than a few called the university to complain. The History department issued him a series of reprimands, then official warnings. Then they held a panel — Green was asked to moderate, in order to ensure the least possible departmental shenanigans, because it turns out the History people are even more petty to each other than we are.”

“Which you wouldn’t think possible, unless you’d seen them in action,” Rogan mutters. “Green. Jesus.”

“The panel met for three days, heard testimony, and conducted peer review of David’s pile of disorganized, largely incomprehensible notes, which he claimed was going to form the core of the most revelatory volume of eastern Montana history ever written. In the end, they declared Professor Roemer’s entire course of research invalid. They recommended that he seek psychological help. They directed him to propose new projects and show evidence of progress on them immediately. And they threatened to strip him of his tenure.”

“Can they do that?”

“We’ll never know. Because David quit, right there at the end of the panel meeting. He walked out of the room, out of the History hallway, straight off of campus. He never even went back to his office. He just disappeared. And three years passed.”

“Why are we slowing?” Rogan says abruptly. And then, “Shit.”

She points straight over Jalena’s shoulder. And right as she does, Jalena feels it, feels fingers pressing into the shoulders of her coat, only they’re too soft, straw fingers. The clown-faced wind whispers at her ear, and she whirls.

But she sees nothing. Just grass, endless, green-black in the moonlight, and rolling. The truck glides to a stop on the shoulder of the road, but Bemis doesn’t turn off the motor.

Several seconds pass before Jalena can shake off the feel of those fingers, the whispered words she hadn’t quite caught at her ear. She starts to shake her head, try a laugh, just to see if that feels right, and stops when she sees the lights.

A cluster of them, flashing all together maybe a foot above the grass, way off to her left. Another cluster flashes to her right, and winks out. Then more, even closer to the ground this time, almost in the grass, and also closer to the truck. They are all over the plain, she realizes. All around them. Flaring, blinking out.

“Ant firecrackers?” she finally says.

“Fireflies?” mutters Parrott.

“At the end of October?” snaps Rogan. “This long after dusk?”

“Too many,” says Frazee, which is silly, ridiculous, but also feels right.

There are too many. The lights shooting everywhere Jalena looks, in no discernible pattern, as though the whole prairie is sparking. The sparks too sudden and violent for firefly light, as though the wind itself is striking flint in the air.

And there’s a sound, too. At first, Jalena takes it for lightning sizzle, or downed power line, but there aren’t power lines she can see, and anyway, the sound is too soft, too gentle, could almost be grass waving, except this grass isn’t long enough to wave.

Frazee bangs her flat palm against the cabin’s back window. “You seeing this?”

“No,” Green barks. “We stopped to toke up.”

“You’re an ass, Green.”

But Green isn’t listening. He’s staring into the prairie and clutching Bemis’s wrist.

“There,” he says. “Bemis, you had to have—”

“Nope,” Bemis says, and shakes his arm free. “I see fireflies.”

“Fireflies my fat ass,” Green snarls.

“Well, you got that right, anyway,” mutters Rogan, and again, Jalena considers laughing, and then realizes that Green isn’t talking about the lights.

He has seen something else, or thinks he has. “She was right there.” He points straight out from the truck into the prairie.

She?

This time, Frazee only taps the window with her fingers. “Bill. How much farther, do you think?”

Bemis shrugs and lights a fresh cigarette. It’s the alcohol, Jalena knows — the years and years of it — that makes his hands tremble that way. Only the alcohol. But he keeps watching Green watch the grass. “Not very, I think. It’s been a while.”

“Maybe this is far enough.”

He glances over his shoulder, right into his ex-wife’s face. Another look that Jalena doesn’t recognize or understand passes between them. When Bemis next speaks, his voice has regained its customary bitterness. “Jalena’s tenured, after all. One of us. Part of this story, whether she wants to be or not.”

“Maybe it’s time we had a new story.”

“There are no new stories. Not for me. Just the inescapable rhythm.”

“Oh, Christ, just for once, Bill, talk Bemis. Not Stevens.”

“Fine. Here’s some Bemis: fuck off, Alexa. This is the only story I know how to tell. Thanks to you. How’s that?” He turns away and starts the truck.

Even sitting still, the air has gotten colder. As soon as the truck starts moving, Jalena can feel it shooting up her sleeves, down the throat of her closed coat. This isn’t the winter wind quite yet, she knows, but its herald. The lights in the grass have stopped sparking, or else the truck has passed the place where the lights are. Way out above the prairie, a single crow rides the gusts of breeze like a clump of black ash.

“Three years, he stayed gone,” Parrott says, when they’re moving at full speed again. “No letters. No e-mails. As far as I know, not a single one of us heard from him. His sister, either. And then, on Halloween, right at dusk, as we all gathered in Bemis’s office for the annual toast we’d taken to offering to him, David Roemer came back.”

“He just stuck his head in the door,” Rogan says, “like he’d only popped down to the Butterfly Café on Highbottom for a huckleberry chai.”

“ ‘Found it,’ ” Frazee says, in that recitation tone, again, as though she’s performing a poem, or praying. “That’s what he said.”

“ ‘Found them,’ ” Parrott corrects, even the correction part of the rhythm, as though that, too, got repeated every time they all told this.

And how often, Jalena wonders, have they told this? And to whom?

“He said, ‘them,’ ” Parrott continues. “And then he asked if we’d seen Marco.”

“Marco?” Jalena is listening, but also watching the prairie. Instead of sparking, it’s now sparkling, as though it has dewed over all at once in the last five minutes, the drops catching and scattering the starlight breaking out overhead. The whole prairie glints, the blades of grass silver and stiff and translucent as fingernails.

Fields and fields of fingernails, sticking up out of the ground.

“Marco Roemer. Maddy’s boy. David’s nephew. He was maybe eight, then? Apparently, David had showed up out of nowhere, picked up the kid from soccer practice, and brought him here. I mean, to the university. ‘Just stopped off to grab the rest of my files,’ he said. ‘Say goodbye, Marco.’

“And that was it. Off they went. Leaving us all. ”

“. just sitting there,” Frazee says, so sadly that Jalena takes her eyes off the prairie long enough to check on her. Frazee is crying silently, watching the grass. “Doing fuck-all, as always.”

“Paying him homage,” says Parrott.

“Instead of getting up and helping.”

“Actually,” says Rogan, “after he showed up, we didn’t know what to do except sit around and stare at each other, as usual. And wonder why we all seemed to feel so compelled to retell this story, about some fucked-up fucker even more fucked up than the rest of us.”

“Someone actually capable of living his life, you mean,” Parrott says. “Someone capable of real love.”

“Ah. Right. The digging-up-graves real love. The lit professor’s ideal. The made-up, fucked-up kind.”

This time, Frazee doesn’t take Rogan’s hand or even turn around. And that’s why Rogan is so angry, Jalena understands abruptly. She’s hurt, and she’s scared, because Frazee is so far away from her.

Then she thinks, I am actually seeing. I see.

“We were all still in our places,” says Parrott, “when Maddy Roemer burst through the door. ‘He’s got Marco,’ she said.”

“ ‘He’s going to kill Marco,’ ” murmurs Frazee.

Dazed by the lights on the prairie, the silver grass, the stars blooming in the blackness like thousands of parachutes opening all at once, an invading army gliding earthward, Jalena thinks she has misheard. “What?”

“ ‘He’s got my son,’ ” says Parrott, with a waver clearly meant to replicate Maddy Roemer’s. “ ‘He’s gone all the way batshit. He says he’s found them. The Carnival. He says they’re all dead.’ ”

Jalena stirs, alarmed. “What? Who? I don’t—”

“ ‘Murdered. All of them. Or something. They’re here, they’re back, and he thinks he’s gone to find Kate. And to do that — to find them — I think he’s going to kill Marco. Oh my God, he’s going to kill my son.’ ”

“To lure the Carnival — the murdered dead — to him,” Frazee explains. As though that explained anything. “Or get himself invited. Something like that.”

“ ‘He’s going to kill Marco,’ ” Parrott says again. In Maddy Roemer’s voice. “ ‘You’re his friends, aren’t you? Help me.’ ”

“We were all on our feet by that point,” says Frazee, flat toned. She still has tears in her eyes, and her hair whips out from under the scarves as the truck plunges forward and still more stars blossom all around them. She is speaking through her scarf, her coat collar, her chattering teeth. “Because the thing is, Jalena. we didn’t understand what she was saying, exactly. We still don’t, to be honest. But we knew she was right.”

“Right? Right? About what? That. that this Carnival was full of dead people?”

“That he was going to kill Marco. Kill his nephew. We all. you could just see it in him.”

“So there we all were,” Parrott says. “Galvanized at last. Ready to help. Because we all, well, we loved David.”

“Or we loved what happened to him,” says Frazee.

Across the truck, Rogan nods furiously, and for once, she’s the one who reaches out, grabs Frazee’s hand. “That’s the truth. That’s exactly right. We loved talking about David.”

“This part was almost funny,” says Parrott, though she doesn’t sound as though she thinks it was funny. “We realized that not a single one of us had any idea what to do next. Maddy didn’t know where he’d gone, understand, just that he’d taken the boy. All that scholarship in the room, and not a single one of us could figure out how to research a moment we were actually in.”

“How to engage life as it flies by,” Frazee says.

Parrott drones on. “I can’t remember whose idea it finally was—”

“Mine,” Rogan snaps. “It was mine.”

For the first time since the lights appeared in the grass, Frazee looks up and meets her partner’s glare. A smile — the ghost of one — flickers on her face, under the scarf. “It was yours.”

“Facebook,” Rogan says. “All the kids were doing it. So many that even we’d heard about it.”

“Once we were there, on the site, it didn’t take long,” Parrott says. “We. not Googled. There wasn’t Google, was there? What was the verb?”

“Who cares? How about ‘searched’?”

“Okay, yes, Dr. Rogan, fine. Just trying to be precise. We searched. We tried ‘carnival.’ We tried ‘dead people.’ And then we just typed in its name. ‘Mr. Dark’s Carnival.’ And there it was.”

“A single mention,” Frazee says. “On one user page.”

“Mr. Judgeandjury. Born 1881. Two friends, neither of whom any of us knew. One post, zero likes.”

“What was the post?”

“Numbers. Just numbers. N E 27 07 M 12. Or something very close to that.”

“None of us had any idea what those were, obviously. But Maddy Roemer was smart as hell. Even smarter than her brother, I think.”

“GPS coordinates?” Jalena says, and Rogan takes her eyes off Frazee long enough to look right at her, for once.

“Impressive,” she says.

It’s the surprise in Rogan’s voice that rankles Jalena, and also reminds her, again, that all this is for her: a performance, unless it really is a hazing, which it really might be. The words spill from her mouth before she can catch them.

“Africanist smart. Smart African, kemosabe.”

Instead of flaring up, spitting back, or blushing in embarrassment, Rogan levels her stare and holds Jalena’s eyes until Jalena’s slide sideways.

“I was simply marveling that you recognized the notation. None of us other kinda-smart people did. Of course, it was a while ago, now, and those devices weren’t so common.”

“We got down a road atlas,” Parrott says, “then doubled back to the Facebook page to make sure we’d gotten the numbers right. But the post was gone. There was nothing there at all.

“So we just took the numbers we had and went where they led.”

“That drive,” Frazee says suddenly, and not in storytelling rhythm but her everyday cadence. “My God, Darlene. Do you remember that drive?”

The truck, Jalena realizes, has started to slow. It isn’t stopping. But it’s crawling, now. And Green has his face pressed against the passenger-side window like a little boy pulling up to his grandparents’ house on a holiday, with his puffy, weirdly manicured hands poised on the door handle.

“I remember,” says Parrott, though she, too, has turned to stare into the night, over the prairie.

“All that orange light,” says Frazee.

“Was that that year?” Parrott grips the side of the truck, nodding. “It was. You’re right.”

“They—somebody—had slid orange plastic bags over every single streetlight in Clarkston. Also, it had just snowed, remember? The first snow, I think. And the way the wind made those bags flap, so that the light flickered? It was like we were all swimming in jack-o’-lantern light. Like the whole town was a jack-o’-lantern we were floating in.”

“All those people. ” Parrott says.

“You never saw that Clarkston, Jalena. It was already vanishing by the time you came. But my God. There we were following a frantic mother on a motorbike straight out of town, in the hopes of saving her son from her very possibly deranged brother, our former colleague and friend, and we all kept getting distracted by the light. And the houses. All those decked-out houses.”

“All done up in black crepe,” says Parrott.

“Lit skulls in upstairs windows, peeking out of drawn drapes,” Rogan adds.

“Whole flocks of ghosts tethered to the rooftops like. I don’t know. Like goats. Just floating around on whatever held them there.” Frazee is still looking at her gloved hands. She has actually turned her back on the grass, though she keeps glancing over her shoulder. “And then there were the kids, of course. Legions of them. People used to come from hundreds of miles away for Clarkston Halloween. From across the Continental Divide, even. From the Dakotas. They’d drive all the way here just to park somewhere on the outskirts of our town and spend as long as they possibly could wandering from haunted block to haunted block, or crawling through Stanton’s maze to get covered in spiderwebs and then rewarded with those brownies at the end.”

“Oh, my God,” says Rogan. “Stanton’s wife’s brownies. Those butterscotch chunks? Those hazelnuts?”

“Everybody, everywhere, just screaming and laughing.”

“Getting grabbed,” says Parrott.

“Getting laid,” says Rogan.

“Sounds Dionysian.” Jalena watches their faces. None of them are looking at each other. They are looking at their laps, or the grass. Yet again, Jalena feels that murmur of disquiet all over her body. “Sounds made up, to be honest. Like you’re pulling my leg.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” whispers Frazee.

And that’s when Green bursts from the truck, which doesn’t stop and veers suddenly as Bemis shouts, “What the fu—” and the door Green has flung open slams shut behind him. Frazee gets flung sideways into Jalena, and Parrott almost tips over the side before Bemis gets the truck straight, jams on the brakes, and brings them to a stop.

“Green!” Bemis shouts, flinging open his own door and racing around the front of the cab through the headlight beams to stand at the lip of the prairie. Parrott has straightened and stood up, and Frazee has got herself untangled from Jalena and hopped out of the truck bed to the gravel. She and Bemis stand together and watch Green lumber at startling speed, like a grizzly roused from hibernation, up a rise that didn’t even seem to be there a moment ago, down a little depression, the prairie nowhere near as flat as it appeared from the road, not flat at all. Green crests another slope, way out on the plain, already, and then he vanishes into the grass.

“Bill, what the hell?” Frazee asks.

Bemis pulls hard at his beard with a shaking hand. “Fuck if I know. He kept asking, ‘You see that?’ I didn’t see shit. And then he just. ” He waves his other hand at the prairie.

“Hey,” Rogan says, having crawled across the bed and joined Jalena and Parrott. “This is it, right? Is it? The exact same place?”

The glance Bemis aims at her is saturated with years-old contempt and resentment, and somehow makes him look even more exhausted than he usually does. “How would we know that, exactly? It’s grass.”

“How did we know then?” Parrott is climbing over the side of the bed, so awkwardly that both Frazee and Jalena have to help her down. “I don’t remember, do you?”

“The coordinates,” Frazee says.

“Which we may or may not have had right.”

“And Maddy Roemer’s bike, where she dumped it on the shoulder.”

“I think we better. ” Bemis says. With a sigh, and a single glance at his ex-wife and her lover — and without even looking at Jalena — he reaches back into the cab, under Green’s seat, and pulls out a rifle.

“What’s that for?” Frazee asks.

But Bemis just steps off the gravel to go find Green.

For a while, they stand and watch as he picks his way. Rises, descends. The same rises and descents as Green? Jalena isn’t sure. Bemis isn’t either, apparently; he keeps stopping to look around. In a surprisingly short time, he is far out toward the horizon, and those sparks of light have started up again, are shooting up not exactly around him, but too close for Jalena’s comfort. Not that he seems to notice. Bemis stops again, appears to bob in place.

Like a surfer sucked out to sea, Jalena thinks. As though the prairie has an undertow.

Then Bemis, too, slips from sight.

“Hey,” says Parrott.

“I see it,” says Frazee, stepping into the grass.

Jalena’s next move is instinctive, immediate. She loves — and doesn’t at all trust — being out here, in all this nowhere, with these people, who might be the only people on the planet, currently, that she could claim to know. Only living people, she thinks, and squashes that thought as she drops her hands to the cold steel sides of the truck and eases over onto the dirt. The one thing she is certain of is that she is going where Frazee goes. She turns toward the grass.

Then she wonders if that is exactly what they’re all counting on: getting her out there, away from the road, and any semblance of safe haven. So they can finish whatever the hell they’ve planned for her. Make her one of them.

She’s at the very edge of the gravel — the grass lapping at her feet like a lake tide, hitting exactly the same spot on the toes of her boots with each new gust of wind — when Frazee drops to one knee. She’s already fifty yards or more away from them. The grass does not rise up, gets no deeper around her. But Jalena could swear it stills as Frazee reaches into it. Her scarves are blowing, but the grass has gone quiet, which makes Frazee look like a Sioux squaw in a Charlie Russell painting, pulling washing out of a river.

From the grass, Frazee pulls up something striped. Even from this distance, Jalena can see that it’s fabric, and also filthy.

In the truck bed, Rogan has stood, now, too. “What is that? Alexa, come back.”

Frazee turns the fabric in her hands. She’s saying something, but her voice is inaudible.

“It looks like part of a prison uniform,” Jalena calls.

But Frazee shakes her head, lays the fabric neatly back where she found it, and smoothes it on the ground. This time, somehow, Jalena hears her loud and clear. “More like pajama pants. Maybe.” Then her head jerks up. “Bill?” she shouts into the dark. Then she’s up, and she’s running.

“Alexa!” Rogan shouts.

“Wait,” Jalena calls, and gets one foot in the grass before Parrott grabs her around the wrist and yanks her back.

“Listen.” Even now, Parrott speaks in that blank, airy whir. But her fingers grip like handcuffs. “Hear it?”

And for just a second, as she starts to shake loose, Jalena thinks she does. It’s faint, far away, out there where nothing is or at least should be.

“Is that a calliope?” says Parrott.

But Jalena is thinking about South Carolina. County fairs, cotton candy in her hand, a beer in her father’s and his other hand on her shoulder. The sounds out here are those sounds — rides, organ melodies in crackling speakers — but even tinnier. Half-strangled. “Could be an ice cream truck,” she says.

Parrott lets go and lights out in the direction of the sound, which is roughly toward Frazee, but at an angle, and the slope she stumbles down is a different one. Jalena almost calls her back. She feels the ghost of her father’s hand lift. Not that it was ever actually holding or steering or protecting her, anyway, even when it was really there.

“All right, that’s enough,” she says, and steps off the road.

“Don’t,” Rogan barks behind her, and then yells, “Alexa!” again.

“Shut up,” Jalena says. Rogan is either too frightened or playing too frightened to leave the truck, even for her lover.

She takes exactly two steps before the prairie grabs her. Just like that, she’s falling, her hands flying up not just to break the fall but to grab the ground, which is going to open, Jalena screams inside herself, is going to swallow me down, but it doesn’t. It smashes into her palms and mouth and punches her breath from her instead.

And in that single, silent moment — her lungs motionless inside her ringing bones, like empty stalls in an abandoned barn — Jalena hears the grass-waving sound again, and realizes that it isn’t grass at all; it’s whispering. A thousand, million whispering voices, just under her bruised hands, under the tissue-thin veil of earth, calling out to each other. Calling her down.

Just the ground, she snaps, inside her own head, where nothing and no one whispers. She makes herself breathe.

“Jesus, Jalena,” Rogan is calling, one leg over the truck side, though even now she seems reluctant to climb down. To touch this ground. “Are you all right?”

Jalena is still caught in whatever tripped her. Sitting up, she reaches back, edges her foot free, and stares at the single tent stake tilting out of the dirt. A big one, at least a foot and a half long. Strips of ragged orange and red cloth stream from it, as though whatever was here got ripped from its moorings and tumbled away down the grass.

“There really was a carnival,” Jalena says. For a moment, she’s relieved. Because her colleagues — friends? Maybe? — have not been lying or having her on. Then the moon seems to switch on, right overhead, giving her a better look at the stake in the ground, which has been driven not just into the earth but through the skull of a little shrew, or mole. Its skin still on it. A single, half-eaten eye leers up at her.

Scuttling backward, feeling wet dirt soak through the butt of her khakis, Jalena stares at that eye, can’t seem to break gazes with it, and even after she does, she can see it in front of her face. She blinks furiously, jams her fingers into her closed lids, and pushes, as though she could shove that poor thing’s face out the back of her brain.

When she opens her own eyes again, Rogan isn’t looking at her anymore. She’s looking at the plains. And her mouth has come open. Whirling, Jalena looks, too, and sees nothing. Just the grass rolling with the landscape, utterly still atop it.

She sees nothing.

Sees nothing.

“Wait,” she says. “Where is everybody?”

Way out on the plain, Frazee screams.

Instantly, Rogan is off the truck bed, sprinting into the grass, and Jalena is up and running, too, but not following. Rogan’s trajectory is wrong, she thinks, she’s veering way too far right. The explosion of gunshot makes Jalena jerk her head up, but she doesn’t even slow, just adjusts direction, heading toward Frazee’s voice. Toward her friend, Frazee, who has always been kind. The grass stays quiet under her feet, but the air has come to life, flapping in her face as though she’s plunging through a bat swarm, and there’s chittering, too, squeaking and cawing. At least one of the noises she’s hearing is her own voice, though the sound she’s making has neither language nor sense in it, is just herself streaming out. Her hands fly around her face as though warding off a gnat swarm, though there are no gnats, have been none. There’s whispering again, now, too. And that ice-cream-truck tinkling. Under her feet, the earth undulates, seems to bow beneath her weight, fling her upward, as though she’s running on a trampoline, on empty air, and she is constantly in danger of falling. If she falls, she knows — she knows—she will keep falling. Into nothing. Into waiting arms. Whispering, one-eyed faces.

She’s climbing a rise, now, and she hears the shouting to her left, all right, knows it’s aimed at her, but she doesn’t stop, keeps going, crests the hill, and just as she does, at the very instant the ground flattens beneath her, Rogan hurtles into her, slamming her sideways off her feet and down, hard, on a humped-up, rock-hard mound of earth. Her back cracks on top of it, almost snaps in half as Jalena throws her hands sideways again, grabbing the grass as she gulps for breath, stares at the billions of stars wheeling overhead, so close to the ground that she swears she can feel their heat in her hair, their feather-white touches on her skin and in her teeth. They are going to pour inside me, she thinks.

They are pouring inside me.

“Oh, God,” Rogan moans, straightens to her knees, and stares at Jalena. At the mound where Jalena lies. “This really is. we’re really here. In the exact. how does that. ”

It’s not true, Jalena knows—cannot be true — that the ground moves beneath her. Kicks, as though it has a fetus inside it.

But she shoves up anyway, jerking even her hands away from the dirt. She looks down between her splayed legs at the earth. “Really where?” she whispers.

Instead of answering, Rogan points ahead. Jalena follows her finger and sees the drop-off, almost completely invisible in the dark, a deeper shadow in a thousand-mile field of shadow. A bona fide cliff. The phrase swims up in her memory, out of some undergrad Western history seminar. Not a phrase she’s ever encountered since she’s actually lived in Montana.

Buffalo jump. Cliffs in the grass, over which the Plains Indians chased whole herds of bison, back when there were herds of bison. When that was almost all there was.

Before there was nothing.

“Rogan. Where are we?” Then Jalena feels it again: that squirming beneath her, the bumping along her legs. And she realizes that she knows what Rogan’s going to say, what they’ve been trying to tell her, all night. Now that she’s one of them.

“We’re where we buried him,” says Rogan. Right at the moment that — just over the lip of the buffalo jump — Frazee starts shrieking.

Immediately, Rogan is back on her feet, racing for the edge of the jump as though she’s going to throw herself off it. Jalena scrambles up, too, knowing the earth is not actually grabbing her. But the second she’s standing, the wind unleashes, crashing through her like a tidal wave, and it has things in it, flapping and gigantic and shapeless as that leaning, empty cowl on the airport terminal roof. There are sounds everywhere, too, in her hair, her ears, inside her skin. Bird wings beating. Locusts buzzing.

Grinding her teeth, flinging her hands across her face, Jalena stumbles off the mound — off David Roemer’s grave — toward the lip of the jump. She reaches it just as the wind passes all the way over, carrying off everything else with it, leaving her so surprised and her movements so unresisted that she almost tumbles into space.

But she doesn’t. She stops, staring down in stunned astonishment as the world opens beneath her, the real prairie, vast and flat and endless and utterly empty. Except for Frazee on her knees at the rocky base of the cliff, tearing at the grass as though she could rip out its heart, screaming, “God damn you. GOD DAMN YOU.”

And there’s Rogan, edging down the switchback path Frazee must have taken to get to where she is. She’s shouting, too. “Alexa, I’m coming!”

And there’s Bemis, who seems to pop up on the flat plain, somehow behind Frazee, and gazes wildly around himself, as though he’s surprised. As if the wind has lifted him up and dropped him there. The rifle in his hands seems to jerk as he lifts it. As though it is what’s lifting, not his arms.

No. As though the air itself is tugging his arms. As though he’s a marionette.

And just as it happens — right as the wind rises again, Jalena can see it this time, a huge, black, screaming thing, boring down on Bemis like a steam train — she begins to understand. Realizes what her brilliant colleagues have somehow missed, all these years. Whatever is out here — whatever spirited off David Roemer’s lover, or some flickering essence of her, and lured him after it, again and again, until it was finished playing with him, whatever has drawn them all out here tonight — it isn’t kind. Mr. Dark and his Carnival, whatever they are: they are not kind. They are not offering opportunities to commune with loved ones, or invitations to join them, or comfort in grief. They are playing. Toying. Casting the living in roles they cannot help but enact. Assigning them parts in a pantomime all its own.

She watches the wind smack into Bemis, all but lift him off his feet as it yanks his arms up, levels the rifle. Frazee shrieks, “David,” one last time before the gun goes off and the bullet blasts through her brain.

Then the wind engulfs Jalena, too, driving her to the earth, which is giving way as she knew it would, opening as she teeters, falls, the ground shockingly soft on her bruised back, the sky whirling and full of faces. So many faces.

“Dad?” she hears herself say. Then her vision clears, and the stars are on her.

She awakens in the bed of the truck, laid out flat with her head in Parrott’s lap. When she opens her eyes, the stars are still wheeling. She tries to lunge upright but her spine seizes, and she cries out.

“Sssh,” Parrott says, stroking her hair. “Sssh.”

The stars slow, like a switched-off ceiling fan. Slow. Go still. Stay put. Then they start to fade.

Which means it’s morning?

“How long?” she finally manages.

Parrott never looks down, answers automatically, as though she’s one of those fairground fortune-teller automatons. Climb on the scale, tell me your birthday, I’ll show you your future.

“A while,” she says. “You better have that head checked when we get back. Although I don’t think anything actually hit you.”

Red and blue lights skitter over the back of the truck cab, and again Jalena tries to rise. Again, she fails, but realizes what those lights are. She sucks in a long, deep breath, and a new feeling fills her. It should be panic. But it hurts too much.

“Frazee?” she whispers, although she already remembers.

Parrott just goes on stroking.

“Bemis?”

With a nod, Parrott directs Jalena’s gaze to the right. The bed of the truck is open. Bemis sits in the back of the nearest of three police cars, his head down, his handcuffed hands in his hair.

“Rogan?”

“She went with Alexa, of course. With Alexa’s body. They’ve already taken that.”

“Green?”

Parrott goes silent again, and Jalena thinks of his bottom desk drawer, full of photographs he has never let anyone see. Of a life, she is now certain, he had long since lost.

“Green’s gone, too?”

The sky continues to lighten. The stars slip back into their caves, one by one. Jalena imagines them up there behind the blue; she will sense them up there every second of the rest of her life. Hanging upside down, ringing the earth in their unfathomable trillions. A Hughes poem pops into her head, a rare one she’d studied for her dissertation, written during the Spanish Civil War and forgotten, about creeping dream shadows, a mother rocking her baby to sleep amid tanks and sirens. About wind grabbing and tossing men like straw.

“It’ll all come out now,” Parrott says eventually. “It probably should.”

But time passes, and policemen come and go, and no one asks them anything. The police car with Bemis in it returns to town. No one seems to have any idea where Green has gone; he’s just gone. Not until the sun has risen clear of the grass and fixed itself on the horizon does Parrott tell Jalena the rest, while they just sit together, alone again, with the sparkling in every direction, all around them. Winking with light.

“It happened so fast,” Parrott says, still stroking Jalena’s hair as though petting a cat or comforting a child. “It took nine years playing out, but the end came so incredibly fast.

“We got out here, where those coordinates had sent us. We poured out of this very truck in this very place and looked all around and saw lots of grass and nothing else. Then we heard the kid screaming, and we just raced onto the grass. All of us. Team Lit and Comp, Halloween Lifeguards, to the rescue. Ridiculous, really. Who did any of us think we were kidding?”

A shiver seems to spread across the prairie, from one end of the horizon to the other. Like a laugh, Jalena thinks, and shudders.

“Frazee saw him first. She called out, and I looked, and I saw what she saw. There was the kid, Marco, stretched out on some rock. And there was David Roemer over him, with. I don’t even know what it was. In my memory, it was a knife, but it might have been another rock. They were just frozen that way. It really was biblical. Some crazy Abraham and Isaac thing.

“But this is what’s important, Jalena. This is what you need to understand. It’s what we’ve always comforted ourselves with. And I still think it’s true. I really do.

“We were, I don’t know, fifty yards away? Maybe more? So David had plenty of time. He could have done whatever he wanted with that kid. And he just held there. I think he’d been poised like that for a long while. Do you see? He was never going to kill that kid. Not ever. The whole charade was for us. He just wanted to create that image. That moment.”

“So that one of you would kill him,” Jalena finishes. Because she does understand. He was going with his lover, or so he believed, which meant he’d be joining the Dark Carnival of the murdered dead. Which meant he had to be one of them.

“The rest of us — well, the men — just froze when they saw him. Rogan, she was new, she didn’t really understand what was happening. And I was doing something really helpful like waving my arms and shouting a lot. So that left Alexa. And Alexa. she was always the bravest. She just barreled toward him. Straight into him. She drove him right over that cliff. For a second, we thought they’d both gone over, but she’d just fallen in the grass. David landed on his head. We could all hear it splat even from where we were standing.

“And there it is. Now you know.”

Pushing gently but firmly in the small of Jalena’s back, Parrott eases her, finally, to a sitting position. With careful fingers, Jalena probes at the bruised spots on her spine, pressing until tears pour into her eyes.

“One of you,” Jalena whispers, in Frazee’s chanting cadence.

Parrott gazes at her. Her expression could almost be a smile. A lost and rueful one. “One of us. Think we can get you in the truck?”

They manage that, eventually. For one long moment, after she gets the engine started, Parrott sits, watching the prairie. Jalena, though, can’t bring herself to look at the grass. She watches Parrott, instead. And Parrott looks. not peaceful, exactly. But also not scared.

And that’s when Jalena knows she has it wrong. That all of them do. They always have. Because whatever it was that was holding that boy on that rock, that lured David Roemer out there and then stayed his hand, it wasn’t David Roemer. Any more than Frazee’s murderer was Bill Bemis.

It was that wind. The Dark Carnival. Mr. Dark’s Carnival. And when it comes — and apparently, sooner or later, it always comes — it takes not just everything you have, or had; it takes what you were.

How does she know? Because she was there, this time. She saw. She just knows.

“Can we go home?” she asks, hating how small her voice sounds.

“Which home?” Parrott asks.

But then, instead of explaining that, she releases the brake, keys the ignition, and turns the truck off the gravel, back toward Clarkston and civilization, where people cling to their days amid the memories of their dead, and shut their houses tight against the prairie wind, and play their parts, simply by doing their best to go on living.

HIBBLER’S MINIONS

by Jeffrey Ford

It was 1933, and we wintered at the Dripping Springs west of Okmulgee. The Dust Bowl was raging, money was scarce. People didn’t buy what they didn’t need, but one thing they still needed was Wonder. The folks out on the Great Plains could always scrape together a dime or two for Ichbon’s Caravan of Splendors, a wandering menagerie of freaks and exotic beasts. We put on shows from Oklahoma to Ohio and back each year. Granted, the custom of carnivals was dying, and it faded another few inches with every town we rolled into. Dying wasn’t dead, though, and in those days that was something.

Ichbon was an old-timer by then, having started out with Barnum in New York City at the American Museum when still in his teens. The great showman helped set the young assistant up with connections and cash to run the Caravan of Splendors. By the time I came to the Maestro, as we were required to call Ichbon, he had seen all the wonder he could stomach, and at nights was given to drinking Old Overholt. Although he’d lost his sense of splendor, he retained his shrewdness for a dollar through those weary years and always managed to keep us in food, drink, and a little pocket money. He dressed like an admiral, complete with a cocked hat ever askew on his bald head. His trucks were dented, his trailers were splintered and rickety, his tent was threadbare, his banners were moth eaten, and his beasts were starving. A lot of us, though, in the grasp of the Maestro, had nothing but the show between us and destitution. Who would hire a man born with an extra face on the back of his head? I was Janus, the Man Who Sees Past and Future. In reality, I saw neither, and even the present was murky.

On a day in late February, Ichbon instructed the laborers, also known in their act as the Three Miserable Clowns, to erect the tent so as to check it for repairs. In a few weeks we were due to set out on that year’s journey. I was standing with him beneath the vaulted canvas, the ground still frozen beneath our feet, the sunlight showing dimly through the fabric. “What do you see in the future, Janus?” he asked me.

“Hopefully dinner,” I replied.

“I predict a banner year for the caravan,” he said.

“What makes you optimistic?”

“People are in such desperate straits, they’ll seek refuge in nostalgia.”

“Refuge we shall give them,” I said.

“Nostalgia,” said Ichbon, “is the syrup on the missing hotcakes.”

Mirchland, the dwarf, appeared then through the tent’s entrance with a stranger following. “Maestro,” he said, “this is Mr. Arvet. He’s come from all the way up by Black Mesa in the Panhandle to see you.”

I could tell the man was a farmer by his overalls and boots, and that he was beset with hard times by the look in his eyes. His face was a dry streambed of wrinkles. Ichbon took off the admiral hat and bowed low. “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said. He straightened and put his hand out to the man. “I am Ichbon.” The Maestro’s credo about the public was “Treat them each like visiting emissaries from a venerable land. It’s good for the cash box.” The two shook hands. I expected the fellow to ask to join the show. I’d seen it before a hundred times. But instead he said, “I have something to sell you.”

“What might that be?” asked Ichbon.

“It’s out in my truck in a crate.”

“An animal?”

“We had a black blizzard back in the fall. God’s own wrath came barreling across the dead fields a mile high, and in its clouds it bore the face of Satan. You couldn’t touch nobody in the midst of it or the electricity in the air would throw you apart. When it passed it left behind a plague of centipedes and a beast.”

“Bring your truck in under the big top,” said the Maestro, “and I’ll have the clowns unload it.”

“The big top,” I thought, looking up at the tattered canvas, and my other face laughed. I stopped laughing, though, when the Miserable Clowns, using all their strength, unloaded a long crate from the back of the truck. The sounds that issued forth from it reverberated inside the tent, reed thin but raspy, and their strangeness made my hair stand up. A moment later, a horrible stench engulfed us.

“Pungent,” said Ichbon and drew out his handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose. From behind his makeshift mask, he asked Mr. Arvet, “Can you bring it out of the crate?”

“I made the box so the end slides open,” said the farmer. “Do you have a cage of some sort we can empty it into?”

The Maestro gave orders for the clowns to bring the leopard cage, the leopard having given up the ghost through the harsh winter. The three buffoons brought the metal barred enclosure and set it down so that its opening was congruent with the sliding panel of the crate. When all was ready, Mr. Arvet went to the box and pulled up the hatch. Immediately some large tawny colored beast shot forth. It moved too quickly to see it well at first. The clowns dropped the sliding door of the metal cage and trapped it. Ichbon and I stepped closer to see.

“What in God’s dry earth?” said the Maestro.

“Me and my woman call it the Dust Demon,” said Arvet.

The Miserable Clowns backed out of the tent and fled.

The thing was as long as the leopard had been, but bulkier, more muscular, the very color of the grit that blew across the plains in those dirty days. Its body was covered with a fine, spiraled wool, and it moved on powerful legs, at the ends of which were paws with long, black, curving nails. There was no tail to speak of, just a stub, and the head was like nothing ever seen outside a nightmare. Its eyes were the tiniest black beads, and it had no ears, only holes that appeared as if they’d been drilled into either side of its skull. The mouth was wide, and there was no jaw, just a thin membrane in the shape of a giant open tulip, the whiskered edges rippling with life. The Demon grunted and then howled to discover it had not escaped. When its maw was wide, further in there could be spotted rows of sharp black teeth.

“An abomination,” I whispered from my other face, unable to help myself.

Arvet looked around as if unsure who’d spoken — he’d not seen my other me — and finally said, “Well, it is a demon.”

Ichbon shook his head. “You say this came out of a dust storm?”

“Doc Thedus, up in Black Mesa, guessed it had been hibernating under the ground for centuries, and when the topsoil blowed away, it was awoken.”

“Maybe,” said the Maestro, “maybe.” I could tell from his expression that he was seeing dollar signs. “How much do you want for it?”

“A hundred,” said the farmer.

“A hundred dollars,” said Ichbon, and put the hat he’d been holding back on his head as if to make him think clearer. “No doubt you’ve uncovered a bona fide wonder here, Mr. Arvet. I’d like to make a deal with you, but I’ve not got a hundred to spare at this moment. We’ve yet to start this year’s caravan. I’ll tell you what I can do. I’ll give you seventy dollars now, and in the fall, we can meet up in Shattuck, where we put on our last show, and I’ll give you another fifty. That’s more than you’re asking. By then, we’ll be flush after our journey to the east.”

Arvet rubbed the back of his head and stared at the ground for a long time. “I suppose I could do that.”

“Good enough,” said the Maestro and shook hands with the farmer.

“What do we need to know about the Dust Demon? What does it eat? How do you care for it?”

“First off, you gotta be careful around it. The thing took down my neighbor’s wife and ate her like a ham sandwich. Luckily he realized there was money to be made from it and instead of shooting it on the spot, helped me trap it. I gotta split the profits with him seventy/thirty of a hundred dollars. I guess I’ll keep the extra twenty for myself.”

“Besides farmers’ wives, what does it eat?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said. “We had an outbreak of jackrabbits up there and they were easy food to catch for it, so I fed it jackrabbits. It ate ’em but without any real enthusiasm. One thing’s for sure, whatever you do don’t put any water near it. Water makes it weak. My wife put a bowl of water in its cage early on like you would do for a dog, and it almost perished on the spot till we come to understand it couldn’t abide anything wet. Keep it covered in the rain.”

That night, the Maestro gathered us beneath the tent and told us his plans for the Dust Demon and how the creature would save us all. Martina, the Dog Girl, described Ichbon’s delivery as “grandiloquent,” which all but Ichbon knew meant “meandering and tedious.” The tent by then had trapped the Demon’s stench, and we breathed it while the old man carried on. Finally, Jack Sprat, the Thinnest Man Alive, said in a slightly raised voice, “It smells worse than shit in here.” From its cage behind the speaker’s podium the creature let loose a weak cry.

Ichbon took Sprat’s cue and said, “In closing, I want to reiterate: the Demon will draw them, money will fill the coffers, and the Caravan of Splendors will rise from its economic hibernation to live again.” We clapped once or twice, I wouldn’t call it applause, and everyone made a beeline for the exit. Even the Maestro didn’t stick around. He walked in a stately manner followed by the Three Miserable Clowns pantomiming him in the throes of his speech. They followed him, and I followed them, back to his trailer, where I knew the Old Overholt would flow. It seemed that Maybell (the Rubber Lady) and the Falling Angel had the same notion as me. They were there, seated outside, passing the bottle with Ichbon when I arrived. A small fire burned in the center of their circle. There was an empty wooden folding chair and I joined them.

The next morning, I woke in my trailer, with a headache from the whiskey and coughing out of both sides of my head from Maybell’s harsh muggles. The only thing I could remember was the sight of Ichbon reeling drunkenly beneath the stars, going after the Three Miserable Clowns with a lion-taming whip. They were running around him, ducking and weaving, and he was snapping that thing in the air, like gunshots. They were all laughing hysterically. “Miserable bastards,” the Maestro bellowed and cracked the whip. When I left the trailer, hurrying to make it to breakfast on time, I nearly ran over Mirchland. He said, “The Maestro wants you in the tent in a hurry.”

I was hungry and the thought of facing the smell of the Dust Demon with a hangover didn’t sit well. Still, I went. When I got there, I found Ichbon standing next to the cage of the creature. His hat was off, his head was bowed.

“Yes, Maestro,” I said.

He nodded toward the cage. The beast was lying motionless. I stared for a long while, trying to notice the rise and fall of its breathing, but it was still. By that time, the flies had arrived, and although it seemed impossible the thing stunk worse.

“You see that on the floor of the cage?”

I nodded.

“That’s the future.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Considering I don’t first blow my brains out and if I had the money, I’d have that thing stuffed,” said Ichbon. “We could still make a fortune off the carcass with the right banner and bullshit in the towns, but a stitch job like that would sink us. I’m afraid we’ll just have to move ahead without it.” Never let it be said that the Maestro was a quitter. “The Dust Demon,” he said, as if picturing the creature rendered in full color bursting out of the ground toward an unsuspecting farmer’s wife. Just then, I glimpsed a black dot of an insect leap off the creature’s head and land on the back of Ichbon’s wrist. He looked down, brought his hand closer to his eyes, and squinted.

Moments passed and he continued to study it.

“What is that?” I finally asked.

“It’s a flea,” he said. “Quick, go get the professor and round up the clowns.” As I hurriedly left the tent, I saw, through the eyes in the back of my head, the Maestro cover the insect on his wrist with the opposite hand. He was smiling broadly. “When life is shit, make shit soup,” he yelled after me.

Professor Dunce was Jon Hibbler’s show name. He was the only one in the caravan older than Ichbon. Throughout his long life in the business he’d done nearly every act, once even passing as Jeez Louise, the Bearded, Tattooed, Fat Lady. He’d seen all there was to see on the road, and the Maestro kept him around as a sort of advisor. Still the creaky Hibbler had to pay his way, and so pretended for the crowds that he was an imbecile. Dressed in a graduation gown and wearing a dunce cap, the professor would sit in a chair, and Ichbon would stand next to him, calling the patrons over and beseeching, “Ladies and gentlemen, could anyone really be this stupid?” It cost three cents to ask the dunce a question, and I never ceased to wonder how many couldn’t wait to spend their pennies. Hibbler had a college degree, though, and had a rasher of high academic terminology that he would splice together to make a whirling lecture devoid of sense. The crowd loved their own love of his inanity.

The professor moved slowly, shuffling along amid the trailers in his black gown like some grim clergyman. The cold affected him greatly. He was pale as a ghost with a shock of white hair and a white beard. By the time I rounded up the clowns, Hibbler was just passing into the shade of the tent. Immediately, Ichbon ordered the clowns to go and bring back three glass jars with screw-on lids and eyebrow tweezers. Then he turned to the professor and said, “Do you remember, Jon, your act back twenty years ago, Hibbler’s Minions?”

Ichbon’s words took a moment to sink in, and then the professor smiled and said, “You mean the fleas?”

The Maestro stepped close to me and said, “This man, at one time, was the proprietor of the most renowned flea circus in the world. God, what a moneymaker it was.”

“It was a good act,” said the professor.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“I couldn’t get the fleas. You have to be able to loop a very thin gold wire around them to get them to perform. Cat and dog fleas are too small, but human fleas—Pulex irritans—were large enough. I’d harness them to miniature chariots and have them walk a tightrope, carrying a little umbrella. At the end, I’d shoot one out of a cannon and catch it in midair. It’s the cleanliness of the modern world that’s put them in decline. You can’t find them anymore.”

The Maestro said, “I hope you still have some of that gold wire,” uncapped his hand from off his wrist, and brought it up for the professor to see more clearly. “Look at the size of that thing.”

Hibbler nodded, slowly at first, but then with more determination. “I could work with that flea,” he said. “It would be easy.”

“I’ll have the clowns collect as many as they can from the carcass of this worthless pile before I have it burned.”

There came a day in early spring when the caravan finally lurched forward toward the rising sun. To be moving, to be caught up in a day’s work, I found preferable to the purgatory of wintering. After the Dust Demon had been burned down to its bones and Ichbon had retrieved the skull and claws, the aroma lingered in camp till the day we departed. Despite the dust storms, everyone breathed easier on the plains out of reach of the tentacles of that stench.

I brushed up on my act, which beside cheap tricks like inhaling a cigarette with one mouth and expelling the smoke out the other, took the form of an argument with myself. The Maestro always warned me, “Don’t leave the audience for too long with your other face. It’s too strange, too hungry. When it licks its lips, the customers walk away.” I’d only viewed my other face once, in a room of mirrors, but the sight of me struck me unconscious on the spot. I was left with amnesia of the incident, unable to picture me. Whenever I tried, the hair would rise on the backs of my arms and the saliva would leave my mouth. I rewrote the script of the argument so that my other face had half as much dialogue. It meant fewer times I would have to turn completely around to answer myself, and that was fine with me as the act was exhausting.

The Maestro was right: the crowds that March were so dejected, they pretended we were good. By the time we made it to Muskogee, Professor Dunce had shed his graduation gown for a tuxedo and top hat and been reborn as Hibbler, Master of Minions. He sat with me and the Maestro and Maybell one evening. We passed the smoke and the bottle and he explained, “These are no ordinary fleas. They’re disproportionately large with enormous heads. I can see their eyes watching for my commands. Under the jeweler’s loupe I have discovered they don’t have insect limbs, insignificant sticks, but muscular arms and legs with feet and hand-like grippers.”

“But will they perform?” asked Ichbon, taking a toke.

“I daresay they’re smarter than dogs,” said Hibbler. “I don’t even have to bind them and they willingly perform the feats I require.”

“They feed on your blood?” asked the Rubber Lady.

“They don’t touch me. When I doze off at night, they leave the trailer and go hunting. I think they must be into the animals, but I knew it was right to let them find their own diet. How much could they take? There are only six of them.”

“The peacock is looking a little peaked,” said Ichbon.

“When we open in Muskogee and you see the act and the money it brings, you won’t care if they’re feasting on your balls, Maestro.”

“There’s a lady present,” said the face at the back of my head.

I saw the first show of the new flea circus, and Hibbler’s Minions was the hit the old man had promised. Every night after the first, it was packed for his performance in the back left corner of the tent. The crowd could readily see the fleas and were astonished at what they’d been trained to do. Incredible lifting, pulling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, leaping, and all without a harness, all initiated by voice command from Hibbler. Laid out on a board was a three-ring circus, and in each ring a different flea performed a different feat. One lifted a silver cigarette lighter over its head, the next juggled caraway seeds, the third tumbled and leaped high into the air. Above them one crossed on a high wire. All six of them enacted a chariot race with two tiny chariots going around the circumference of the center ring. Word spread far and wide about the minions. And when their act drew to a close the damn things would line up in a row and bow to applause.

Hibbler was back in old form and there was actually a spring in his step. He’d become the star attraction of the Caravan and was relishing it. “I rule them with an iron fist,” he told me. “They know they’d better listen.” But he dismissed me when I mentioned the fact that both the peacock and Brutus, the orangutan, had recently passed on. Both animals were withered and lethargic in their final days.

“Do you really believe that fleas could drain an orangutan of its life? Please, Janus.”

“There are only six,” I admitted.

“There were only six,” he said. “Now there are ten. But still, ten fleas?”

I lost my skepticism for a while in the success of the show. All the acts were doing well, what with the crowd Hibbler drew. Instead of being pleased with the money that flowed in, though, the Maestro seemed anxious. Sometimes he didn’t even wait for nightfall to start on the Old Overholt. “A tenuous thing, a flea,” he was overheard to say. When the Falling Angel asked him what he meant, Ichbon whispered, “It’s not the fleas I’m worried about in that act.” Then the anteater was taken by an acute malaise and in a matter of a week, became depleted and died. It was noted that the creature’s eyes were missing at the discovery of its death. With this my skepticism returned, and I feared the minions were behind it. Mirchland had the same idea, and we discussed it one night, standing under a full moon behind the mess wagon when neither of us could sleep for the phantom itching brought on by our knowledge of what was happening to the menagerie.

“All that’s left is the albino skunk,” he said. “Then what?”

By the next morning, the albino skunk had also gone the way of all splendors, and the Caravan was for the first time since its inception without a menagerie of any sort, save fleas. The burial of the poor creature was pathetic. Everyone was there but no one had anything to say. Finally, Ichbon took his hat off, cleared his throat, and spoke. “I, for one, have no regrets seeing this overgrown rat pass on. It bit me once. In fact, I celebrate the passing of the entire menagerie. Good riddance to the damn beasts. The whole thing was a crime I’ll now wash my hands of.” When he was finished, the fleas dragged a dandelion onto the grave. Hibbler said, “Now say your prayers.” I swear I saw them kneel all in a row and bow their heads. Mirchland looked up at me from the other side of the grave and carefully nodded. Beside me, I noticed the Falling Angel was looking pale, his once-skintight lavender outfit now sagging with wrinkles.

Performers on the circuit agreed, the Falling Angel, Walter Hupsh, had an act so simple it was beautiful. He took a ladder to a platform at the peak of the big top, twenty feet in the air. Then he bent cautiously forward, grimaced, and fell. He was tall and lanky and not well built for it, plummeting like a bird forgetting its gift. Granted, there were two old mattresses buried in the packed dirt beneath the ladder where he hit. They were covered over with sawdust, and the public never knew. But still, with each performance there was an impact. Hupsh was head rattled from a life of falling, that we knew, but a strange lethargy overtook him as we left Tulsa for Wichita. His trips up the ladder had become pathetic, his flights, as he called them, tragic. Mirchland and I kept tabs on him.

One afternoon, out of design, I sat next to him at lunch. “You look tired, Walter,” I said. “Not been sleeping well?”

“I think I busted my ribs,” he said, and a little drool of oatmeal issued from the corner of his lips. “And I got the itches something fierce. I wake up with the itches.”

“Are you being bitten by a bug, maybe?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said and went back to his oatmeal.

In the days that followed, Walter came to rival Jack Sprat for most emaciated, and Sprat challenged the Falling Angel to a duel for sole ownership of the title. Cooler heads prevailed. The Maestro took me aside and said, “The falling guy looks like shit. Reminds me of the peacock.”

I told him what I thought was going on and that Mirchland was onto it too. “Those fleas, whatever they are, drained the life out of all of the animals and now have turned to human blood.”

“You mean Hupsh?” he said.

“Of course,” I answered. “Look at him.”

Just then the man was practicing his act. We looked over toward the center of the tent. The Angel took the ladder as if he were gravity itself. I could feel the weight of each labored step, but up he went, a trooper. Ichbon smoked a cigarette in the time it took him to reach the platform. Once there, he inched out to the edge. He stumbled, grasped at his throat, and groaned pitifully in the descent. He hit with a rattle. The Maestro and I ran to him. There was nothing left but a flesh bag of broken bones covered in sawdust.

When Ichbon caught his breath, he turned to me and said, “Get the clowns.”

Mirchland and I were already there, sitting with Ichbon outside his trailer, passing the Old Overholt, when the Miserable Ones delivered Hibbler to our meeting. The Maestro said, “Pass the bottle to Jon,” and I did. Hibbler was in his graduation gown, which, though no longer part of his act, he still wore to bed.

“We need to talk,” said Ichbon.

“Give me a cigarette,” said Hibbler.

I handed him one and he lit it with the silver lighter lifted by the flea in his show. His hands quivered. “Talk about what?” he asked.

“Falling Angel.”

“A tragedy.”

“We think your fleas did him in,” said the Maestro.

“My fleas? You shouldn’t have said that.” Hibbler became indignant and sat up straight in his chair.

“They have to be squashed.”

The old performer shook his head. “Impossible. There are too many of them. They’re listening right now.” The professor’s bravado of recent weeks was gone, and he seemed shakier than he’d been since I’d known him. After a long draw on the bottle, he wiped his mouth, slumped forward, and gazed at the ground.

“I thought you were in charge,” said Ichbon.

“I thought I was too.”

“Let’s burn them,” said Mirchland in a whisper.

“No, you might as well set fire to yourselves and the whole damn caravan,” said the professor. “Before you could light a torch they could be all over you, sucking you drier than no-man’s-land.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit around and wait till I’m on the menu,” said Ichbon. “Call them together for a meeting and we’ll ambush them.”

“Shhh,” said Hibbler. “I told you, they can hear us.”

“Fuck the fleas!” yelled the Maestro.

Mirchland and I stood up and walked slowly away from the meeting.

Ichbon watched our dull escape. “You chickenshits,” he said.

From my back mouth, I warned him, “Caution.”

Two days later, the Maestro blew his brains out in his trailer. Jack Sprat found him, slumped back in his chair, a hole the size of a silver dollar between his eyes. There were also bullet holes in his feet, his shins, his stomach, his rear end, and his thigh. We knew he must have gone mad from the itching and tried to eradicate his persecutors with bullets. Only the Miserable Clowns dared to touch his corpse. They dragged it out to the edge of the field we were set up in, gathered brush, and made a bier. One by one, the members of the caravan came out of hiding to pay their last respects. There was less said at the event than for the burial of the albino skunk, but as his smoke rose, we watched with tears in our eyes, as much for our own fates as his. The minions made a presence, their rank and file by the hundreds kneeled and prayed. When the fire burned down, the clowns retrieved the Maestro’s blackened skull and mounted it on the bumper of the lead truck in the caravan.

* * *

Forgive me if I don’t dwell on the list of my comrades who withered and succumbed to the hunger of the minions. We left a trail of smoldering biers in our wake as we moved inexorably from town to town. By the time we hit St. Joseph, near the Kansas-Missouri border, Jack Sprat, Mr. Electric, the World’s Ugliest Man and his beautiful wife, Ronnie, the Crab Boy, Gaston, the cook, and more had weakened, shriveled, and passed on. No one dared to speak about the horror we were trapped within. To speak out moved you immediately to the top of the menu. Whispers were dangerous. Those of us remaining had to take on more jobs in order to keep the caravan rolling.

Once the itching started your hours were numbered. Most were dragged down in a state of grim and silent acceptance, but there were one or two who raged against it. The latter were far harder to witness, their antics pathetic against the inevitable. As for the performers who survived, the stress of insect servitude, the fact that they were like cattle kept for slaughter, quickly began to undermine their acts. The fortune-teller saw only one future. The knife thrower’s hands fluttered like trapped birds, and his poor assistant was numb with the fear that if the fleas didn’t kill her, he would. The Miserable Clowns lost their sense of humor. As terrible as the rest of the caravan was, at each stop the crowd still showed up to see Hibbler’s Minions. The new grand finale of the act consisted of thousands of fleas coming together to form the figure of a man tipping his flea hat to the audience.

Mirchland and I, cautiously passing written notes, planned our escape. We were fairly certain the fleas could not read. St. Joseph was to be the spot where we would take our leave of the caravan. The plan was to disappear with the crowd at the end of Hibbler’s act, to mingle in with them and, once to the road, try to hitch a ride or run for it. Not much of a plan, but we were desperate. The correspondence we had going was voluminous, most of it pondering the fact that the fleas obviously intended to drain all of us in the carnival before dispersing out into the general population. We never saw news of flea infestations from the towns we passed through and wondered why the minions didn’t spread out and share their horror with the rest of the world. Mirchland thought it was because they were building strength, increasing their numbers for an all-out assault on some unsuspecting hamlet in our path. I, on the other hand, thought it had to do with that part of their act where they transformed through accretion into the figure of a man. “Only together can they achieve their terrifying potential,” I wrote to the dwarf.

Just as we planned, when the evening show let out on our second night in St. Joseph, I met my friend behind the clowns’ trailer. He’d packed a small satchel he had attached to a stick and had a lantern in his hand, the wick brought down so as to only offer a mere glow. He was sitting on an overturned milk crate, his back against the trailer wheel, his feet off the ground. “Hurry,” I said to him. “Let’s go.” I was anxious to be on the move. As I stepped away from him, my other me noticed that he didn’t budge. Then I spotted his empty eye sockets, and spun around.

The fleas issued forth from the twin puckered holes where his eyes had been, two living streams of black. Single file, and if my ears did not deceive me, singing some kind of song in unison. I gagged, doubled up with fear, and fell on my knees. The fleas marched along the ground to within two feet of me, and then drew together to form the word sorry, in my very own script. Something bit my rear end, a warning that I’d not be going anywhere. To my surprise, they didn’t infest me. I supposed I was to be saved for a later meal. Returning to my trailer in a stupor, I spent the night scratching my ass, the itching from just that one bite an agony. The prospect of inevitably being overrun with them made me consider Ichbon’s method of scratching with a revolver no longer insane.

Granted, the fleas were shrewd, but the next day, after torching Mirchland’s remains, the caravan headed away from Missouri and back toward the heart of Kansas. Everyone who had been with the show for a couple of years knew this was wrong, but no one mentioned it. I surmised immediately what was going on. The Miserable Clowns, who drove the trucks that pulled the trailers, were taking us out into the plains, away from the towns and cities. To be honest, I was shocked that they’d have the foresight or concern. When the fleas got through with us, there was nothing stopping them from overrunning humanity. The plan, as I perceived it, was to strand us out in the heart of the Dust Bowl and let them eat each other after they’d devoured us. In the end, if the world was to be saved, it would be saved by miserable clowns.

For the next three days straight, the caravan rolled at top speed, at first on a road, passing small dilapidated farms and one-horse towns, and then on a packed dirt path that cut through the sandy remains of what had once been pasture. The sky was blue, but you’d hardly know it as the dust blew up around everything, choking the air and blocking the sun. Myself and I had to wear kerchiefs around our mouths and noses and something to protect the eyes from the blowing grit. I opted for goggles and my other me settled for an old wide-brimmed hat pulled low. The hours dragged tediously on as we passed through the desolation. Late on the third afternoon, when the caravan came to a halt somewhere in the far-flung dry heart of America, the clowns were informed by Hibbler that there would be no more driving. The fleas needed to perform.

The trailers were gathered into a half circle as the night came on and then lit by lanterns and torches. There was no paying public for a hundred miles in any direction. We performers were to be the audience. There wasn’t any choice. We gathered on folding chairs, forming a half circle around Hibbler and a small, makeshift stage for the fleas. The old man wore his graduation gown instead of his tuxedo and top hat. He stood before us, weaving to and fro, with an insipid smile on his face. When the crowd quieted down, he lifted the graduation robe over his head and dropped it on the ground. One more horror to add to the onslaught: a completely naked Hibbler stood before us.

There were audible groans from the crowd and someone in a most pitiful voice whispered, “No more.” As if those words were the cue, the old man’s entire body was covered instantly by fleas. It happened so fast, I thought it was a trick of shadows from the torchlight. But no, every inch of him, instantly. His screams were muffled by the minions filling his mouth. They remained latched to Hibbler, pulsating en masse with the rhythm of feeding. And then as quickly, they were gone. His corpse remained standing for a moment — snow white, shriveled, sucked dry — before collapsing in upon itself. We gasped and rose to our feet, standing there stunned, wondering what would come next. It took no more than a moment for us to realize — this was to be the end of the road for Ichbon’s Caravan of Splendors. The fleas had somehow detected the unspoken treachery against them.

They struck again, covering in an eyeblink the slouching form of Hector, the Geek, making a mummy of him in less time than it took him to bite off a chicken head. As he fell away, they settled on the juggler and his apprentice. The Three Miserable Clowns stepped forward then, brandishing jars full of gasoline. They doused the writhing, flea-draped forms, and then the most miserable of them all flicked his lit cigarette at them. The sudden explosion knocked me off my feet. The next thing I knew, I was helping me up and we were running away from the caravan into the night. Ahead, it was pitch black and behind, I saw flames engulfing the trailers, bodies strewn on the ground, and a man’s form made of fleas, tipping his hat to me and waving.

I ran at top speed like I never had nor ever would again, and when I finally stopped to catch my breath, at least a mile from the burning caravan, my other me admonished me. “Up, you laggard,” he bellowed. “They can suck you dry, but I want to live. Get moving.” I pulled myself together and took off again. I wandered over dunes and across barren fields. When the wind finally died down and the sky cleared enough to let the moonlight through, I found an abandoned house, one whole side up to the roof covered in sand. Smaller dunes surrounded the entrance. Exhausted, I pried open the door, pushing a foot of sand away. Inside, there were two rooms. One was full to the ceiling with sand. The other was clear and had a rocking chair by a window that still offered a partial view of moonlight on the waste.

The next day, I awoke in the rocker to the roar of a black blizzard moving across the prairie. The approaching sound, like a locomotive, woke me. I ran outside to see it coming in the distance. Dust two miles high, rolling toward me, a massive brown cloud one might mistake for a mountain range. I’d survived the caravan and now I was to be buried alive. I told myself I would stand my ground, but the sand that was pushed ahead of it in the wind stung me everywhere, and I thought of fleas biting me. Before I turned and ran for the house, I saw it as Arvet had described: the face of Satan coalescing in the roiling dust — horns and snake eyes and maw open, hungry as a flea. I got inside and shut the door behind me just when it hit. Huddling in the corner of the clear room, I took off my jacket and threw it over my faces. The air grew thick with dust and the noise outside was deafening.

That night, after Satan had passed, I dug out. On my march back to civilization the following morning, I came upon the carnival half-buried in sand and tumbleweeds. I saw the drained corpses of my colleagues, even those of the Three Miserable Clowns. No sign of the fleas, though, as if the dust storm had sent them back into hibernation. I broke into Hibbler’s trailer and took the cash from the cash box — considerable, given the success of the flea shows. I managed to get one of the trucks going and drove down to Liberal, Kansas, where I eventually settled. I was surprised folks there accepted me for what I was, but then my having two faces was the least of their problems in those years.

I never spoke about the fate of the caravan, yet I often pictured it out there on the plain, covered over with blowing sand. A couple years later, I was volunteering for the Red Cross in one of their makeshift hospitals, treating those laid low by the dust plague, when I came upon a female patient brought in after a blizzard, close to death’s door. It was Maybell, the Rubber Lady. She was in a bad way, wheezing up clouds of dust, her chest rattling like a hamper of broken china. She remembered, called me Janus, and smiled. In the evenings, when the ward was quiet, I sat by her bedside and we reminisced about the show and Ichbon and the appearance of the minions. She told me she’d escaped being drained because her flesh was too elastic. That got me thinking and I said to her, “That’s the one thing I always wanted to know. Why they allowed me to escape.”

“I know,” said Maybell, barely able to speak. She motioned for me to draw closer, and I leaned in. “Hibbler told me it was that face on the back of your head. They felt some kind of kinship for it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to thank her for that, but my other me did.

SWAN SONG AND THEN SOME

by Dennis Danvers

Alexandra’s explaining her act to me. “It’s only when I know I’m going to die that I can sing that song, hear the changes, hit the notes, and hold them. I can’t explain it. Maybe there are certain emotions only set free at the time of death, some silenced anguish finally given voice. I don’t know. It just wells up inside me. Whatever it is, it’s not a trick, Orlando. I die. I can’t sing the song otherwise.”

Basically, she sings a few songs well enough for a beautiful woman in a seedy carnival, swinging back and forth on a line like a hypnotist’s watch, then she’s hoisted to the top of our tiny big top that sat mostly empty until Alexandra came along. Her final song begins as she ascends, the most incredible a cappella performance you’ve ever heard, sung in what may or may not be a language, like an aria from another planet, intricate and moving — you can’t help becoming lost in it even though you’ve been told she is going to drop to her death at the song’s end — when she hits a crystalline sustained note of such heartbreaking beauty the crowd gasps. I’ve never heard it fail. Every soul in that tent is riveted to her voice as sure as Jesus was nailed to the cross. She holds the note still as she plummets, until it’s cut short in full voice by the sound of her body smacking onto tarmac, sometimes concrete, sometimes earth. We take whatever parking lot we can. We can’t afford to be choosy. Just when everyone who hasn’t heard what happens next has jammed every 911 switchboard for miles around, she springs, well, staggers to her feet and finishes the note, not quite as crystalline, not quite as beautiful, then bows and lurches to her trailer where nobody better come near for a couple of hours or so. She emerges looking as she looks now, so beautiful you want to believe anything she says, but in my case, wanting to know the trick.

Singing isn’t something I’m interested in learning — though I’ll gladly listen — but resurrection, that’s another matter. Alexandra dies but comes back to life. I appear to be alive but died inside years ago. Alexandra woke me from my slumber, one of those deep slumbers you think you’ll never wake from, because what’s the point? She found me working on a clogged cotton candy machine and asked if I was Orlando, because that’s who she’d been told to talk to for a job, though technically that would be Sam, the owner, who’s always too high to trust his own judgment and defers to mine. When she asked, I wanted to say I’m whoever you want me to be, but I only managed, “You got him.” Been true ever since.

Alexandra probably thought my reaction meant I was just another guy who wanted to fuck her, which I suppose I was, am. Men dream about women like Alexandra. Who wouldn’t want to make love to her? Wilbur, who keeps the ancient rides running, vehemently claims he wouldn’t, even proselytizes on the subject. At the peak of the season, Alexandra dies and comes back to life seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Wilbur believes fucking a woman like that just might kill you, and he doesn’t want to find out.

He’s not the only one who feels that way, apparently, only the most vocal. I’ve seen more than one new hand set his sights on Alexandra, only to abruptly drop his pursuit after witnessing her act for the first time. Some quit the carnival outright, as if they’ve dodged a bullet and don’t want to tempt fate any further. Not that the braver or less squeamish have any more success. She’ll have nothing to do with any of us romantically.

Just as well. It’s hard enough watching her die as her friend. As her lover I’m sure I couldn’t bear it. We go for long walks together, manage to talk for hours without revealing too much of our pasts — books, movies, the morning sky — how we feel about anything that matters but without the usual stories to explain what landed us in the same lifeboat, adrift. Nobody ever dreamed of being part of Sam’s Carnival of Dreams, not even Sam. Alexandra and I picnic on the banks of whatever water presents itself — river, lake, park pond — and I ache with unspoken love for her. Once my love would’ve been something to offer, I suppose. Not anymore. It comes with too many fuckups and regrets, not to mention a few warrants for my arrest and even more lawsuits.

If I thought for a moment she was the least bit interested, I’d forget what a bad deal I am, but for now I just try to be her friend. She doesn’t want anyone to love her. I know exactly how that feels, but sometimes what you want and what you feel aren’t the same.

No riverbank today. She’s found me finishing my breakfast at a counter seat in a Denny’s on the way to our next job. I’m not sure what came over me, but questions just started pouring out — how she does it, how she sings so beautifully, how she dies but doesn’t — a real cross-examination even though I know she doesn’t like to talk about it. She’s been acting strangely — anxious. For a woman who faces death all the time, Alexandra’s usually serene. Something’s up. I have this stupid idea I can help. That she needs it. Help. I know that feeling too.

“So what’s the song say?” I ask. “Say it to me.”

She smiles enigmatically, then a tiny pout. “You know I can’t do that. It’s an incantation.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s magical. I can’t just mumble it in some Denny’s.”

“I know. You need the threat of death. You don’t think this food will kill you? You obviously haven’t tried the Three-Grease Special. It gets a Golden Coffin Award from the American Heart Association.”

She laughs. “You’re awful.” Her favorite compliment when I’ve pleased her. She likes it when I tilt at corporate giants.

“Does it mean anything? Is it words, or is it just notes and syllables?”

“Yes.” She smiles, her eyes shining. Would you please drop the subject?

“You drive me crazy.” I say this with more emotion than I intended.

Her eyes lock on mine for a brief, thrilling moment, and there’s something there. I’ve stumbled onto one of the pathways to her heart. She likes men she crazes, apparently. Makes sense. The siren likes them wrecked. Not a problem. I’ve been a castaway on her island for a couple of years now.

The waitress comes, and Alexandra doesn’t order anything. “I came looking for him,” she tells the waitress, pointing at me.

The waitress smirks like she thinks she knows what that means, but she doesn’t, and I feel a pang of longing I usually manage to ignore.

“So what has you up at this hour?” I ask when the waitress leaves.

“I wanted to make sure the rig’s right for the private show coming up. We’re using the customer’s tent, and the peak’s at least twenty feet higher than ours. I want it to hoist me all the way to the top. No one will care if I only fall partway.”

I see her falling in my head. You wouldn’t think it would bother me anymore. “I can do that. We’ve got plenty of rope.”

“The Sands of Time will also need to be adjusted for the extra time it will take me to reach the top.”

The Sands are a hokey eye-catching contraption under a spotlight attached to a tripwire that releases the harness holding Alexandra aloft. Sam’s idea, it’s basically a balance beam with sand flowing on one side and a feather from the Angel of Death (a crow’s, I’m guessing) on the other. The sands begin to flow as her swan song begins and she rises, measuring out the last remaining moments of her life.

She drops to her death when the last grain falls.

Some suppose this is a classic distraction from whatever trickery breaks her fall, but I watch only her, ignore the sand, and I can tell you she falls like Lucifer until she smashes into the ground with incredible force.

There is always blood, usually hair. Once in the early days I found a tooth, though she is missing none now. No sign of the fractures I’ve witnessed. No scars. She coils up into a ball, but still her limbs are crushed on impact. Her legs stitch themselves back together first, apparently. Her spine. When she stands, her arms dangle all akimbo and bloody. I carry the tooth, upper front. She didn’t need it when I went to give it back. She must not have tucked in her head tight enough. Now the universe has a spare.

“Why can’t we use our tent?”

“It’s a private party,” Alexandra says. “There might be a lot of people, and ours is looking a little shabby, case you hadn’t noticed.” We were about to get rid of our big tent, do away with working acts altogether, rely solely on games and rides, before Alexandra. Sam’s Carnival of Dreams will likely die with Sam, who gave up dreaming about anything real a long time ago. The only reason he kept doing it was he doesn’t know how to do anything else, and in his burned-out, fat sixties he wasn’t likely to reinvent himself — until Alexandra came along.

“Sam could give a shit, case you hadn’t noticed. You aren’t worried about falling another twenty feet? You’ll be going faster, you know. The acceleration is really something.” There was a time in my youth I could’ve calculated it in my head. Now I couldn’t tell you the formula. I try not to imagine it, her hitting the ground harder, faster, with a more decisive, fatal smack. The usual fall is bad enough. It makes you sick how many people turn out to see her, until you hear the song, and then you understand. Most people look away and just listen, but there are always several in the crowd, like me, who feel they owe it to her to witness her fall, her sacrifice to create such beauty.

She shrugs. “Death’s death,” she says.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Fine. Don’t.”

“So what brings you back to life? If you sing like that because you know you’re going to die, then why the fuck don’t you stay dead?” I have trouble saying that last part, and she touches my cheek with her delicate fingertips, which by all rights should be mangled claws. I’ve seen them crushed like eggshells. I live in fear of the day she dies and doesn’t rise to sing again.

“Sweet Orlando, I come back for you. It would break your heart if you lost your Alexandra. Who else would drive you crazy?”

I want to bat her hand away. I want to seize it and cradle her in my arms. I do neither, and then her hand is gone.

“When do you need it, your new noose?”

She rolls her eyes. “Tomorrow afternoon if possible, so I can try it out, get the feel of it before my performance in the evening.”

“I’ll just use the same harness. It’s only the line that will be different.”

“I want to experience the ride, the world from a higher place.”

“You like it, don’t you? Dying.”

I expect her to make a joke of it the way she usually does, but this time she doesn’t. She drops her gaze, confesses. “Sometimes I think so. I tell myself it’s the song, that I do it for the song, but sometimes I’m afraid it’s really death I want — to feel its power.”

“Then why do you always come back?”

She smiles bravely. “I thought you would’ve figured that out, Orlando. I’m cursed, blessed — whatever you want to call it. I brought it on myself. My problem, okay?”

Alexandra claims to believe in that supernatural stuff. I don’t. Except for her. I believe in her. I have no choice. “So, what? If you jumped from a plane, you wouldn’t die?”

“But I would never do that. That would be suicide.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

“No one could hear my song.”

“Why does that matter?”

The question hangs in the clattering Denny’s unanswered. She looks for a moment as if she might tell me, then gives me the same flirtatious laugh she gives every other lovesick rube who longs to know her story. “I’m a true artist, haven’t you heard?”

A smitten reporter a few towns back gushed about her. She likes to quote ironically from her lavish clippings, a form of vanity, as if she had any deficiency in that vice. I totally understand the reporter. We’re of one mind: Alexandra’s a true artist, all right, but what’s the art? “One question: Straight answer, okay? As friends?”

She drops the playful but evasive flirt routine. Neither of us has a surplus of friends. We take our friendship seriously. “Okay.”

“Do you ever get used to it? Dying?”

It isn’t the question she was expecting. Her flinch as I ask tells me the answer before she gives her head a quick shake. “No, never.” She smiles ironically. “That would be the end of it, wouldn’t it? Death be not proud. All that.” We’re both Donne fans. She laughs but lets it go, looks me in the eye, as a friend. “Never.”

She first showed up outside of Lubbock a couple of years ago, her act not quite fully formed — some bad rope work, the song, and the fall. God knows how she came up with it. I imagine her dangling from one of the few tall trees in town, repeatedly falling onto the hard, baked ground.

It didn’t take her long to persuade Sam to give the act a try. At first we wanted to put a net under her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She didn’t need it, didn’t want it, didn’t sing so nice, she insisted, if she believed the fall might not kill her. Sam admired what he thought was her hammy theatrics, selling the act to him, and humored her up to a point. But still the first audition almost didn’t go on. She insisted she needed someplace to go to recover—come back to life is what she said. Sam guffawed at that. “You want a dressing room? You want a fucking dressing room? Nobody gets a dressing room around here.”

I said she could use my trailer if she wanted. Not big enough to turn around in, but she could stay there, put herself back together. Fair enough. Seemed like a simple thing. She hit the ground hard. It stunned everyone, that incredible song still ringing in our ears. She wasn’t breathing. We were all certain she was dead. Sam muttered, “Aw shit” and called 911, was still describing the accident when her crumpled legs pushed her up, and she stumbled back to my place. I had to give her a little help then. The door’s difficult even when your hands aren’t broken. Her breath, as she waited patiently for me to get it open, wheezed and gurgled horribly. The place was a mess afterward. Blood. Vomit. Smells I’ve never smelled before and hope to never smell again. She had died. I still can’t believe it no matter how many times I’ve watched it happen.

She apologized to me later for making such a mess of my trailer, and I said it was not a problem. She could come back to life in my place anytime. She just had to promise to finish the job. “I don’t want some half-dead woman lying around taking up space.”

She laughed and gave me a peck on the cheek, and I suppose that’s when we became friends.

She never used my trailer again. Sam surprised us all by buying Alexandra her own trailer the next day. She usually rides with Wilbur in a truck cab so loud you can’t hear yourself think, but he claims they talk opera. “She once performed Madame Butterfly,” Wilbur claims.

When I asked her about it she quickly changed the subject, saying it was nothing. “If I was really any good, what would I be doing here?” she says.

Right. My IQ used to make my guidance counselors salivate, but look at me now, one of those fellows parents can at least be thankful their sons didn’t turn out to be even if the brain surgeon plans didn’t pan out. Good. Just how are you using that term?

* * *

I’m hanging more than thirty feet higher up, near the top of our rich host’s tent, putting up the new rigging, when a fellow, nineteen or twenty, comes in down below. He looks up and asks if I’m the manager. I doubt he’s from the house. He doesn’t look clean enough, pure enough, not to mention rich enough. Even the servants up there look down on us as riffraff.

Even at this height I can see the young man is angry.

I lower myself down, and we step outside to where his battered F-150 is parked, looking like it’s driven a thousand miles through macho TV hell. The rides are going up behind us. We’re not even unpacking the games for this stop. What kind of party doesn’t want games?

The kid’s breathless before he even begins. Tells me he’s been following us. Says his big brother is dead before his time. Wants to know if that fucking witch is still traveling with us. The one who sings and dies.

If you’re going to bother having anybody in a carnival in the way of a working act, a strongman’s always handy to have around, wrestling parts of this and that into place, showing people the door when they get a little unpleasant, even when you don’t necessarily have a door. Otto’s our strongman. At least that’s what he calls himself. Makes a good strongman name. Otto the Terrible. I think his real name’s Christopher or something.

He’s strong, all right. I have him step over to where the young man and I are talking. The fellow doesn’t seem to care the least little bit. His hand’s jammed in his jacket pocket like he has a pistol in there. His face is fierce with rage, and his eyes dart around, seeking his prey. It’s easy to conjure thousands just like him, looking for me. “Where is she?” he asks.

Then the master of the house shows up out of nowhere. Master of the house is an old-fashioned term. I don’t use it lightly. He seems to be living in another century out here. Dressed in immaculate white linens without a wrinkle, he looks like a dogwood in bloom.

The house itself is a big Victorian curiosity with all sorts of gazebos and promenades and whatnot. I’ve spotted him patrolling the grounds pensively in his antiquated gear. He carries himself as if his money matters. Not that it doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no idealist, but all that money doesn’t make him important. That can always change one way or another. Easy come, easy go, unless you’re lucky, and who makes his own luck? Only the fool who thinks he does, all of it bad, but I’m only speaking from experience. Maybe his sense of importance comes from somewhere besides money, despite the showy evidence to the contrary. Maybe he’s thinking great thoughts in that ostentatious pile. He must keep them to himself because Googling the guy turned up nothing but this place. It’s his, the county says so. He paid cash. Sam and I were curious because he’s paying us five times in a single night what we’d be making anywhere else for a whole week. Mr. Bartholomew’s his name. He ignores me and Otto and fixes the young man with a look that says he doesn’t like a ruffian on his premises and tells the fellow to leave immediately. Odd thing is, he does.

It makes no sense to me. I know he was about to pull a gun. I know he was enraged. I know. Nothing really. But I’m very surprised, shall we say, when the young guy says, “Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” gets in his truck, and drives away at a moderate rate of speed.

Mr. Bartholomew turns and walks back to the house without so much as a screw you for me and Otto.

Otto returns to where Wilbur is working on the Tilt-a-Whirl, holding the stupid thing up while Wilbur makes another repair on the ancient mechanism. I hate rides. They always break down. If there’s anybody comes around to inspect these rides, he’s never caught up with us. Sam and insurance companies don’t get along. He thinks they’re crooks — imagine. So if one of these contraptions mangles you, there’s nobody to sue. Without Alexandra, Sam’s Carnival of Dreams is less than desirable, so it’s fairly obvious it’s Alexandra Bartholomew’s paying to see. To watch her dangle at a higher, deadlier height, to hear her hold her final note a little longer than anyone has heard before.

To watch her die.

Death’s death.

Young men with guns — I understand them and know to avoid them — but I’m developing a serious aversion to Mr. Bartholomew that has my back up.

As soon as F-150 leaves — nobody got his name — I go to Alexandra’s trailer. It’s set apart from the rest. Nobody wants to be too close when she wakes up screaming in the night. I asked her once, and she said it’s always the same nightmare: she opens her mouth to sing, and nothing comes out. She lives to sing, she says.

She’s not surprised to see me, imagining I’m here about the rig. I ask her if she knows anything about the young man’s brother, figuring she’ll say the whole idea is ridiculous.

Instead, she says, “Is he the first?”

“First what?”

“The first to say I killed someone — a brother, a husband, a wife? Have there been others?” She looks into my eyes as if I might have been harboring this secret knowledge from her.

“Not that I know of,” I say. “Why do you ask?”

She looks around her little trailer at her little knickknacks and souvenirs she’s accumulated over the last couple of years — mostly gifts from adoring fans. Swans. Lots of little swans. Mostly glass, some wood. A fine pewter fellow that must weigh a couple of pounds. None of them mangled and bloody and broken. Clippings on a corkboard, featuring her in her sexy swannish but disposable attire. Alive. Photography is strictly forbidden during her act. I notice for the first time obits scattered among the clippings from the towns in our wake. Samuelson, Michael, passed away peacefully. Blunt, Donna, departed this earthly life. Cort, Obadiah, died in his home in the early morning hours. In every case, the survivors were snipped away, nothing but the name and the fatal sentence, a grainy photo from another time.

It occurs to me that the reason the young fellow left so quickly is he plans to come back. Maybe with the law. Maybe I shouldn’t have made such a fuss over a simple inquiry concerning a performer. A singing witch? No idea what you’re talking about, no idea at all.

Alexandra ends her survey of her tiny trailer, gathering her thoughts. It’s finally here, the moment I thought I was waiting for — when I learn the truth about her — but everything inside me is screaming, Stop!

“I take their lives,” she says. “They die. When they hear the song, it awakens the longing for death they carry with them always, held back by fear or religion or false hope, but the song takes them to such a height they’re beyond fear, and they long for the release of death. They take mine if they’re ready. It’s how I come back to life. They give me their hearts, the will to live they don’t want anymore. It’s time.” She picks up the pewter swan, admires his plump, smooth belly. The one who gave her that one proposed, I believe. She puts it down. “They don’t die right away. A day or so, but they’re finally ready, you know? They say their goodbyes, die peacefully, still hearing the song — the death they’ve longed for.

“They confide to those who will be their survivors — the same ones who would find them if they just put a gun to their head or slit a vein — how in the middle of my performance, time seemed to stop, and there was nothing but my voice and the music, and they knew they were ready to die, so they surrendered their lives to me. It’s the simplest of transactions: Our spirits meet, they give me their lives, and I draw a fresh breath and stand, so I may sing again.” She looks me in the eye, barely holding it together now, her lip trembling. “They thank me.”

I believe every word, but I don’t want to. “You’re crazy. There are that many who long for death? Someone every night?”

“More. Too many. They clamor to save me. Usually, there’s more than one, and I must choose. Sometimes I choose the oldest, sometimes the one in the worst pain, sometimes the one in the deepest despair. I hate that part. Who am I to choose? Only there’s no one else.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll have a tent full of happy people some night? Wouldn’t that be the end of you?”

“It’s not funny.” She laughs sadly, sniffles. “Or maybe it is. God, how I wish there were such a thing as a tent full of happy people.”

“Maybe Mr. Bartholomew will provide. He seems pretty happy with himself at least. Far as I can tell, this whole thing seems to be for him. Nobody up at the house but the help — and even they’re too good for us. We’re a fucking carnival, for Christ’s sake. Somebody’s supposed to be excited we’re here.”

“He has company coming,” she says. “The tent will be full. Believe me.”

“How do you know that?”

She looks into my eyes. “Oh, Orlando. Never mind.”

“Fine, I will. That’s pretty much what it takes with you, totally checking out of reality. You think it’s easy watching you die? My friend the resurrectrix? But I think the young man’s coming back, and I think he has a gun, and I’d rather not see how you ad lib with bullets. So why don’t you and me take a drive around here and see the sights until he finds out you’re not here? Sam won’t want any trouble.”

“Maybe the kid just wants to talk to me.”

“Maybe he wants to shoot you between the eyes. All he had to say about you was you’re a ‘fucking witch,’ and implied you killed his brother. Does that sound like a chitchat to you?”

She hangs her beautiful head and shakes it sadly. “Do you remember Slim?”

“Of course I remember Slim.” He was a charming, haunted alcoholic who used to work the games, who died in my passenger seat on the road to Tucson. How could I forget? It takes a moment to realize what she’s saying. He died looking out over a moonlit desert with a smile on his face a couple of days after he heard Alexandra’s audition.

“Maybe I deserve that bullet. There’s no point running, Orlando. Don’t you understand? I don’t find them. They find me. I’ve found the smallest, most obscure tent I can.”

“There’s always a point in running.” I should know. My name’s not Orlando. I ruined a lot of lives on my way to the carnival life. I should be in jail or worse. I often wish I hadn’t fled, but the thought of whatever rage is in pursuit of Alexandra makes me want to take flight again. The two of us. When the carnival comes anywhere close to certain jurisdictions Sam understands I need to take some time off. I’m not the only one. Otto has an aversion to Seattle, though mostly the area is too classy for our fleabag show. Wilbur claims Otto killed a man there, but you can’t believe half the shit Wilbur says. He says that Alexandra will be the death of me. Where on earth could he have gotten that idea?

“Get up, get your stuff,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. She’ll go just to humor me. She doesn’t take anything except a shoulder bag. None of us has much. There’s not a thing in my trailer I’ll miss if we run, and a few mementos that won’t haunt me anymore. Running. Great exercise. Done it all my life, in ever widening circles.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks as she fastens her seat belt and checks her beauty in the rearview. “You can’t need the aggravation. Wilbur says you can’t go back to Houston, you’re in so much trouble there. He says there’s serious law after you.”

“Fuck of a lot Wilbur knows. It’s Dallas, well, the whole Dallas — Fort Worth Metroplex I best avoid. Waco too, though there’s fuck-all in Waco anyway. Nobody knew me in Lubbock, so that must be far enough, though there’s always federal marshals to consider. Is that where you’re from? Lubbock?” I’ve never gotten her to talk about her past.

She doesn’t answer right away, watching the lush woods roll by. “Don’t be in love with me, Orlando.”

No point denying it, though I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. “Is there a reason for that? Is that part of the curse too? No love?”

We’ve reached the extent of Bartholomew’s estate, which just sits here with acres and acres of verdant wooded beauty, some very expensive horses, and not much else. He doesn’t seem to be famous, so I figure he’s a crook of one sort or another. We’re at the northeast corner of his property. I turn east so we can drive alongside someone else’s land for a while, a rock star or a mystery writer or a philanthropic heiress. The help for all these places must live in the next, poorer county we drove through to get here. We usually don’t perform in this part of the world, nestled between coal mines and national parks. There are plenty of riverbanks close by, but none of them we can sit on for this heart-to-heart. Part of me just wants to keep moving anyway, like a migratory tug toward another impossible future, but I poisoned my happily-ever-after habitat a long, long time ago.

For as long as she remembers, Alexandra says, all she ever really wanted was to sing beautifully, but all anybody ever cared about was her looks. She turns sideways in her seat, tucks in her legs, and tells me her story. I try to tell myself I’m ready. I keep my eyes on the road.

“I was in love with a man,” her story begins, “but he didn’t love me.”

“What kind of fool was he?” I ask.

“Shut up and listen, Orlando. I’m trying to save your life.”

The man’s name was Jacob. In addition to all the usual virtues she goes on a little long about, the man sang like an angel, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted fame. He wanted adulation. He wanted everything, and who can have everything? The more he wanted, the more he despaired because he couldn’t have it, and what he had bored him. So what was Alexandra?

I know the answer to that one — she is everything — but she’s asked me not to speak.

As an understudy to the female lead who never seemed to miss a performance, Alexandra doggedly followed in the footsteps of Jacob’s career, scarcely getting his attention. So in love was Alexandra, she slipped something in the woman’s drink, making her too sick to perform, and Alexandra had her chance.

Her performance was full of passion and fire, but her voice disappointed the crowd, and the applause was tepid and polite. I glance over at her, and she looks crushed by that failure as if it were fresh — a moment she can never get past. Doesn’t seem fair. A defining moment, they call it. She goes on:

“Afterward, Jacob was terribly sweet to me and took me walking in a huge cemetery in the moonlight near the performance hall. He said if I wanted I could have the secret of his beautiful voice, but I told him all I wanted was him. He laughed and made love to me on one of the graves, though it obviously meant nothing to him. Just another fuck. Nothing could’ve been more heartbreaking.”

“Why are you telling me this story?”

“Because you need to hear it, because you need to know who the woman you think you’re in love with really is. What I’ve done.”

Who really needs to know that? Do I want her to know who I am? What chance would I have then? “Go on.” I reach another crossroads and turn north.

“He told me he would teach me a song — his most beautiful — the song you’ve heard me sing hundreds of times now, and he told me when I learned it, it would be mine, the most beautiful song in the world, and he could have what he wanted more than anything on earth — release — to die, to sing no more. He said to me, ‘If you really love me, you will rescue me from this life, and you will let me die.’

“In that moment, I knew I wanted, more than I had ever wanted him — a man who would never love me after all — to sing as beautifully as he. So he sang, taught it to me. He had swallowed poison, he told me. I could feel his dying like a vortex drawing me in, but the song flowed into me, through me, until I was nothing else. The beauty of it made me quiver like a bowed string. Time stopped on that grave, and I finished the song, kneeling naked over his strangling body, howling the perfect note to the full moon as he died.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like to sing like that!

“I soon learned he had tricked me, that only in the face of death could I sing the song so beautifully that time stops at the borderlands of life and death where the most intense beauty thrives. Don’t love me, Orlando. Please, please don’t love me. I devour lives for beauty, consume despair and hopelessness like a breath of fresh air.”

I don’t speak right away. Time is distance. The farther we drive, I tell myself, the more it’s just us two — the madwoman and the man who loves her. If we drive far enough perhaps we can leave the curse behind.

“Here’s the problem, Alexandra. You tell me not to love you, then show me that you care. This concern gives me hope.” I give her a sad but hopeful smile, and damn her, she smiles back.

“Are you always so stubborn?” she asks.

“Never. So tell me about death.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“Did I say it was? I’ve watched you die.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There must be something.”

“A dark abyss. Nothing.”

“Silent?”

“There’s the single dying note.”

“And when it ends?”

“I’ve never heard it end.”

“That’s something then, right?”

She looks down and then up. “We have to go back.”

“Back to Bartholomew’s? No way.”

“It’s not just another performance.”

“What is it then?”

She takes a deep breath in and out. She knows I’m not going to like this part. “Justice, I guess you could say.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The young man was early. There are more to come. Enough to fill the tent — and then some. Loved ones. Not a tent full of happy people, Orlando. Much, much worse — a tent full of unhappy ones who believe I stole their happiness with my song. Survivors of those who gave their lives to me.”

I’ve obviously never wanted to die badly enough to end my life, but I’ve lived so long in the neighborhood I understand the concept all too well. My failure to act has been nothing more than cowardice. It’s all a matter of timing, isn’t it? The readiness is all, though I suppose the survivors might disagree.

We round a curve, and I spot iron gates and a sign up ahead, a field of stones beyond. “Look what we have here. Seems you can find one of these almost anywhere.” I pull off the road into a cemetery and park the car. It’s not as big as the one she described in her tale about Jacob, but big enough and full of the dead. “Walk with me,” I say and get out, heading for an angel on the horizon, hoping she’ll follow.

She does.

“What are we doing here?” she asks.

“I want to tell you my story. Everybody’s got one, right?”

“Right.” Her tone softens. She knows what we’re doing here.

We reach the crest of the hill where the angel stands and take in her mountain valley view. I’m not sure I see much more than the stone eyes see at the moment. I look out. I see her fall. I hear her sing.

“I wasn’t cursed by a wizard or anything, or maybe I was — the Wizard of Mediocrity. He ruled everything, every fucking cul-de-sac for miles around. We lived it, we breathed it, we ate it breakfast, lunch, and dinner by the bucketful. We sure as fuck drove through it. But I was smart, which meant I took the smart classes, which meant, you know, I had to work a little harder, smoke a little more dope to finish my math homework. But I was real good at it, and I did a science project. A science project. I don’t even remember what it was about exactly, some barely coherent sustainable habitat horseshit I came up with when I was high on several substances, including weed, speed, and acid. Certainly beer. Ended up a winning combination. I won a ribbon at a science fair. I think the judges liked the model I built to go with it. I later ran over it repeatedly with my car but that’s more the middle of the story. I cashed in the ribbon for a scholarship, started believing my own bullshit, and next thing you know I had more or less faked my way into grad school until I landed an internship at an environmental agency on my way to green science stardom.

“I was supposed to monitor a major watershed for toxic substances. I didn’t do it. Busywork, I figured, for a smart guy like me. It was a hot, unpleasant summer. I had interviews for real jobs. I faked the data. I’d faked everything else in my life. Why not? I looked at the last three reports and wiggled them this way and that. I was a master faker. Only trouble is I missed a toxic bloom you might’ve read about. Google liver cancer, and it’s bound to turn up. Birth defects is the latest, most horrible consequence, but they didn’t know all that back then, how bad it was going to be, because thanks to me, it had gone virtually undetected for months.

“The minute I heard the analysis of the shit I allowed to go right into the reservoir, I knew enough, smart bioscience whiz that I was, to know how bad it was going to be, enough to know I was basically a slow-motion mass murderer, visiting death upon several generations. When my laptop was seized as evidence, I knew I was screwed and ran.

“Sam was looking for someone with my skill set, someone without a past to keep his carnival running. Running from pretty much everything else, I spent a few years feeling ridiculously sorry for myself. I was scarcely worthy of my sympathy.” I look at her. She’s listening intently. I’ve never spoken to her like this, ever, opened up to anyone since I joined this carnival over a decade ago. We’ve talked about books and movies and music and food and the first time we swam and the way the striated clouds looked in the slow sunset and the calm that comes with listening to the river flow, but not our stories. What was it she said? Not the silenced anguish of our lives. “Then you showed up, and like you say, at first all I could think was, ‘That’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’ Then I heard you sing, saw you die — the most beautiful, and the saddest things in all the world, in a single moment. When you came back to life in my little fortress of solitude, hugged my toilet, bled on my sheets — that broke the wizard’s curse for good, I can tell you. Love you? Oh, it’s much worse than that. Love you doesn’t begin to cover it.

“The last class I went to in grad school I was high and totally unprepared, scared out of my mind because everything was starting to fall apart, and I was supposed to make some presentation on the research I hadn’t done, and the professor asked me if I was ready, and I started to give him some lame excuse, when somehow the truth just came out, and I told him I wasn’t ready, that I’d never been ready my whole fucking life. What was the point? The fucking point. I’m sure I said fucking. Ready? For what?

“Then I met you.”

Her eyes are full of tears like mine. She lays her hands on my cheeks. “You know what I’ve wished for? Someone like you, Orlando. Someone who loves me because of who I am — what I am — no matter what. You think I’m brave?”

“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

She kisses me softly on the lips. She lingers a tender moment. “Orlando, we have to go back. I’ve promised to perform.”

“Promised who?” I ask, though I already know.

“Bartholomew.”

I try to doubt everything she’s told me in our silent drive through the countryside, holding hands like lovers. I’ve just about talked myself into believing poor Alexandra suffers from some plausible delusion she might be treated for with the latest drugs and quackeries — I’ve heard electroshock is back — but when we catch sight of Bartholomew’s place, there’s no doubt. It’s a sea of cars, mostly modest, carnival-going sorts of cars. Some even sport our bumper sticker—Sam’s Carnival of Dreams. (“People go for dreams,” Sam says. “That’s what we are — a weird fucking dream.”) I can’t park anywhere close to the tent. It’s surrounded by cars from all the states on our meandering route, a scattering of rentals throughout. Some survivors must’ve flown in to the nearest airport.

The Ferris wheel, near vintage, the classiest thing on the midway, spins near empty, but for some of the help from the big house, taking a break. Their master must be inside the tent. There’s a handful of kids on the merry-go-round overseen by a lone woman, her eyes on the big top. I tell Alexandra to wait in the car and keep out of sight while I peek inside, scanning the crowd’s faces. The tent is filled with ill-will wishers waiting for Alexandra to perform, enduring the other acts merely to be polite. It’s written on their faces. There are no children.

Otto is bending steel, but no one cares.

There’s not much left of the show. The halfhearted clowns have fled, or maybe Sam just gave them the night off to cut down on his overhead. Sam’s fairly dressed up for him in a tattered corduroy suit a couple sizes too small. He’s sitting with Bartholomew, trying to impress, telling his usual stories. He’s washed and brushed out his lush gray mane, tossing it now and then.

Bartholomew has a look of superiority on his face that makes me sympathize even with Sam who as usual has not a clue what’s going down. He probably broke out the good bud for this event.

Otto holds up a rebar pretzel and gets a smattering of applause. He usually gives it to someone in the crowd but this time doesn’t bother. The kid from earlier is sitting right up front, chewing furiously on a mouthful of gum, like he’s trying to make his ears pop. He’s already up there with Alexandra, where everyone looks now and then, tilting their heads back, though all that’s up there is the rigging for Alexandra’s act, the machinery of fate.

Otto starts into his big finale, lying on his back, foot-juggling a refrigerator. It’s not as hard as it looks — the compressor in the refrigerator is a hollow aluminum shell — but it’s still fairly impressive. This crowd can barely manage to give the dancing refrigerator a glance. He tosses it high, balances it on one foot. Nothing.

The kid takes his hand out of his pocket, checks a phone, and puts it back. Maybe the rest of the family is on the way. Wouldn’t want to miss this.

I return to Alexandra. “Otto’s almost done. So who’s Bartholomew?”

“An avenging angel.”

I know better than to smirk. This nightmare is unimpressed by my skepticism. “And Jacob, was he an angel too?”

“Yes. Fallen. Heartless.”

“I want to believe you, but—”

She puts her fingers to my lips. “Don’t. Don’t believe me.”

Don’t love her, don’t believe her. So of course I do, and she disappears into her trailer to change. I hurry into the tent to adjust the Sands of Time. I totally forgot. I use a stopwatch and a scale to add the necessary seconds, the moments of her life, before I set the mechanism. There’s a moment I consider tampering with it, leaving her hanging when the song ends — and it’s my turn to look up, to imagine her there when silence fell and she was still alive, imagine her dying in silence, her nightmare fulfilled. I measure carefully. I set the mechanism, hurrying to finish before her intro begins, and the tent is filled with the thunderous applause of an audience ready for blood.

She sings her opening numbers exceptionally well. She must feel the approach of death with near certainty tonight. The crowd peers at her with unbroken malevolence, some openly grieving for those stolen from them by her song. They pray for her doom.

I imagine life ahead without her, and I don’t want it. I understand what she meant when she said she was trying to save my life, but it was too late. I already loved her. You can’t imagine what it’s like to sing like that! No, but I can listen. She doesn’t just live to sing. She lives to die to sing.

Her song fills the moonlit empty nights, vast and silent otherwise, with beauty, driving through the desert toward the dark horizon into the dark abyss, into nothing. Letting go. When it’s time.

There’s my cue. A spot finds my hand, and I pull the lever. The Sands of Time begin to flow.

Listen. Listen, goddammit. She’s started her song.

I’m ready.

THE LION CAGE

by Genevieve Valentine

The Brandini Brothers Circus roasted peanuts when it set up camp for a show. It was the same batch of peanuts, heated as many times as you could without turning them rancid. If anyone was ever stupid enough to buy some, they’d crack a tooth as soon as they bit down.

I thought it was awful when I went to the circus and saw it, but as I was saying so to the peanut vendor, a man in a green coat tapped me on the shoulder. The coat was velvet, brushed to within an inch of its life, and his hair was blond and shellacked as the peanuts.

“There’s no danger, I promise you,” he said. “The people who come to see us would never buy peanuts for what we charge. Popcorn’s a quarter of the price, and the peanut smell comes free.”

You’d think a thing like that has to be a flat untruth — it felt like one at first — but the one thing the Brandinis did better than run a circus was to never tell an absolute lie.

It was Matthew Brandini who wore the green coat. He introduced himself to me, and explained he went by Matteo for the circus; it wasn’t truly his name, but it wasn’t a whole-cloth fraud. That’s how the Brandini Brothers were about everything.

No one ever did buy peanuts, so far as I could see, but the smell did what it was supposed to do. The popcorn man went through a dozen sacks of corn at every show.

After I joined up with the circus that night, that was the first thing I carried.

I’d grown up the biggest in my family, an inch taller than my older brother, as wide as my father in the shoulders by the time I was fifteen, and that had been ten years gone. I’d been on the verge of quarry work when the Brandinis came to town. If my parents were sad to see me go, they didn’t say anything — it wasn’t as though they could afford to feed me anymore.

You got room and board with the Brandinis, on top of your wages, and as soon as I knew Brandini was going to ask, I knew I’d be saying yes.

(I hadn’t had much experience with employment — it was hard back home, since the war — but you know when work is coming your way: Matthew Brandini told me the truth about the peanuts, and he was looking at me the way men who needed things taken care of had always looked at me.)

It wasn’t bad, as work went. My younger brother was in the quarries and hadn’t come out the same, and my older brother had joined up with the railroads, and barely knew where he was writing from, when he wrote home. At the circus, at least you weren’t working alone, and no one would let you starve, and there were always things to look at that made you feel like the world was exciting.

The clowns I could have done without — they seemed strange and cruel in the makeup even though I knew they weren’t — but we had a team of dogs that danced whenever the right song played, and the four contortionist girls in spangles who always seemed glamorous, smoking outside their trailer wearing thirdhand robes.

I liked all of it, except the lions.

* * *

Daisy was one of the loaders: she’d come from lumber country, and swung a hammer twice as fast as I could. She could have spiked the whole tent alone, I always thought, watching the hammer appear and disappear above the line of backs, and from the space the others gave her to do it, they thought the same.

She wasn’t much for talking, but what she said was always frank, and that mattered more, probably.

“They’re only a pair of old cougars,” she said during my first unload. We were laying sawdust, and she’d caught me looking over at the cage. “Nothing to see there.”

But I kept glancing over, because there were shadows at their edges that moved even when they weren’t moving and drew your eye, though there was never anything there, and even before you’d lifted your head you felt like a fool.

Next time I did it, she tossed her braid over her far shoulder to stare me down and said, “Don’t keep looking at them.”

I kept my eyes on my work after that.

That was all she said about it — not one for company — but she was a quick worker. She steered the wheelbarrow like a racecar driver and handled the shovel like a musician’s baton; the sawdust was as even as new snow, except for the crescent she left around the lion cage.

I did look right at them once, early on. Someone had abandoned the cage a moment on the way to rolling them into the train car, and I took a corner too quickly and startled them.

They were sitting up, two she-lions, unblinking. They looked at me.

You saw them, of course, you saw them all the time, every night in the ring you saw them. But there’s seeing and then there’s seeing.

I don’t remember what they looked like. I was cold, I remember; I was shaking all over for half an hour. Daisy had to hold the other end of everything I carried that night just to keep it steady, until even Joseph the rigger noticed, from three cars away, and came over.

“Nobody’s business,” said Daisy when Joseph asked what happened, in a tone I’d never heard from her. He left us alone.

I sat in the train car that night and listened to the muted sounds of the circus, drumrolls and applause like a heartbeat, and after long enough it felt less horrible to think what I’d imagined when I saw the lion cage.

(Night had fallen, all at once, the moment I’d surprised them.)

Carvessa was the lion tamer.

The first time I saw the circus, Matthew Brandini introduced him second to last, with a drumroll and the spotlight swinging wildly all over the place before it found him, and I had been distracted by the spotlight and never really noticed the act.

It was for effect, of course, I realized after I joined up. Alice who handled the light already knew where he’d be; they just wanted the audience in suspense.

(I didn’t understand showmanship, the Brandini Brothers were always telling me. Matthew sometimes sighed about it and looked over at Jim with the patience of a saint, like if only I’d come to my senses they could put me in some rouge and a spangled leotard and get me into the ring where I could be useful.)

I did understand it, some ways; it was more exciting for the audience if the light discovered him, so when he cracked his whip and the pair of cats jumped from the pool of darkness onto the stools behind him, it was like magic. Maybe that was the only magic they ever saw in it. Maybe that was what I didn’t understand.

Carvessa was tall and tawny, and had probably been handsome once, but life had happened to him so that his face was hardened something awful. Seeing him standing next to the pair of mountain lions was like seeing triple: the same expression when the light came on, hard to fool and hard to please.

He drove the pair of lions from one stool to another with a single crack and a flower of dust, as everyone sitting in the stands that I’d built clapped and murmured like they were waiting for something.

He made those two cats jump over one another onto an empty stool, and then up teetering onto the same stool, and he made them get down again and dance in the dirt, curling over one another faster and faster until they looked like one animal. The light cast his shadow across them both.

Finally he made them leap from a dead stop through the hoop standing behind him, their claws missing his face by a hair as they passed like thread through a needle.

The audience gasped, because to them out there under the bright light, everything looked beautiful and dangerous.

I didn’t make a sound, because I could see Carvessa’s face as the cat leaped over him, and the lions looked more human than he did.

On his way out he drove the cougars before him, stinging the packed ground on either side of their paws. As he passed, he looked at me, and even though I was a good twenty feet away, the next whip crack took the end off my right shoelace, sure and sharp as if one of those cats had reached out and snapped her teeth.

The audience was still clapping for him, but it was getting softer and softer; the cougars hadn’t eaten him, and they were disappointed.

Back at the bunks I showed Daisy what Carvessa had done, and as she was shaking her head and handing me the flask she’d pulled from nowhere, Joseph leaned in and clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Just keep clear of him, you’ll be all right.”

Joseph was a rigger for the trapeze. Technically we were all working on the tent together on anything that needed doing, but Joseph always ended up with that, as soon as we broke ground. He was one of those people you trusted to make sure something held like it was meant to.

Sometimes he asked me to help with the pulley, and I’d haul things up to him hand over hand, looking up at the shapes his shoulders made as he worked, him so high up he looked hazy from the sawdust and me on the dirt where they’d paint center ring.

To feed the lions, you brought whatever you could catch as near the cage as you dared, then threw and hoped you trusted your own aim.

“I can’t throw to save my life,” Joseph said, the first time I brought back a rabbit. “Let me clean that for you and you can be the messenger.”

His hands shook the whole time the rabbit skin fell away from the meat.

The cats were more mannered than any people at the circus — the crew never had time for delicacy, and the Brandinis might pretend to be refined men of the theater, but they ate with their heads as low as anybody else who’d grown up hungry.

The mountain lions never moved an inch so long as you were standing there; no one had ever even seen them eating. The meat just vanished somehow when everyone’s back was turned. When you tossed the meat into the cage, they were sitting with their paws pressed together like prim little hills, claws quietly appearing and retracting, just waiting for their chance.

I stared at their paws whenever I fed them. My head got so heavy when I was near their cage, like all the blood had drained from my neck; I couldn’t have looked any higher. They were tawny on first glance, and dusted with white, but there was a gray underneath that got deeper the longer you looked, like they were pulled tight over some darkness that had no name, like the pads of their paws were made of stone. When they stretched their claws came out, sickles of bone that scraped the bottom of the cage without a sound, just long enough that you shuddered and turned your head.

The meat was always gone when you looked back.

I learned to hand the rabbits to Joseph for cleaning and then make myself scarce until I knew the feeding was over. Otherwise my dreams were filled with talons.

Some of our crew had their eye on becoming an act. Every so often you’d catch Peter and Richard juggling things at each other, or Allan throwing knives into a block of wood. Matthew Brandini would hover around our train car every so often, watching them practice as if they actually had a chance.

(Even early on, I hated how much it got their hopes up. They all had to know it was useless unless Jim Brandini made a round, looking out at someone in particular from under eyebrows as dark and sheltering as the brim of a hat. Matthew could stroke everybody’s egos and think about flashy introductions all he wanted, but Jim was the one who decided what the circus was willing to be responsible for.)

Daisy said once, “If you’re interested, you’ll have to put yourself forward. Matthew suggested you and I pair up as the Two Giant Nymphs of Olympus. I flicked my cig at him. Nearly caught that coat on fire. It might have given the impression you weren’t interested.”

We were coiling rope around our shoulders to drag a wagon full of benches to the tent, looking like a pair of Clydesdale mares in denim trousers and shirtsleeves.

“Haul,” I said, and she grinned.

Joseph could have performed, I thought. He was surefooted and pleasant to look at, and anything else you needed Matthew Brandini could probably teach you.

I told Joseph so, one day when he was swinging by his knees from the rigging, sliding a joint into place. He laughed and said, “Can’t see under those lights. Pass up the bigger wrench, would you?”

I didn’t think he would have wanted to. For no reason I could name, I liked that I was right. I watched him fasten the support, his fingers living creatures against the sea blue of the tent.

He was kind, and Daisy was kind, which was more than I’d expected — he taught me how to play the crew’s quick-draw card games, and Daisy gave me a little folding mirror one of the rubes left behind, so I had something in my bunk that looked like mine.

The crew all minded themselves, and even though my palms turned to calluses, it was less trouble than most places; it felt safe as houses, mostly.

The lions had to come out of the train car at every stop, same as the team of six trick dogs and the two ferrets and the handful of parakeets that were all in love with each other and couldn’t stop singing about it.

As soon as we pulled into a city, Daisy and Peter and I hauled the train car door open, and all the cages got rolled down the ramp and out to wherever the animal gallery would be, so people could pay to stand in front of them and wait for them to do something interesting.

There were nearly fifty crew who traveled with the circus; we drew straws to see which two of us had to handle the lion cage.

(Once I drew a short straw, and Joseph slipped it out of my fingers and handed me his. Nobody argued it. The back of my neck went hot; he was looking at me.)

Some of the others didn’t seem bothered by the lions, aside from making sure to keep clear of their claws. A few seemed uneasy but afraid to show it — Peter and Richard would sing a dirty song in two parts to cover up their nerves whenever they drew short straws and had to roll the cage out.

Joseph and Daisy never so much as turned their faces toward the cage, any time they were close enough that the lions could see.

Those cats were cougars for sure, to look at. If you were some rube from just outside town who came to the circus to gasp and gape at the acts, and purposely drop popcorn where the parakeets could reach it just to watch them flutter after it, you might pass by the mountain lions and think only how smooth their fur was as they sprawled carefully in the shade of the cage, and keep going.

But I’d seen a mountain lion once, at home in the bitterest winter I remember. The snow was deep and it must have gotten desperate, and one night it came pacing around the house, barely leaving footprints even though the snow was three feet high. We’d brought our pig inside, but it might have been feeling lucky.

When I held out the lantern to frighten it off before my sister had to use the shotgun, its eyes had glinted bright and flat and gold, lamps answering lamps in the second before it turned to run.

These cats weren’t real, maned sort of lions, that was for sure, but they weren’t any cougars I could think of, either.

If you’d held up a lamp to them one night, maybe, when you were on your way back to the train car and feeling brave, their eyes stayed ink black even when they looked at you, two pairs of holes with nothing inside them.

(I dropped the lamp; I ran back to the train in a panic, sank to the ground outside, and gasped into the dirt, hands fisted in the grass, until I had the strength to stand. When I came inside Joseph’s smile died as he looked up, and Daisy watched me without blinking until I thought I was going to scream.)

Wherever Carvessa had found them, he should have left them there.

* * *

At the next stop we came to, Joseph drew the short straw. Without waiting to see who had the other one, Daisy stood up and went with him to the animal car, and the cage appeared in a single practiced drag down the ramp, with Daisy pushing the brace behind with her eyes averted from the cage and Joseph in front, staring straight ahead and pulling as if his life depended on it.

They’d been traveling with the Brandini Brothers a long time; when they reached the patch of dirt that would be the zoo, they stopped without having to call out warnings, and locked the braces in tandem without even looking at one another.

Most of the crew seemed to think that there was nothing more to those cats than avoiding sharp tempers, and they were busy enough hauling equipment; I was the only one who saw that when Joseph made as if to glance over his shoulder, Daisy rested her hand on his back and kept him moving straight ahead, smooth as a circus act, away from the lion cage.

I was the only one who took any notice, except Carvessa, who stood in the Brandinis’ doorway, his eyes sliding jealously to the mountain lions.

There’s a disadvantage to being as big as I am when people expect their young women to be quick and sharp, but Father said once that I was so quiet I near disappeared, and it was true; among the dozen of us that were dragging the tent into place, I was just another set of broad shoulders.

He never looked up; he never saw I saw.

The Brandini Brothers train got a wild welcome in some towns. There would be a huge crowd of children as we slowed past the station on our way out to where we could make camp; Daisy and Joseph and I would be wedged into the way car at the back end of the train, shoveling candy out to the Brandinis, who stood on the tiny painted porch grabbing behind them for it, tossing out never- ending handfuls of sweets that must have looked like magic — but it wasn’t an absolute lie.

Those lies they only had one of, and it was Carvessa.

One night, after the tent but before the shows started, Joseph and I sat at the edge of our train car, our legs swinging back and forth gently. He was turned a little toward me, his foot sometimes just brushing the edge of my foot.

I wished I had my little mirror, so I could tell if my temples looked as warm as they felt.

“My hands still smell like candy,” he said. “I’ll be the human sugar wafer for a week.”

“I think Jim hit one of them in the face with a piece,” I said. “You think he’d be more careful of someone who might buy a ticket.”

Then Joseph said, “You have to stop looking at Carvessa.”

At the edge of the trees, Carvessa was sitting with the Brandinis, passing a bottle back and forth. Their chairs faced the rest of the camp, but more often than not he was looking over his shoulder toward the animal gallery. I didn’t realize I had been looking.

“Why do the brothers let him keep them?”

The words were out before I could think about them, and my face went hot, but after a long time he said, “I don’t know,” in a way that gave me strange ideas.

“Look at me,” I said, and he did, right in the eye, for a little too long.

It wasn’t that anything was wrong with his eyes. They were bright, light green against his brown skin, and we watched each other long enough that I knew there was a little gold fleck in his right iris. But something was there all the same; my reflection in his pupils was hazy, like he was trying to remember me from some time long ago.

Joseph had looked at the lions once, and they’d looked back at him, and something was missing from him now.

* * *

When Matthew Brandini was watching practices it usually meant Jim was inside doing the books and getting angry, but sometimes he really did seem interested in how things looked. “A true showman,” Allan said sometimes, when he wasn’t calling them both hacks for not giving him a knife-throwing act.

Matthew Brandini watched the contortionists practicing once, a human tower of limbs, and made them do it again more slowly, until it looked twice as hard for them than it had before.

He was right. People clapped harder the harder it looked, without thinking much else about it. They only wanted popcorn; they got the peanut smell for free.

Daisy smoked sometimes, when it was cold outside and she’d fought with Allan (they didn’t get along) or with Joseph (they got along horribly well, right up until they didn’t). Maybe the smoking was to keep her out of fistfights — Peter said it once — but I didn’t think so. She was the kind to level you with a single punch and leave.

When she offered me a drag I took it, an excuse to stay with her a little while. It was deep night by then; only the parakeets and the two of us were left awake. Their song carried faintly on the breeze from where they were, all the way out in the gallery.

Finally, I handed back the cigarette and asked, “What happened to Joseph?”

The lions were in their cage; when I spoke, their ears twitched once, in unison.

She grinned around the stream of smoke between her lips. “Who knows with him. Did he fall out of his bunk again?”

“I mean before.”

“Oh.” She took a drag, let the smoke rise until it vanished. “He went out one night. He was gone so long I went looking for him. Found him in front of the cage slumped like the dead, though he doesn’t remember it now. Nothing at all.”

“What do you think happened?”

“It’s cold,” she said. She dropped the cigarette, hauled herself back inside.

But she’d glanced over at the animal gallery like she couldn’t help it, and the lions hadn’t moved when she spoke, not a paw, not an ear.

For a long time after she went inside I stared at the corpse of Daisy’s cigarette and tried to shake the feeling that the mountain lions were too big for that cage, that it couldn’t hold them, that they should be a thousand thousand miles away from here.

One day when I wheeled the sawdust barrow out, Carvessa was next to the lion cage, peering in and clicking his tongue against his teeth like he was tending a pair of housecats.

“You shouldn’t be looking at my girls like you do,” Carvessa said, still watching the cat and not me, absently scratching behind its ear.

It sent shivers all through me to see him do it, like standing at the edge of Harris Gorge back home and looking down at the tops of trees that were so far down it seemed like a carpet of moss, not pines and oaks and maples anymore.

He shouldn’t have been petting it. That wasn’t just some cougar under his hands; that cat wasn’t his.

“Where did you find them?” My throat was dry.

He looked up at me, finally, and his eyes were as flat and sunken and horrible as those of either of the cats.

“Don’t you like them?”

“They shouldn’t be caged,” I said. I was sure, but the words shook.

“It takes some doing,” he said, low and edged. “That territory’s farther away from anywhere you’ve been that you’d never find it without me. Rough hunting, out where you can catch cats like these, you’d have to be willing to give up an awful lot in that chase. But I could tell you. You want one? I’ll tell you how.”

No, I thought to my bones, like I’d screamed it.

“I want to finish here,” I said, and tapped the broom on the ground until he stepped aside at last and turned the corner of the cage, back to camp.

The cats’ heads swiveled to watch him go. Nothing else moved but the tips of their tails, twitching back and forth in time with each other.

When it struck me that they might turn their heads back and look at me, my ankles felt like they’d gone hollow, and I raced that broom across the ground, dragging grass and dirt with me without ever stopping. I’d been holding the broom handle too tight. My fingers were numb an hour after.

I must have made up my mind then, though it feels now like I must have made up my mind as soon as I ever saw the lion cage.

When rubes came to look at them, they all clicked their teeth, too, and pursed their lips and mewled and murmured to each other about what a pretty pair of cats they were: stupidest people I ever saw.

“Can you get him drunk?” I asked Daisy at the fire, after I’d decided.

She looked at me for a little while. A whole cigarette came and went. Then she said, without asking who I meant, “He already knows how I feel about him. Wouldn’t work. I’ll ask Peter.”

“Have you ever looked at them?”

She shook her head. “Never had the nerve,” she said, her throat so tight I could barely hear.

I said, “Don’t come looking for me, whatever you hear.”

Her eyebrows went up. Then she handed me her flask.

“You’ll need this,” she said.

The Brandini Brothers Circus shut up shop late — card games ran till dawn in the crew quarters, you could slip a key from the Brandini car without anyone missing you. It was dead night by the time the place had settled in to sleep.

My lantern light was shaking all the way out to the cage, because my hand knew better than I did that I was a fool.

The ferrets were tumbling, and a few of the parakeets chirped hopefully when they saw light. But when I approached the lion cage, it got silent.

Not just the birds; the whole night was holding its breath, and as the lions drew themselves out of the dark and sat up to watch me, I could see their claws scraping against a floor that somehow made no sound.

“It’s all right,” I said, like I was talking to the farm dog back home. My key hand was shaking worse than my lantern hand.

I set down the light, unlocked the padlock, took a steadying breath as I lifted it away; then there was just the bolt left, and the cage would be open. I curled my fingers around it.

“What are you doing?”

Carvessa had a voice like a saw even when he wasn’t drunk, and I froze with my hand on the lock despite myself. When I looked up I was looking at the lions, and I saw a tawny slice of cheek and a high arched brow and nothing else.

He was behind me and they were in front of me, and it was no competition at all.

“What you should’ve,” I said, and slid the bolt free.

Then I dodged to put the cage between us, and ran.

But I knocked over the light as I went; it sputtered and went out even before I started running, and in the desperate dark my legs gave out on me. I landed with a sour thud that knocked my sight sideways for a heartbeat.

Then — I couldn’t help myself, I had to know — I turned.

The lights from the train car were far off and flickering, and in the moonless night the lions looked like shadow puppets before a candle as they jumped, and then I didn’t understand what happened.

Carvessa fell between them — he was pulled down under them — they slid on top of him — they blinked out of sight and appeared again without him — Carvessa vanished at the touch of their paws.

Carvessa gasped; he must have gasped, or sobbed, or started to speak, because then there was a terrible sound of something swallowing up all his breath.

One of them turned toward me, licked her lips with a tongue that left no blood behind.

Blood was missing, I thought, so numb with fear that it seemed like a disappointment rather than a horror. If there had been blood, it meant Carvessa would have died from tooth and claw, and mine would be a death like any other death, instead of whatever was about to happen to me.

Her eyes had no reflection; I only knew she was moving because her teeth gleamed close and white as she opened her mouth.

I braced myself, stared right at her as she stepped toward me. I was so terrified I couldn’t force my eyes closed. I knew down to my eyelids that in the next step she’d make a sound and that would be the end of me.

Her jaw slid open and open and open, far beyond what was possible, wide enough to eat the night, and inside her mouth unfurled the warm dark deep.

Joseph told me later — he told me a hundred times — that I fainted, that when they found me my eyes were rolled up so far in my head they could only see the whites.

I woke up surrounded, everyone leaning in like a circle of faces in a musical picture and trying to decide among themselves what must have happened.

“Never met a soul Carvessa wouldn’t try to frighten out of its skin just to see if he could,” Allan said, and Peter said, “I don’t care what the brothers might say, we’re well rid of him,” and they nodded back and forth.

“She doesn’t even remember what happened, I bet,” said Daisy in a tone I recognized, “none of you are helping, move.”

“When you caught Carvessa taking those cats out, it must have scared you something terrible,” Joseph said, looking at me like there was only one right answer.

He still had that little spot in his right eye, a pretty accident.

I said, “I swear they could have killed me.”

No one seemed surprised; they’d figured Carvessa set them on me just to get in one last scare on his way out.

Peter asked me, “Which way did they go?”

“Don’t remember,” I said.

It worked well enough as an answer. It wasn’t an absolute lie.

After the lions, I lost my strength. I was as big as ever, it was nothing so easy to see, but in the first days I wasn’t good for anything but holding something you put into my hands.

“Shock,” Daisy said. “Happened to me once when I dropped a pole and thought it was going to hit Peter, couldn’t get any work out of me for a week. Stop twisting your fingers.”

Jim Brandini never spoke to me again. Matthew came by the crew car a few times when Jim was away, and asked anyone but me how I was doing, with the sort of earnestness that could be equally fake or real on a man like him. Joseph disliked him something serious; he never got anything out of Joseph.

The worst of it lasted a week or two, where I woke up gasping and sweating and unable to even drop out of bed because my legs were just marrow and air, and Joseph would hand me a glass of water and sit with me until I stopped shaking.

Then one day I could help Joseph thread the pulley. A week after that I was dragging things up to him hand over hand, and only my white knuckles gave away that anything had ever been wrong.

He was kind to me, always, but I couldn’t look Joseph in the eye after the lion cage. I knew something he didn’t; I didn’t dare show him.

“Good as new, then,” Matthew Brandini said encouragingly when he saw me, and ran a hand through his glossed blond hair like it was a relief.

(My hair went a little thin in patches, after the lions; I cut it short, eventually, just to give me enough ducks’ feathers to cover the empty places.)

Daisy made a face behind Matthew’s back as he left, but even she took to watching me carefully, then saying, “All right,” every so often, as if to herself.

The lion cage with its gate still open stayed in the zoo car, empty and waiting. No animal ever filled it.

I gave Daisy back the little mirror sometime that winter. She didn’t ask why; she’d looked right at me often enough.

My eyes reflected nothing, now; two dark pools where no light reached.

Sometimes I dreamed of the lion opening her mouth to swallow me.

She’d opened her mouth impossibly wide, until there was nothing else in my sight, until I knew I’d disappear wherever Carvessa had gone, and behind the awful white glint of her teeth I’d see something that would drive me mad if I didn’t strike out and crack her jaw hard enough to close it.

I didn’t disappear — the lions had shown me mercy — but even their mercy burned.

It was an impossible dream to wake up from; before I could scramble awake in bed and try not to breathe loud enough to wake the others, I always had to feel the grass under my hands and the horrible airless dark against my ears, and nothing around me but the blackness and the stars.

I stayed as far from that tent as I could get, once it was standing. It had nothing for me.

* * *

When you come to the Brandini Brothers Circus now, you’ll see contortionists and clowns and dancing dogs, and Allan throwing knives at Rachel, the girl Matthew picked up outside Chicago, who has eyes big enough to see from the back row. Sometimes she and Daisy and I play poker.

You’ll buy popcorn; it’s cheaper, and the peanut smell is free.

On your way out, if it’s moonless and cold, you might walk past the animal car and shudder, and not ever know why.

Nothing will be there but the train and the dark; there won’t be a thing to see.

THE DARKEST PART

by Stephen Graham Jones

All we wanted to do was kill a clown.

And not just once, either.

I mean, one clown, sure, one would be enough, one would be plenty. But he was going to die all night.

Dick’s ex was a nurse over at Idalou, and during their two years together, Dick had learned enough doctoring that he figured he could bring a clown back from flatline a time or two at least. With electricity. With adrenaline stabbed into its heart.

It was going to be perfect.

What Garret had to provide wasn’t medical know-how, but his dad’s old barn out near the Lubbock county line. The one that should have caved in on itself two winters ago.

It would shelter us for one more night, though.

And, out by the county line, there was nothing but livestock to hear a clown scream.

We’d gone out there a few days before, killed the headlights of our trucks, and closed the doors to turn the dome lights off as well, and the darkness had been almost grainy, it was so thick. Like we could have stuck our tongues out, let it collect, swallowed it down.

“Perfect,” Dick had said.

Garret had nodded, leaned over to spit just past the toe of his boot, and said, “Hell yeah, son.”

My job was the bait.

Of the three of us, I was the only one with a son the right age.

Three weekends ago it had been my weekend with Josh. But, because we were watching the calendar, I’d faked a job for Misty Banta’s father. His spread was half of Crosby County; a good ten percent of my calls are to get his pumps going again, so his cotton will have something to drink.

From our six years together, Tina knew that a call from Deacon Banta wasn’t just a call for that particular pump job, but for all the pump jobs waiting for the rest of the year. When Deacon says jump, you don’t even hesitate.

She bought it, I’m saying.

And she was okay with me taking Josh to the carnival. Talking to her on the phone, there’d even been a pause, like she was thinking maybe she’d go with, that we could be that family again, walking down the midway or whatever it’s called, Josh between us, trying to figure out where to start on this wispy spin of cotton candy.

But she hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t either.

All the years the carnival’d been coming through Crosbyton, we’d never gone, not even once, not even when Josh came home from kindergarten with a clutch of free tickets. I always had a job, a call, a game to watch, something.

Tina’s only rule about finally taking Josh was that, if we rode anything fast, I’d be sure to be in the car with him.

It was because every once and again, the Hammer would throw its riders up into the sky and not catch them. Because at some point in the season, the Spinnaker was going to grind some kid’s arm off.

“He’s my son,” I’d said to Tina.

Instead of yes.

* * *

“No guns, right?” Garret said in the parking lot, when I pulled up.

Dick was already there, watching the Ferris wheel like it was his nightmare come to life.

It was. For all of us.

“No guns,” I said, both my hands cupped over my son’s shoulders.

He knew Dick, he knew Garret. They’d been there the night he was born, and they’d killed many a beer on our porch, and toasted the sun on its way up.

The first time or two, Tina’d scrambled us some eggs.

Turned out there weren’t enough eggs in the world, though.

There never is.

“What do you want to ride first?” Dick said, pushing away from his truck.

Josh looked up to him, then to me.

“Everything,” he said.

“That’s my man,” Garret said, and socked him soft on the shoulder.

“Everything,” I said.

It might have been what I’d said myself nearly thirty years ago, standing right here, caught between second and third grade, the lights washing across my face.

It was the last time I’d be so innocent.

The Tunnel of Brotherly Love.

That was what the sixth graders had been calling it that year.

Me and Garret and Rich didn’t understand.

Dick was still “Rich” then, a name that would fall away in eighth grade when it got too cruel, from his dad having to put them on food stamps.

Legend was that there was one particular second-rate carnival out there, maybe this one, maybe not, that its Tunnel of Love was jinxed, but in a special way. If you waited for the darkest part of the ride and then kissed whoever was sitting beside you, kissed that person like you meant it, not just a peck and gone, then the end of that tunnel would open onto a world that would look the exact same as you’d left, except it would be all different underneath.

Nobody was sure how it would be different, but the way we heard it, it would be like this new place would be stitched through with. with something like all your wishes come true. Like, you’d think you sure were thirsty, and then somebody’d give you a Coke. You’d think it sure is hot, and a cloud would drift over the sun. You’d think you sure hoped your mom didn’t tan your hide for being late, then she’d be on the phone all the way in the kitchen when you sneaked through the front door.

The only problem was the kissing part. We didn’t know any girls, or how to ask them to ride this ride with us.

But we had each other.

And of course, later, we all figured out it was a scam, that the carnival had probably started the legend itself to sell more tickets.

It didn’t keep us from cramming three into a two-seat car, though, and closing our eyes at what we figured was the darkest part, puckering up, one of us having to go twice.

It didn’t keep the sixth graders stationed behind us from telling everybody, either.

And it didn’t stop the dreams.

Garret was the first of us to halfway remember.

This was sophomore year, about. Freshman for Dick, as he was called by then. He’d failed out of ninth grade. But we were still us.

It had been years since anybody’d spelled out our names in the kissing tree song, too. But it had been good for us. We’d had to learn to scrap younger than most, we’d had to watch each other’s backs in a way other third graders hadn’t, and we carried that with us now. Even the seniors left us alone for the most part.

But Garret’s dream.

We were out at his dad’s barn when he got liquored up enough to tell it.

We’d spent nearly all of that Saturday slapping dark red paint over the barn, for his older cousin’s wedding. The wood was thirsty, drank it up.

Garret’s dream was of that Tunnel of Love car just clanking along on its chain, the chain pulling the three of us along those two steel rails like a hundred times before.

But there had been that part with the strobe lights, where all the Halloween leftovers were stood up on rods, and hung from the ceiling.

The idea was that a girl would shriek, throw a leg over her guy’s thigh, and he could wrap a protective arm around her. Tunnels of Love aren’t complicated.

In Garret’s dream, though, one of those silver flashes of light, it lit up this out-of-place clown. A clown that, next strobe, had turned its head, was looking right at me and Rich, kissing.

It was like we’d woken it up.

And that was it, the end of Garret’s dream, just looping for him night after night, and sometimes during history or math.

“What does it mean?” Dick asked, draining his beer.

“It means he’s a dumbass,” I said, cuffing the back of Garret’s neck and pushing him away.

There was hay dust floating all around us right then, I remember.

It felt like the world was never going to end.

Because Tina would hate hearing about it, I took Josh up into the Hammer first thing.

It’s important to get the Hammer behind you like that. If you do it after popcorn and Slushees and Milk Duds, the inside of that bullet-shaped gondola can get ugly.

I clamped my hat down and the attendant locked us in, nodded once to me like a bull rider, and up we went, to hell with gravity and logic.

If you don’t scream at least once on the Hammer, then you’re probably not alive.

Josh was laughing so hard when it was done that he was crying. Either that or he’d started out crying, and now it had turned the other way.

He was going to be all right, I figured.

Dick and Garret were waiting like sentries at the exit gate, their eyes everywhere at once.

“Having fun?” Dick said, his lips thin.

I didn’t answer, just pulled Josh past.

For two hours, we rode everything at least once, and then it was hot dogs and ice cream and paper boats dripping with nachos. For all of us.

Clown killing, it’s hungry work.

Finally, Dick pushed his second hot dog away half-finished, looked to Garret and me in a way we couldn’t ignore.

“Enough of this,” he said, and balled his napkin up, rolled it onto the table like he was calling our bluff.

It had all been a good idea two months ago, when the carnival’s fliers first started showing up stapled to telephone poles, taped to the gas pumps, tacked on the bulletin board at the laundromat.

Dick had the make-do medical degree.

Garret had his dad’s old barn.

I had my son.

Two months ago, it had made perfect sense, hadn’t seemed unfair at all.

* * *

I told Josh that Uncle Garret and Aunt Dick were going to ride a ride finally.

Garret leaned over, spit in front of my boot, his eyes on mine the whole time.

“They’ll sit right behind us,” I said to Josh, staring back at Garret.

We were standing in line for the Tunnel of Love. We weren’t tallest — there were some varsity linemen there, with their bubbly dates — but we were the oldest, by about a generation.

We were the least smiley, too.

What had happened sophomore year was that Garret’s dream had made us remember our own dreams.

For a few nights after the Tunnel of Brotherly Love — it’s hard to even talk about. And it was different for each of us, as near as we could compare, that long after the fact.

Garret’s dream pretty much stopped when he saw that clown’s head twitch over, become aware of us, its eyes completely fixed on me and Dick, kissing. It was like his dream was stopping there because that’s where he flinched.

The way it was for Dick was that he woke in his bed for no reason.

He was living in town with his grandparents then, sleeping in the same bed his dad had slept in before him.

Their street was Durham, and it was the same as Dogwood and Emerald and every other street.

A hundred times before, he’d lifted the old-fashioned window of his bedroom, stepped out careful of his grandmother’s prize flowers, and gone off into the night with us, the silver spokes of our bikes’ wheels flashing moonlight.

It’s what he thought was happening again. That we’d touched the glass of his window with a twig, were waiting out on the lawn for him.

The way he told it, looking away so we couldn’t make out what exactly was happening to his eyes, he kind of drifted up from bed, ghosted across to the window, dodging the creaky floorboard.

The lawn was empty. Just moonlight on dead grass.

He looked up the street, then back again, said out loud, “Hunh,” and turned to get back in his bed.

Except there was a clown in it. A clown lifting up the sheet, in invitation.

Which is where it cut off for him, the whole rest of that night.

Some people are blessed, I guess.

Where it picked up for me was in the nurse’s office at school.

I was bleeding into my underwear.

From back there.

The sheriff came down, the district’s counselor drove in, and then Doctor E showed up, a sour look on his face. I was wearing dark green sweatpants from the lost and found by then. Doctor E said it was recent, what had happened to me, what had been happening to me. Just a night or two ago, and this was Thursday. I hadn’t been anywhere but home right after school all week.

There was only one answer who it could be.

My dad didn’t know what was waiting for him when he coasted in at seven that night, his hard hat cocked up on the dashboard.

My teacher then was Ms. Willoughby.

She walked right out across the sidewalk in her skirt and cardigan, waited for my father to stand from the truck, his gloves folded in his hands like he’d always taught me — a man’s only as good as his gloves, always take them inside for the night — and she slapped him across the face, then hid her face and ran down the sidewalk.

I know because I was watching from the back seat of my mom’s car, three houses down.

We were supposed to have left, my mom even had a thick clutch of one-dollar bills for the motel that night, from a hat the principal had passed, but she couldn’t do it. She had to see.

The men gathered on the lawn took turns on my father. Boots, fists, knees. When one of them limbered a crowbar up from the side of his leg, though, the sheriff guided it back down.

My father woke up in jail, and then in court, and then in lockup in Lubbock, waiting for transfer down to Huntsville. That simple.

I don’t know what ever happened to his gloves.

All I did know, the secret I only ever told Garret and Dick, was that in my bed a few nights later, something caught behind my knee. Something that had been lost in the sheets.

It was a little red ball made from foam. With a slit in the side.

A clown nose.

The car jerked us forward, into the past.

Because this was the Tunnel of Love, the seats weren’t molded for two, but for one, and angled to the center so you slid into whoever you were with.

“Is it scary?” Josh said, his hand on my leg.

“No,” I lied.

Garret and Dick were right behind us. They fit into their car even tighter, were liking it even less. It would have been hilarious, any other night.

Dick said he’d burned the underwear he’d bled into, that he’d never told the nurse about.

Garret didn’t have any memory at all. He’d never dreamed white clown fingers wrapping around his naked hips from the side. It was like that one silver flash of light had wiped him clean.

Our plan was to ride until it worked, until it happened, until we saw that clown turn its face our way.

My plan was to tip my cap off this first time, so Josh would believe that we were going back for it. And that we were going back for it again, and then I’d just keep losing it over the side of the car.

Meaning this was just a dry run. This was just prep, just casing the place. Seeing if we had the nerve or not.

Still, I held my son close to my side, and he sensed that something was off. I could feel it in his breathing. In the way he was trying to watch everything at once, his head on a swivel.

When he flinched from the first stupid strobe going off like a camera flash, I pulled him closer yet, and, because it’s what you do, I kissed his forehead to keep him safe, and in that instant Garret screamed.

I didn’t know his throat could sound like that. I don’t think he did either. And it wasn’t stopping, either.

Everybody screamed with him.

Me and Josh turned and Garret was trying to fight his way from the car but the crossbar had him pinned at the lap. All he had to crawl out of was his skin, and he was about to.

Dick looked to me like for help, and my face went cold when I saw what had happened, when I saw why Garret was flipping out.

Dick had two black-eyeliner crosses drawn across his eyes, crosses with those diamond tips like a wrought-iron cemetery fence. Like a clown.

“What?” he said, touching where I was looking, his finger coming back dabbed black.

I touched my eyes to be sure, but my fingers came back normal.

Two or three clanks of the car’s chain later, Garret was able to grab onto a prop pitchfork, jam it under his steel wheel to. I don’t know. Tip them over, spill him out? Run the plastic tines up under Dick’s jaw, splash them out through his eye sockets?

I was able to turn around enough in my car to wrestle the pitchfork to a standstill.

They had to shut the ride down.

“I–I remember now,” Garret said, and it was like he was crying from his mouth.

His dream had finally moved past that clown’s face. Into the nights after.

He had to breathe into a popcorn bag back by the trash cans for ten minutes before he could talk. I kept Josh behind me, like trying to block him from having to see this, and could tell from my hand on his shoulder that he was scared, that he was glad for my hand on his shoulder.

When Garret finally pulled the bag away, he had those greasy popcorn husks all in the stubble around his mouth.

“This is off,” Dick said up to me, his eyes red from scrubbing.

“Like hell,” I told him.

Tina hugged me when I deposited Josh on the porch, and, because I’d once got down on a knee to ask her to spend her life with me, she held me a breath longer than necessary, like she was hugging what could have been, too.

“Remember the window,” I told Josh when I bent down to tell him good night.

Tina was already inside the house.

Through the door I could see my favorite chair. It had a crochet blanket draped across it now.

Josh nodded his serious nod.

I’d told him I was going to go back to the carnival for one of those chocolate bars, was going to slip it over the sill if I could.

We took shifts staying awake, me and Garret and Dick. Or, Garret and Dick took shifts. I couldn’t shut my eyes. They wanted the clown dead, sure. But it was my son in there.

Tina came in, kissed Josh good night, pulled the chain on his light, and eased his door shut like she always did. The house was old, had high doors so the air could circulate. It was good for staying cool, but the drapes in the living room would move when Josh opened his window, the air from his room pulling down the hall at them.

I held my breath when Josh appeared at the window, his head just cresting the sill, but the blue light of Tina’s television never faltered. Meaning she hadn’t walked in front of it, to check the source of the draft.

“What?” Dick said.

I shook my head no, nothing.

Garret still wasn’t talking.

He did have a gun now, though. The twenty gauge from behind the seat of his truck. We hadn’t been able to pry it away.

All night, not one shadow moved in Josh’s room.

Because it was Saturday, Tina wasn’t up early, either.

I was the only one awake at the curb anymore.

I started the truck, eased us away.

At the Egg Shack, we shoveled breakfast in.

“It was because we didn’t go through enough times,” Garret finally said, just coughing it out all at once.

Me and Dick stopped eating, waited for more, didn’t want to mess him up now that he could talk again.

We’d barely got him to trade Dick’s.38 snub nose for the twenty gauge. The black rubber grip was sticking up from Garret’s pants like a billy club handle in a gangster movie. But it was better than a shotgun.

“We can go back—” I started to say, my soggy toast halfway to my mouth.

I stopped it there.

Dick and Garret looked where I was looking.

A clown was crossing from a booth on the east side of the Egg Shack. He was making for the bathroom.

Regular clothes, but the white was still on his face. Just smeared around.

“No nose,” Dick said.

He was right.

Not no clown nose, but no nose at all. Like, he’d left his foam one in some kid’s bed, and so the one he wore in the daytime, it hadn’t come back, looked all scooped out now, like on a skull.

Garret’s hand jabbed down for the.38 but I took him by the elbow, guided him calm.

“Get the truck,” I told him, sliding my keys across the table at him.

Dick was already laying a ten and a twenty on the table.

Ninety seconds later, on the east side of the Egg Shack, I managed to sideswipe a waitress, sending her coffee and flapjacks and ketchup bottles crashing all over the floor.

Where nobody was looking for about ten seconds then was at the short hall that fed down into the bathrooms.

Had they been, they’d have seen a thirty-six-year-old man dragging a sleeping clown out the front door, rolling him into the bed of a truck. The clown wasn’t exactly sleeping, though.

I didn’t help pick up the breakfast I’d spilled.

“This is for my dad,” I said, and applied the water pump pliers to the clown’s lower lip and gave it my weight slow, pound by pound.

What Dick had was a horse inseminator, long retired.

Instead of pulling the clown’s pants down, we just cut them up the back, right along his crack.

What Garret had was his fists. I finally made him put gloves on.

It was eleven in the morning. We’d hardly even started.

Dick was right, too. He could bring a clown back from the dead, it turned out.

We splashed water over him and then hid.

He came to slow.

The water hadn’t even washed his white paste off. Maybe if you wear it enough nights, it doesn’t come off anymore.

Once he got his bearings, he reached over for whatever he could grab onto. It was an old pen, like for milking. He pulled himself to it, climbed it like a ladder.

Because Dick was Dick, he’d figured that’s what the clown would do. So he’d broke a green-glass bottle, spread it out along the top of the boards of that milking pen.

The clown fell back, curled around his hands, and rocked sideways in the dirt.

When he stood the next time, it was with the help of a shovel handle we’d planted. It was just a handle, because it’s no fun if the whole world is sharp edges.

He used it like a crutch, like an oar, and made his way to the wide door we’d left thrown open.

The clown nodded about all the open space and took off at a hobble across the field. It was winter wheat gone native, all golden and headed out. Garret’s dad had sown it probably twenty years ago, just to hold the topsoil down, keep it from blowing into town.

Thirty yards out, one of the steel traps Dick had bought bit up into the clown’s shin.

We just watched.

The trap wasn’t tied to anything.

The clown fought it for a minute or two then stood again, started clumping to freedom.

Until the next trap.

Dick had thirty of them, all told.

“Now that’s a funny clown,” he said.

This time we drowned him. Slow.

Because Dick couldn’t guarantee bringing the clown back a third time — the second time had been shaky enough, sparks and the smell of burnt meat everywhere, the needle in the clown’s heart over and over, like looking for the magic spot, the on switch — I finally flicked my yellow pocketknife open.

It had been my dad’s.

When he’d died in Huntsville, they’d mailed us the envelope of possessions he was supposed to get back.

It was sharper than sin, could cut a hair longways two times if I held steady.

You know how sometimes when you’re eating a roast on a Sunday afternoon, and there’s a dark purple vein in there, and you kind of pull on it and it comes with your fork for a little ways before snapping?

That’s where I was going. That’s what I wanted to burrow around for, pull up into the daylight, show this clown.

“Now hold him,” I said to Dick and Garret.

It was a joke. The clown didn’t have any fight left to him.

I rolled his sleeve up and jerked my head back.

“Now that’s commitment,” Dick said.

The clown’s white makeup was even under his shirt.

None of us said it, but I know it made me wonder what else was white, in his pants. And whether that had rubbed into any of us that one summer, like Desitin.

I ground my teeth together.

Already this clown’s face was a mash of blood and meat, and he was bleeding into what was left of his underwear for sure, and there was battery acid mixed in with that blood instead of horse semen, and one of his feet flopped over now from the teeth of that first trap, but all of that fell away when I saw the fish belly part of his arm.

“It’s because he’s a freak,” I said, licking my lips to get this cut right. To keep my hand steady.

“And we’re sure he’s the one, right?” Dick said for the second time.

It was because of how old the clown was, or wasn’t.

“They don’t age the same,” I said up to Dick, staring hard at him to make my case.

Not like we could stop now anyway.

“One clown’s as good as any other,” Garret said.

His voice was coming back. His head was starting to work again.

“Just do it,” Dick said.

I did, the blade slipping into the clown’s arm like the arm was made of butter, like the flesh wanted my knife.

The white didn’t stop at the skin, as it turned out.

The clown was paste all the way in.

When I looked up, he smiled at me, dark blood spilling from the low corner of his mouth, and then his whole face bulged up at once, the instant before it burst onto mine.

Garret had had the.38 right to the clown’s temple.

He was pulling the trigger and screaming, screaming and pulling the trigger.

I spit out what I could — it tasted like paint — let the clown slump away.

To finish it, we tied the clown to my truck like we’d promised, dragged him in figure eights across the other side of the field from Dick’s traps. We kept having to stop to tie onto a different part. He was loose. He was coming apart.

“How many clowns can you fit in a car?” Dick asked, turned sideways to look through the back glass.

“A lot, like this,” I said.

We piled what was left in the barn and burned it.

“Let it go,” Garret said, when the barn itself caught.

If I say we held hands in that firelight, then it was as third graders, and the light on our faces, it was from the entry arch of a carnival, when the world was a different world.

Because I wanted it to stop with me, I didn’t pass my yellow knife on to Josh like I’d always meant to.

Instead, at work one day I just dropped it down a drain, walked away.

As for Dick, he called his ex three days later, made her listen on the phone when he shot himself.

They found him naked at his kitchen table, his dinner dishes drying on the rack. He’d drawn the black crosses over his eyes. With a ballpoint pen, the coroner said at first. But it turned out he’d used a razor blade first, then cracked a pen open, smeared the ink in, and washed the extra off.

It was a closed casket.

At the funeral Garret just looked at me, didn’t say anything.

What can you say?

Because nobody else would know to, I looked in Dick’s shed and his truck and even out at the old barn, but his steel traps were all gone. Maybe cocked and loaded out in the scrub now, waiting for some other clown to step into them.

When Josh asked where Aunt Dick was, I let my eyes catch Tina’s for a moment, got the go-ahead from her, and took Josh for a walk, explained a few things.

“Like Rusty,” Josh said.

Rusty, my dog I’d had when I married Tina. Rusty, Josh’s first friend. His best friend. Rusty was buried in the church cemetery, now. We’d had to sneak in to do it. Because we loved him. All three of us had been crying. I’d thought for sure we were going to last forever.

“Like Rusty,” I said, and took his hand.

Josh smiled.

“What?” I said.

“He brought me that chocolate bar last night,” he said, trying not to smile.

I walked for sixteen more steps, replaying this in my head, and when I asked Josh the next question, I didn’t stop and squat down and square him up to me so I could watch his face. I just said it real casual, like we were already talking: “He?”

“Aunt Dick,” Josh said.

“But—” I said.

“His name isn’t Dick anymore, though,” Josh said, and whispered the next part: “It’s Rich.”

My face was hot, then cold. Then numb.

“And he’s not like Rusty,” Josh said. “He said he, that he ran away, that’s all. That he joined the carnival.”

I shut my eyes, walked blind the next three days, the next week.

Where I found Garret was the fairgrounds. It was still trashed up from the carnival.

“It’s just wood and fiberglass,” he said.

He was talking about the Tunnel of Love.

“And electricity,” I said.

“And electricity,” he said, nodding.

Neither of us were standing where the Tunnel had been. We were in line, or would have been, had it still been there.

But I guess it was. I guess it always is.

A popcorn bag blew against my leg. I kicked it loose, watched it leave.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” Garret said.

Dick. Rich.

“You’re not going to—?” I said across to him, holding my gun finger into my own mouth like Dick had.

“Got this for you,” Garret said back.

It was my yellow knife. From work.

I took it, looked at both sides, then up to him.

He looked at me in a way I couldn’t figure. A way that meant everything and nothing both at once.

“Sometimes I think we — that something happened that first time in the Tunnel,” he said then, looking where it had been. “That there was a surge or a storm or a solar flare or lightning, something perfect and terrible,” he went on. “And it like trapped us there, right? And we’re still there, and this is all a dream. This is all what might have been. But it doesn’t have to be. We can still get to the end of the ride, go on to the next one.”

I looked over to him.

“Or just leave the carnival altogether, I mean,” he said, “go home,” and licked his top lip fast, like I wasn’t supposed to see.

“I—” I said, and the reason I didn’t get the rest out was that Garret’s mouth was on mine, my face in his hands.

He was crying as he kissed me.

He was trying to bring us back, he was trying to start us over.

I pushed him away hard enough that he fell, and then, after twenty-five years of watching each other’s backs, of keeping each other’s secrets and believing each other’s lies, I left him there.

Tina said maybe when I brought her my grandmother’s wedding band for the second time in our lives.

Maybe.

It was good enough.

I stayed that night, not the next, not the next either, and then for two days in a row woke up in what had been my own bed, once upon a time. Inside of two months, I’d moved back in.

The first thing I did was take Josh’s closet door off, and nail his window shut.

Tina watched from the doorway.

I hated myself for saying it, but I said it anyway, that I was doing this because there were men out there like Josh’s grandpa had been.

Tina couldn’t argue.

The crochet blanket on my chair wasn’t bad, either.

Me and Tina, we were kids again, edging around each other to the bathroom, barely getting to know each other. Twice I woke to her watching me from her side of the bed, her head propped up on an elbow.

“What are you doing?” I said, my voice creaky.

“This is us,” she said back.

It was.

A week later, Josh threw up into his eggs.

It was chocolate, like syrup.

I pushed back from the table and stood all at once, my chair skittering into the refrigerator.

Tina looked at me like I was insane. And maybe I was. But Josh’s eyes when he was throwing up, they never left mine.

After he’d left for school, I checked his window.

The two nails were there on the sill, neatly extracted, the heads not even bent into taco shells like a claw hammer should do. It was like they’d been pushed up from the inside, somehow. Guided out, deposited there, not even hidden.

I called Garret. The phone rang and rang.

Instead of telling Tina anything, I made up a dream I hadn’t had. It was of finding a dead clown on the lawn. Only, when I started rubbing the makeup from its face, it was my dad under there.

It was my way of telling her what we’d done out at Garret’s dad’s old barn.

She was supposed to tell me it was all right, it was nothing.

What she did was just watch me.

“You all right?” I asked her.

“You?” she said.

“I’ve got you,” I told her.

“The carnival’s coming back,” she said.

I could feel my heart beating against my ribs.

“Already?” I said, not sure a year could have passed.

It couldn’t have, could it?

“I think it’s a different one,” Tina said, leafing through the mail. “Or maybe one of their trucks broke, and we’re just on their way home. Doesn’t matter, right? Carnival’s a carnival.”

She looked up to me but I couldn’t make words right then.

“Last time you had to pick Josh up to take him,” Tina said, like charting how far we’d come. “I told you not to let him ride any of the fast—”

“Dick didn’t like the carnival,” I said all at once, talking all over what she was trying to say.

“Dick,” she said, tasting the name. Rolling it around in her mouth. Considering whether the likes and dislikes of a suicide should have any bearing on us.

But she didn’t call me on it.

I stayed up after her that night. Listening for the soft whoosh of clown feet on hardwood.

In the morning there was a new chocolate bar on the seat of my truck, the old-fashioned kind like from the midway of the carnival I knew.

I took Tina’s car to work.

Because I really did have a pump call from Deacon Banta, one nearly all the way over to Idalou, I wasn’t there to keep Tina from taking Josh back to the carnival at the last moment, on a whim. The note on the refrigerator told me where they were. My ticket was under the magnet. She’d got them free at work, surprise.

Like always, she’d scratched a happy face at the bottom of the note.

I fell to my knees in the kitchen, had to hold onto the counter.

What I was seeing was Dick — Rich — watching them under the unsteady lights of the carnival. Halfway hiding behind a turnstile. His teeth sharp, shiny with saliva.

But no.

He’ll keep them safe, I told myself. That’s why he’s there. He’s their guardian angel, scurrying through the shadows, a dark little chaperone.

If he remembered who he was.

If he could remember.

I went out to my truck, opened the glove compartment, ate the melted and re-formed and melted and re-formed chocolate bar.

Across town I could see the very top of the Ferris wheel. It was turning like a saw blade on fire in slowed-down time.

The whole neighborhood was empty.

I walked through the living room, through the kitchen, and walked it again, and again, banging the heels of my hands together.

Twice already I’d been out to the burned barn at the county line, to see if anything had changed. To see if anything had climbed out.

“What what what,” I said, and then made the deal that if I turned on all the lights in the house and kept them on, wasting energy, then that would be enough of an offering, that would keep them safe, that would bring them back to me.

Next I moved the furniture in the living room, walked the shape of the Tunnel of Brotherly Love’s rails, as near as I could remember them. I even closed my eyes at the darkest part.

And then I remembered the basement light.

I raced for it, trying to get there before my deal could get rejected, and when I pulled the door open the light from the kitchen spilled down the stairs ahead of me.

At the bottom of all the steps were Tina and Josh, like they’d been dropped right from where I was standing. They’d tumbled down like scarecrows, like mannequins, fallen in a jumble of angled-wrong arms and legs, their heads too far sideways for the necks not to be broke.

Just as it had been for my dad, I was the only one who’d been here all week.

I shook my head no, please no.

They were dead, obviously dead, both of them. There were cobwebs dusting up from the bridges of their noses and the webs of their fingers, but their faces were still the same. No decay, no sunken cheeks. Eyes dry and staring. Ready to see me if I stepped in front of them.

I threw up my chocolate onto my chest, onto my hands. There were flecks of silver in it, from the foil I hadn’t been able to peel out, had eaten like punishment.

“No no no. ” I said, coming down the stairs for them, cradling Josh’s head in my lap, touching Tina’s face, flailing my hand around for the basement light’s chain, to see them better.

The light didn’t help.

They were cold, clammy.

Shaking my head no, I unfolded my yellow knife, slit the inner part of Tina’s arm open as tenderly as I could. Because I had to see. I had to know.

Her arm was red on the inside. And still warm. Seeping down to drip off her elbow, even.

I pushed her away, kicked her away, and kicked Josh away too, and then the basement door sucked itself shut. Because that’s how this old house works. Drafts.

The front door had opened.

There are moments you can’t take back. Moments that keep on going and going. Moments that swallow the world.

One is when you’re standing in line in front of a plastic and fiberglass carnival ride, your two best friends beside you, licking their lips for what they’re about to have to do.

Another is when you’re sitting in the back of a low-slung Bonneville Brougham at night, three doors down from your own, and you don’t say anything to save your father, even when your principal holds your father’s face down, smears lipstick over his mouth, all around his mouth.

The door opening upstairs was the third, for me.

“Dad?” Josh said, because I’d never have all the lights on if I wasn’t here, and my heart swelled with his voice, but his voice was wrong, too. Different, slightly. Doubled, echoed, undercut, something.

Dad? he said again, and this time, just from the way corner of my eye, I saw it.

The second Dad, it had come from the Josh on the floor, the Josh I’d kicked away. His mouth was moving like a puppet with the Josh above. Like tracing that sound. Like a ghost might pretend it still matters, that it’s still connected to the living world.

A lump swelled my throat up, threatened to spill.

When Tina’s footsteps crossed the kitchen to the basement door, I stood awkwardly, switched my knife to my other hand, to the hand closer to the door, and I nodded to myself that it was good I had my knife. That it was good I had it back.

But then I looked harder at that knife. Slower. And — and I flashed on two or three days after dropping that knife down the drain at work, how I’d needed to trim a hangnail, thought that it sure would be nice to have that yellow knife back.

So the world gave it to me.

So, the world gave it to me.

My chest went cold, my face numb, my breath shallow, my eyebrows crowding together on my forehead.

“No,” I said.

But yes. Sitting in the Egg Shack that morning after the carnival, I sure had wanted a clown to kill, hadn’t I? And so one walked right in front of me. And then Dick, who couldn’t wire speakers if the whole world depended on it, he’d been able to restart that clown’s heart, just like I’d been wishing. And when I didn’t want to be reminded of that night anymore, when I wanted it all just to go away, stay part of the past, Dick killed himself, Garret faded away. And, and — I shook my head no, please.

When I wanted Tina back, she said maybe.

I’d kissed my son’s forehead in the Tunnel of Brotherly Love, and I’d come out into a different world. Only, only this one had cracks in it. And there were clowns watching me through those cracks. Clowns waiting for me to get it, this big joke.

How many clowns can you fit in one man’s head?

I fell to my knees in the basement, the impact jarring my teeth.

Tina’s hand was to the doorknob at the top of the stairs now, the light on that doorknob already splintering.

I raised my hand to hide my face from her, opened my mouth to tell her not to come down here, but then, instead, my mouth said, “You two have fun?”

But in that doubling way.

The voice was coming from upstairs.

The doorknob gathered its reflected light back, went slack.

“We missed you,” Tina said, her footsteps crossing the kitchen again, to the carpet where I probably was.

“Missed you back,” the me up there said. The one that was up there now because I’d wanted to be a better husband, a better father.

It wasn’t me, though.

To prove it, I held my arm up, cut it longways, elbow to wrist, and deep, deeper than I meant to.

The slit yawned open like stretched rubber. Onto the white flan I was made of. The springy moist foam. The scentless paste.

I tried to swallow, couldn’t, and, because there was nothing else to do, I reached up beside my face, pulled the chain light off one last time, the click in the basement the exact sound of a carnival car on its long chain, clanking forward.

I angled my head up as I think I’d always known I would, waiting for a pair of lips to rush across the basement, touch mine.

This is the darkest part.

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.

SKULLPOCKET

by Nathan Ballingrud

Jonathan Wormcake, the Gentleman Corpse of Hob’s Landing, greets me at the door himself. Normally one of his several servants would perform this minor duty, and I can only assume it’s my role as a priest in the Church of the Maggot that affords me this special attention. I certainly don’t believe it has anything to do with our first encounter, fifty years ago this very day. I’d be surprised if he remembers that at all.

He greets me with a cordial nod of the head, and leads me down a long hallway to the vast study, lined with thousands of books, and boasting broad windows overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, where the waters are painted gold by an autumn sun. I remember this walk, and this study, with a painful twinge in my heart. I was just a boy when I came here last. Now, like Mr. Wormcake, I am an old man, and facing an end to things.

I’m shocked by how old he looks. I know I shouldn’t be; Mr. Wormcake’s presence in this mansion by the bay extends back one hundred years, and his history with the town is well documented. But since the death of the Orchid Girl last year, he has withdrawn from public life, and in that time his aspect has changed considerably. Though his bearing remains regal, and his grooming is as immaculate as ever, age hangs from him like a too-large coat. The flesh around his head is entirely gone, and his hair — once his proudest feature — is no more. The bare bones of his skull gleam brightly in the late afternoon sunlight, and the eyes which once transfixed an entire town have fallen to dust, leaving dark sockets. He looks frail, and he looks tired.

To be fair, the fourteen children crowding the room, all between the ages of six and twelve, only underscore this impression. They’ve been selected for the honor of attending the opening ceremonies of the Seventieth Annual Skullpocket Fair by the Maggot, which summoned them here through their dreams. The children are too young, for the most part, to understand the significance of the honor, and so they mill about the great study in nervous anticipation, chattering to each other and touching things they shouldn’t.

Mr. Wormcake’s longtime manservant — formally known as Brain in a Jar 17, of the Frozen Parliament, but who is more affectionately recognized as the kindly “Uncle Digby”—glides into the room, his body a polished, gold-inlaid box on rolling treads, topped with a clear dome under which the floating severed head of an old man is suspended in a bubbling green solution, white hair drifting like ghostly kelp. He is received with a joyful chorus of shouts from the children, who immediately crowd around him. He embraces the closest of them with his metal arms.

“Oh my, look at all these wonderful children,” he says. “What animated little beasts!”

To anyone new to Hob’s Landing, Uncle Digby can be unnerving. His face and eyes are dead, and his head appears to be nothing more than a preserved portion of a cadaver; but the brain inside is both alive and lively, and it speaks through a small voice box situated beneath the glass dome.

While the children are distracted, Mr. Wormcake removes a small wooden box from where it sits discreetly on a bookshelf. He opens it and withdraws the lower, fleshy portion of a human face — from below the nose to the first curve of the chin, kept moist in a thin pool of blood. A tongue is suspended from it by a system of leather twine and gears. Mr. Wormcake affixes the half face to his skull by means of an elastic band, and pushes the tongue into his mouth. Blood trickles down the jawline of the skull and dapples the white collar of his starched shirt. The effect is disconcerting, even to me, who have grown up in Hob’s Landing and am accustomed to stranger sights than this.

Jonathan Wormcake has not ventured into public view for twenty years, since the denuding of his skull, and it occurs to me that I am the first person not a part of this household to witness this procedure.

I am here because Mr. Wormcake is dying. We don’t know how a ghoul dies. Not even he is sure, as he left the warrens as a boy, and was never indoctrinated into the mysteries. The dreams given to us by the Maggot, replete with images of sloughing flesh and great, black kites riding silently along the night’s air currents, suggest that it’s not an ending, but a transformation. But we have no experience to measure these dreams against. What waits for him on the far side of this death remains an open question.

He stretches open his mouth and moves his tongue, like a man testing the fit of a new article of clothing. Apparently satisfied, he looks at me at last. “It’s good of you to come, especially on this night,” he says.

“I have to admit I was surprised you chose the opening night of Skullpocket Fair for this. It seems there might have been a more discreet time.”

He looks at the children gathered around Uncle Digby, who is guiding them gently toward the great bay window facing east, where the flat waters of the Chesapeake are painted gold by the late afternoon sun. They are animated by excitement and fear, a tangle of emotions I remember from when I was in their place. “I have no intention of stealing their moment,” he says. “This night is about them. Not me.”

I’m not convinced this is entirely true. Though the children have been selected to participate in the opening ceremonies of Skullpocket Fair, and will be the focus of the opening act, the pomp and circumstance is no more about them than it is about the Maggot, or the role of the church in this town. Really, it’s all about Jonathan Wormcake. Never mind the failed mayoral campaign of the midseventies, never mind the fallout from the Sleepover Wars or the damning secrets made public by the infamous betrayal of his best friend, Wenceslas Slipwicket — Wormcake is the true patriarch of Hob’s Landing; the Skullpocket Fair is held each year to celebrate that fact, and to fortify it.

That this one marks the one hundredth anniversary of his dramatic arrival in town, and his ritual surrendering of this particular life, makes his false modesty a little hard to take.

“Sit down,” he says, and extends a hand toward the most comfortable chair in the room: a high-backed, deeply cushioned piece of furniture of the sort one might expect to find in the drawing room of an English lord. It faces the large windows, through which we are afforded a view of the sun-flecked waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Wormcake maneuvers another, smaller chair away from the chess table in the corner and closer to me, so we can speak more easily. He eases himself slowly into it, and sighs with a weary satisfaction as his body settles, at last, into stillness. If he had eyes, I believe he would close them now.

Meanwhile, Uncle Digby has corralled the children into double rows of folding chairs, also facing the bay windows. He is distributing soda and little containers of popcorn, which do not calm the children, but do at least draw their focus.

“Did you speak to any of the children after they received the dream?” Wormcake asks me.

“No. Some of them were brought to the church by their parents, but I didn’t speak to any of them personally. We have others who specialize in that kind of thing.”

“I understand it can be a traumatic experience for some of them.”

“Well, it’s an honor to be selected by the Maggot, but it can also be pretty terrifying. The dream is very intense. Some people don’t respond well.”

“That makes me sad.”

I glance over at the kids, seated now, the popcorn spilling from their hands, shoveled into their mouths. They bristle with a wild energy: a crackling, kinetic radiation that could spill into chaos and tears if not expertly handled. Uncle Digby, though, is nothing if not an expert. The kindliest member of the Frozen Parliament, he has long been the spokesman for the family, as well as a confidant to Mr. Wormcake himself. There are many who believe that without his steady influence, the relationship between the Wormcakes and the townspeople of Hob’s Landing would have devolved into brutal violence long ago.

“The truth is, I don’t want anyone to know why you’re here. I don’t want my death to be a spectacle. If you came up here any other night, someone would notice, and it wouldn’t be hard for them to figure out why. This way, the town’s attention is on the fair. And anyway, I like the symmetry of it.”

“Forgive me for asking, Mr. Wormcake, but my duty here demands it: are you doing this because of the Orchid Girl’s death?”

He casts a dark little glance at me. It’s not possible to read emotion in a naked skull, of course, and the prosthetic mouth does not permit him any range of expression; but the force of the look leaves me no doubt of his irritation. “The Orchid Girl was her name for the people in town. Her real name was Gretchen. Call her by that.”

“My apologies. But the question remains, I’m afraid. To leave the world purely, you must do it unstained by grief.”

“Don’t presume to teach me about the faith I introduced to you.”

I accept his chastisement quietly.

He is silent for a long moment, and I allow myself to be distracted by the sound of the children gabbling excitedly to each other, and of Uncle Digby relating some well-worn anecdote about the time the Leviathan returned to the bay. Old news to me, but wonderful stuff to the kids. When Mr. Wormcake speaks again, it is to change course.

“You mentioned the dream which summons the children as being intense. This is not your first time to the house, is it?”

“No. I had the dream myself, when I was a kid. I was summoned to Skullpocket Fair. Seventy years ago. The very first one.”

“My, my. Now that is something. Interesting that it’s you who will perform my death ritual. So that puts you in your eighties? You look young for your age.”

I smile at him. “Thanks, but I don’t feel young.”

“Who does, anymore? I suppose I should say ‘welcome back.’ ”

The room seems host to a dizzying compression of history. There are three fairs represented tonight, at least for me: The Seventieth Annual Skullpocket Fair, which commences this evening; the first, which took place in 1944—seventy years ago, when I was a boy — and set my life on its course in the church; and the Cold Water Fair of 1914, a hundred years ago, which Uncle Digby would begin describing very shortly. That Mr. Wormcake has chosen this night to die, and that I will be his instrument, seems too poetic to be entirely coincidental.

As if on cue, Uncle Digby’s voice rings out, filling the small room. “Children, quiet down now, quiet down. It’s time to begin.” The kids settle at once, as though some spell has been spoken. They sit meekly in their seats, the gravity of the moment settling over them at last. The nervous energy is pulled in and contained, expressing itself now only in furtive glances and, in the case of one buzz-cut little boy, barely contained tears.

I remember, viscerally and immediately, the giddy terror that filled me when I was that boy, seventy years ago, summoned by a dream of a monster to a monster’s house. I’m surprised when I feel the tears in my own eyes. And I’m further surprised by Mr. Wormcake’s hand, hard and bony beneath its glove, coming over to squeeze my own.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he says. “Another instance of symmetry. Balance eases the heart.”

I’m gratified, of course.

But as Uncle Digby begins to speak, it’s hard to remember anything but the blood.

One hundred years ago, says Uncle Digby to the children, three little ghouls came out to play. They were Wormcake, Slipwicket, and Stubblegut: best friends since birth. They were often allowed to play in the cemetery, as long as the sun was down and the gate was closed. There were many more children playing amongst the gravestones that night, but we’re only going to concern ourselves with these three. The others were only regular children, and so they were not important.

Now, there were two things about this night that were already different from other nights they went aboveground to play. Does anybody know what they were?

No? Well, I’ll tell you. One was that they were let out a little bit earlier than normal. It was still twilight, and though sometimes ghouls were known to leave the warrens during that time, rarely were children permitted to come up so early. That night, however, the Maggot had sent word that there was to be a meeting in the charnel house — an emergency meeting, to arrange a ritual called an Extinction Rite, which the children did not understand, but which seemed to put the adults in a dreadfully dull mood. The children had to be got out of the way. There might have been some discussion about the wisdom of this decision, but ghouls are by nature a calm and reclusive folk, so no one worried that anything untoward would happen.

The other unusual thing about that night, obviously, was the Cold Water Fair.

The Cold Water Fair had been held for years and years, and it was a way for Hob’s Landing to celebrate its relationship with the Chesapeake Bay, and to commemorate the time the Leviathan rose to devour the town, but was turned away with some clever thinking and some good advice. This was the first time the fair was held on this side of Hob’s Landing. In previous years it had been held on the northern side of the town, out of sight of the cemetery. But someone had bought some land and got grumpy about the fair being on it, so now they were holding it right at the bottom of the hill instead.

The ghoul children had never seen anything so wonderful! Imagine living your life in the warrens, underground, where everything was stone and darkness and cold earth. Whenever you came up to play, you could see the stars, you could see the light on the water, and you could even see the lights from town, which looked like flakes of gold. But this! Never anything like this. The fair was like a smear of bright paint: candy-colored pastels in the blue wash of air. A great illuminated wheel turned slowly in the middle of it, holding swinging gondola cars full of people.

“A Ferris wheel!” shouts a buzz-cut boy who had been crying only a few minutes ago. His face is still ruddy, but his eyes shine with something else, now: something better.

Yes, you’re exactly right. A Ferris wheel! They had never even seen one before. Can you imagine that?

There were gaudy tents arranged all around it, like a little village. It was full of amazing new smells: cotton candy, roasting peanuts, hot cider. The high screams of children blew up to the little ghouls like a wind from a beautiful tomb. They stood transfixed at the fence, those grubby little things, with their hands wrapped around the bars and their faces pressed between.

They wondered, briefly, if this had anything to do with the Extinction Rite the adults kept talking about.

“Do you think they scream like that all the time?” Slipwicket asked.

Wormcake said, “Of course they do. It’s a fair. It’s made just for screaming.”

In fact, children, he had no idea if this was true. But he liked to pretend he was smarter than everybody else, even way back then.

The children laugh. I glance at Mr. Wormcake, to gauge his reaction to what is probably a scripted joke, but his false mouth, blood pasted to his skull, reveals nothing.

Slipwicket released the longest, saddest sigh you have ever heard. It would have made you cry, it was so forlorn. He said, “Oh, how I would love to go to a place made only for screams.” Uncle Digby is laying it on thick here, his metal hands cupping the glass jar of his head, his voice warbling with barely contained sorrow. The kids eat it up.

“Well, we can’t,” said Stubblegut. “We have to stay inside the fence.”

Stubblegut was the most boring ghoul you ever saw. You could always depend on him to say something dull and dreadful. He was morose, always complaining, and he never wanted to try anything new. He was certain to grow up to be somebody’s father, that most tedious of creatures. Sometimes the others would talk about ditching him as a friend, but they could never bring themselves to do it. They were good boys, and they knew you were supposed to stay loyal to your friends — even the boring ones.

“Come along,” Stubblegut said. “Let’s play skullpocket.”

At this, a transformation overtakes the children, as though a current has been fed into them. They jostle in their seats, and cries of “Skullpocket!” arise from them like pheasants from a bramble. They seem both exalted and terrified. Each is a little volcano, barely contained.

Oh, my! Do you know what skullpocket is, children?

“Yes, yes!”

“I do!”

“Yes!”

Excellent! In case any of you aren’t sure, skullpocket is a favorite game of ghouls everywhere. In simple terms, you take a skull and kick it back and forth between your friends until it cracks to pieces. Whoever breaks it is the loser of the game, and has to eat what they find inside its pocket. And what is that, children?

“The brain!”

“Eeeww!”

That’s right! It’s the brain, which everyone knows is the worst bit. It’s full of all the gummy old sorrows and regrets gathered in life, and the older the brain is, the nastier it tastes. While the loser eats, other players will often dance in a circle around him and chant. And what do they chant?

“Empty your pockets! Empty your pockets!” the children shout.

Yes! You must play the game at a run, and respect is given to those who ricochet the skull off a gravestone to their intended target, increasing the risk of breaking it. Of course you don’t have to do that — you can play it safe and just bat it along nicely — but nobody likes a coward, do they, children? For a regular game, people use adult skulls which have been interred for less than a year. More adventurous players might use the skull of an infant, which offers a wonderful challenge.

Well, someone was sent to retrieve a skull from the charnel house in the warrens, which was kept up by the corpse gardeners. There was always one to be spared for children who wanted to play.

The game was robust, with the ghouls careening the skull off trees and rocks and headstones; the skull proved hardy and it went on for quite some time.

Our young Mr. Wormcake became bored. He couldn’t stop thinking about that fair, and the lights and the smells and — most of all — the screams. The screams filled his ears and distracted him from play. After a time, he left the game and returned to the fence, staring down at the fair. It had gotten darker by that time, so that it stood out in the night like a gorgeous burst of mushrooms.

Slipwicket and Stubblegut joined him.

“What are you doing?” said the latter. “The game isn’t over. People will think you’re afraid to play.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Wormcake. And in saying the words, a resolution took shape in his mind. “I’m not afraid of anything. I’m going down there.”

His friends were shocked into silence. It was an awed silence, a holy silence, like the kind you find in church. It was the most outrageous thing they had ever heard anyone say.

“That’s crazy,” Stubblegut said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s forbidden. Because the sunlight people live down there.”

“So what?”

“They’re gross!”

At this, some of the children become upset. Little faces crinkle in outrage.

Now, hold on, hold on. You have to understand how ghouls saw your people at the time. You were very strange to them. Hob’s Landing was as exotic to them as a city on the moon would be to you. People went about riding horses, and they walked around in sunlight. On purpose, for Pete’s sake! Who ever heard of such a thing?

The children start to giggle at this, won over again.

When they came to the cemetery they acted sad and shameful. They buried their dead, the way a cat buries its own scat. They were soft and doughy, and they ate whatever came to hand, the way rats and cockroaches do.

“We’re not cockroaches!” cries one of the children.

Of course not! But the ghouls didn’t understand. They were afraid. So they made up wild ideas about you. And it kept their children from wandering, which was important, because they wanted the warrens to stay a secret. Ghouls had been living under the cities of the sunlight people for as long as there have been sunlight people, and for the most part they had kept their existence hidden. They were afraid of what would happen if they were discovered. Can you blame them for that?

But young Mr. Wormcake was not to be dissuaded by rumors or legends!

“I’m going down there. I want to see what it’s all about.”

Back then, the cemetery gate was not burdened with locks or chains; it simply had a latch, oiled and polished, which Wormcake lifted without trouble or fanfare. The gate swung open, and the wide, bright world spread out before them like a feast at the banquet table. He turned to look at his friends. Behind them, the other children had assembled in a small crowd, the game of skullpocket forgotten. The looks on their faces ranged from fear to excitement to open disgust.

“Well?” he said to his friends. “Are you cowards?”

Slipwicket would not be called a coward! He made a grand show of his exit, lifting each foot with great exaggeration over the threshold and stomping it into the earth with a flourish. He completed his transgression with a happy skip and turned to look at Stubblegut, who lingered on the grave side of the fence and gathered his face into a worried knot. He placed his hands over his wide belly and gave it gentle pats, which was his habit when he was nervous.

At that moment of hesitation, when he might have gone back and warned the adults of what was happening, some unseen event in the fair below them caused a fresh bouquet of screams to lift up and settle over the ghouls like blown leaves. Slipwicket’s whole body seemed to lean toward it, like he was being pulled by a great magnet. He looked at Stubblegut with such longing in his eyes, such a terrible ache, that his frightened friend’s resolve was breached at last, and Stubblegut crossed the threshold himself with a grave and awful reluctance.

He was received with joy.

And before anyone could say jackrabbit, Slipwicket bolted down the hill, a pale little gremlin in the dark green waves of grass. The others followed him in a cool breath of motion, the tall grass like a strange, rippling sea in the moonlight. Of course, they were silent in their elation: the magnitude of their crime was not lost upon them. Wormcake dared not release the cry of elation beating in his lungs.

But, children, they were in high rebellion. They were throwing off the rules of their parents, and riding the wave of their own cresting excitement. Even Stubblegut felt it, like a blush of heat over his moss-grown soul.

Naturally, Uncle Digby’s story stirs up memories of my own first fair.

The dream of the Maggot came to me in 1944, when I was twelve years old. The tradition of the Cold Water Fair had ended thirty years before, on the bloody night Uncle Digby is speaking of, and Hob’s Landing had done without a festival of any sort since. But though we didn’t know it yet, this would be the year the Skullpocket Fair was begun.

I was the sixth kid to receive the dream that year. I had heard of a couple of the others, so I had known, in some disconnected way, that it might happen. I didn’t know what it meant, except that parents were terrified of it. They knew it had something to do with the Wormcake clan, and that was enough to make it suspect. Although this was in 1944, and they’d been living in the mansion for thirty years at that point — peacefully for the most part — there were still many in town who considered them to be the very incarnation of evil. Many of our parents were present at the night of the Cold Water Fair, and they were slow to forgive. The fact that the Orchid Girl came into town and patronized the same shops we did, attended the same shows we did, didn’t help matters at all, as far as they were concerned.

She’s putting on airs, they said. She thinks she’s one of us. At least her husband has the decency to keep himself hidden away in that horrible old mansion.

My friends and I were too young to be saddled with all of the old fears and prejudices of our parents, and anyway we thought the Orchid Girl was beautiful. We would watch her from across the street or through a window when she came to town, walking down Poplar Street as proud as you please, unattended by her servants or by any friends at all. She always wore a bright, lovely dress which swirled around her legs, kept her hair pinned just so, and held her head high — almost defiantly, I can say now, looking back. We would try to see the seams on her face, where it would open up, but we never got close enough. We never dared.

We believed that anyone married to the Orchid Girl couldn’t be all bad. And anyway, Mr. Wormcake always came to the school plays, brought his own children down to the ice skating rink in the wintertime, and threw an amazing Halloween party. Admittedly, half the town never went, but most of us kids managed to make it over there.

We all knew about the Church of the Maggot. There were already neighborhoods converting, renouncing their own god for the one that burrowed through flesh. Some people our parents’ age, also veterans of that night at the fair, had even become priests. They walked around town in grubby white garb, talking on and on about the flesh as meat, the necessity of cleansing the bone, and other things that sounded strange and a little exciting to us. So when some of the children of Hob’s Landing started to dream of the Maggot, the kids worried about it a lot less than the parents or the grandparents did. At first, we were even jealous. Christina Laudener, just one year younger than I was, had the first one, and the next night it was little Eddie Brach. They talked about it in school, and word spread. It terrified them, but we wanted it ourselves nonetheless. They were initiates into some new mystery centered around the Wormcakes, and those of us who were left out burned with a terrible envy.

I was probably the worst of them, turning my jealousy into a bullying contempt whenever I saw them at the school, telling them that the ghouls were going to come into their homes while they were sleeping and kidnap them, so they could feed them to their precious Maggot. I made Eddie cry, and I was glad. I hated him for being a part of something I wasn’t.

Until a couple of nights later, when I had the dream myself.

I’m told that everyone experiences the dream of the Maggot differently. For me it was a waking dream. I climbed out of bed at some dismal hour of the morning, when both my parents were still asleep, and stumbled my way to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet for a long time, waiting for something to happen, but I couldn’t go, despite feeling that I needed to very badly. I remember this being a source of profound distress in the dream, way out of proportion to real life. It terrified me and I felt that it was a sign I was going to die.

I left the toilet and walked down the hallway to my parents’ room, to give them the news of my impending demise. In my dream I knew they would only laugh at me, and it made me hate them.

Then I felt a clutching pain in my abdomen. I dropped to my knees and began to vomit maggots. Copious amounts of them. They wouldn’t stop coming, just splashed out onto the ground with each painful heave, in wriggling piles, ropy with blood and saliva. It went on and on and on. When I stood up, my body was as wrinkled and crushed as an emptied sack. I fell to the floor and had to crawl back to my room.

The next morning I went down to breakfast as usual, and as my father bustled about the kitchen, looking for his keys and his hat, and my mother leaned against the countertop with a cigarette in her hand, I told them that I had received the dream everyone was talking about.

This stopped them both cold. My mother looked at me and said, “Are you sure? What happened? What does it mean?”

“They’re having a fair. I have to go.”

Of course this was absurd; there had been nothing about a fair in the dream at all. But the knowledge sat with all the incontrovertibility of a mountain. Such is the way of the Maggot.

“What fair?” Dad said. “There’s no fair.”

“The Wormcakes,” I said. “They’re having it at the mansion.”

My parents exchanged a look.

“And they invited you in a dream?” he said.

“It wasn’t really like an invitation. It’s more like the Maggot told me I have to come.”

“It’s a summons,” Mom told him. “That’s what Carol was saying. It’s like a command.”

“Like hell,” Dad said. “Who do those freaks think they are?”

“I think I have to go, Dad.”

“You don’t have to do a goddamned thing they tell you. None of us do.”

I started to cry. The thought of disregarding the dream was unthinkable. I felt that clenching in my gut and I feared the maggots were going to start pouring out of my mouth. I thought I could feel them inside me already, chewing away, as though I were already dead. I didn’t know how to articulate what I know now: that the Maggot had emptied me out, and was offering to fill me again. To ignore it would be to live the rest of my life as a husk.

It was a hard cry, as sudden as a monsoon, my cheeks hot and red, the tears painting my face, my breath coming in a thin hiss. Mom rushed to me and engulfed me in her arms, saying the things moms are supposed to say.

“I have to go,” I said. “I have to go, I have to. I have to go.”

I watch the children sitting there in profile, their little faces turned to Uncle Digby and his performance like flowers to the sun, and I try to see myself there all those years ago. The sun is setting outside, and in the eastern facing window darkness is hoarding over the bay. The light in Uncle’s glass dome illuminates the green solution from beneath, and his pale dead face is graced with a rosy pink halo of light.

I must have seen the same thing when I sat there with the other kids. But I don’t remember it. I only remember the fear. I guess I must have laughed at the jokes, just like the others did.

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.

These days, of course, few would want to.

“Be careful,” Mom said, just before I closed the door on them both.

The others and I had agreed to meet in front of the drugstore. Once we’d all assembled, we walked as a group through the center of town, past small gathered clusters of curious neighbors, and up the long road that would take us to the mansion by the bay.

The sun was on its way down.

They rode the Ferris wheel first, says Uncle Digby. From that height they looked down at the fair, and at Hob’s Landing, and at their own cemetery upon the hill. Away from the town, near the coastline, was an old three-story mansion, long abandoned and believed haunted. Even the adult ghouls avoided the place, during their rare midnight excursions into town. But it was only one part of the tapestry.

The world was a spray of light on a dark earth. It was so much bigger than any of them had thought. As their car reached the height of its revolution, and they were bathed in the high cool air of the night, Wormcake was transfixed by the stars above them. They’d never seemed so close before. He sought out the constellations he’d been taught — the Rendering Pot, the Moldy King — and reached his hands over his head, trailing his fingers among them. As the gondola swung down again, it seemed he was dragging flames through the sky.

“Let’s never go home again,” Wormcake said. If the others heard him, they never said so.

And unknown to them, under the hill of graves, their parents were very busy setting up the Extinction Rite. Were the boys missed? I think they must have been. But no one could do anything about it.

* * *

What’s next, children? What is it you really came to hear about?

It’s as though he’s thrown a lit match into a barrel of firecrackers. They all explode at once.

“The freak show!”

“The freak tent!”

“Freak show, freak show!”

Uncle Digby raises his metal arms and a chuckle emits from the voice box beneath the jar. The bubbles churn with a little extra gusto around his floating head, and I think, for a moment, that it really is possible to read joy in that featureless aspect. Whatever tensions might have been festering just a few moments ago, they’re all swept aside by the manic excitement generated by the promise of the freaks. This is what they’ve been waiting to hear.

Yes, well, oh my, what a surprise. I thought you wanted to learn more about ghoul history. Maybe learn the names of all the elders? Or learn how they harvested food from the coffins? It’s really a fascinating process, you know.

“Nooooo!”

Well, well, well. The freaks it is, then.

The ghouls stopped outside a tent striped green and white, where an old man hunched beside a wooden clapboard sign. On that sign, in bright red paint, was that huge, glorious word: FREAKS. The old man looked at the boys with yellowing eyes — the first person to look at them directly all night — and said, “Well? Come to see the show, or to join it?”

He tapped the sign with a long finger, drawing their attention back to it. Beneath the word FREAKS was a list of words in smaller size, painted in an elegant hand. Words like The Most Beautiful Mermaid in the World, The Giant with Two Faces, and — you guessed it—The Orchid Girl.

“Go on in, boys. Just be careful they let you out again.”

They joined the line going inside. Curtains partitioned the interior into three rooms, and the crowd was funneled into a line. Lanterns hung from poles, and strings of lights crisscrossed the top of the tent.

The first freak was a man in a cage. He was seven feet tall, dressed in a pair of ratty trousers. He looked sleepy, and not terribly smart. He hadn’t shaved in some time, his beard bristling like a thicket down his right cheek and jowl. The beard grew spottily on the left side, mostly because of the second face which grew there: doughy and half-formed, like a face had just slid down the side of the head and bunched up on the neck. It had one blinking blue eye, and a nose right next to it, where the other eye should have been. And there was a big, gaping mouth, nestled between the neck and shoulder, with a little tongue that darted out to moisten the chapped lips.

A sign hanging below his cage said, BRUNO: EATER OF CHILDREN.

The ghouls were fascinated by the second face, but the eating children part didn’t seem all that remarkable to them. They’d eaten plenty themselves.

Next up was THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL MERMAID. This one was a bit frustrating, because she was in a tank, and she was lying on the bottom of it. The scaly flesh of her tail was pressed up against the glass, so at first they thought they were looking at nothing more than a huge carp. Only after staring a moment did they notice the human torso which grew from it, curled around itself to hide from the gaze of the visitors. It was a woman’s back, her spine ridged along her sun-dark skin. Long black hair floated around her head like a cloud of ink from an octopus.

Finally, they progressed into the next partition, and they came to THE ORCHID GIRL.

She stood on a platform in the back of the tent, in a huge bell jar. She was just about your age, children. She was wearing a bright blue dress, and she was sitting down with her arms wrapped around her legs, looking out balefully at the crowds of people coming in to see her. She looked quite unhappy. She did not look, at first blush, like a freak; the only thing unusual about her were what appeared to be pale red scars running in long, S-like curves down her face.

Well, here was another disappointing exhibit, the people thought, and they were becoming quite agitated. Someone yelled something at her, and there was talk of demanding their money back.

But everything changed when Wormcake and his friends entered the room. The Orchid Girl sat a bit straighter, as if she had heard or felt something peculiar. She stood on her feet and looked out at the crowd. Almost immediately her gaze fell upon the ghoul children, as though she could sense them through some preternatural ability, and then, children, the most amazing thing happened. The thing that changed the ghouls’ lives, her own life, and the lives of everyone in Hob’s Landing forever afterward.

Her face opened along the red lines, and bloomed in bright, glorious petals of white and purple and green. Her body was only a disguise, you see. She was a gorgeous flower masquerading as a human being.

The people screamed, or dropped to their knees in wonder. Some scattered like roaches in sunlight.

Wormcake and his friends ran too. They fled through the crowd and back out into the night. They were not afraid; they were caught in the grip of destiny. Wormcake, suddenly, was in love. He fled from the terror and the beauty of it.

It was the Orchid Girl who greeted us at the door when we arrived. She looked ethereal. She was in her human guise, and the pale lines dividing her face stood out brightly in the afternoon sun. I was reminded, shamefully, of one of the many criticisms my mother levied against her: “She really should cover that with makeup. She looks like a car accident survivor. It’s disgraceful.”

To us, though, she looked like a visitation from another, better world.

“Hello, children. Welcome to our house. Thank you for joining us.”

That we didn’t have a choice — the summons of the Maggot was not to be ignored — didn’t enter our minds. We felt anointed by her welcome. We knew we’d been made special, and that everyone in Hob’s Landing envied us.

She led us into the drawing room — the one that would host every meeting like this for years to come — where Uncle Digby was waiting to tell us the story. We knew him already through his several diplomatic excursions into town, and were put at ease by his presence. The Orchid Girl joined her husband in two chairs off to the side, and they held hands while they listened.

I sat next to Christina Laudener. We were the oldest. The idea of romantic love was still alien to us, but not so alien that I didn’t feel a twinge when I saw Mr. Wormcake and his wife holding hands. I felt as though I were in the grip of some implacable current, and that my life was being moved along a course that would see me elevated far beyond my current circumstance. As though I were the hero of a story, and this was my first chapter. I knew that Christina was a part of it. I glanced at her, tried to fathom whether or not she felt it too. She caught my look and gave me the biggest smile I’d ever received from a girl, before or since.

I have kept the memory of that smile with me, like a lantern, for the small hours of the night. I call upon it, with shame, even now.

The Maggot disapproves of sentiment.

Do you know what an Extinction Rite is, children? Uncle Digby asks.

A few of the children shake their heads. Others are still, either afraid to answer the question or unsure of what their answer ought to be.

On the night of the Cold Water Fair, all those years ago, the ghouls under the hill had reached the end of their age. Ghoul society, unlike yours, recognizes when its pinnacle is behind it. Once this point has been reached, there are two options: assimilate into a larger ghoul city, or die. The ghouls under the hill did not find a larger city to join, and indeed many did not want to anyway. Their little city had endured for hundreds of years, and they were tired. The Maggot had delivered to the elders a dream of death, and so the Extinction Rite was prepared. The Extinction Rite, children, is the suicide of a city.

Like you, I am not a ghoul. I have never seen this rite performed. But also like you, I belong to the church introduced to Hob’s Landing by Mr. Wormcake, so I can imagine it. I believe it must be a sight of almost impossible beauty. But I am glad he did not participate that night. Do you know what would have happened here in town, if he had?

He looks at the little girl who talked back earlier. What do you think, dear?

She takes a long moment. “I don’t know. Nothing?”

Precisely. Nothing would have happened. They would have gone back inside when called, just like old Stubblegut wanted. They would have missed the fair. They would never have met the Orchid Girl, or dear old Bruno, or the lost caravan leader of the mermaid nation. I myself would still be frozen in the attic, with my sixteen compatriots, just another brain in a jar. The Extinction Rite would have scoured away all the ghouls in the hill, and the people of Hob’s Landing would have been none the wiser. Their little town would now be just another poverty-ridden fishing village, slowly dissolving into irrelevance.

Instead, what happened was this:

The ghoul children ran out of the tent that night, their little minds atilt with the inexplicable beauties they had just seen. It was as though the world had cracked open like some wonderful geode. They were exhilarated. They stood in the thronged midway, wondering what they ought to do next. Slipwicket and Stubblegut wanted to celebrate; the memory of their unfinished game of skullpocket was cresting in their thoughts, and the urge to recommence the game exerted itself upon them like the pull of gravity. Wormcake thought only of the Orchid Girl, imprisoned like a princess in one of the old tales, separated from him by a thin sheet of glass and by the impossible chasm of an alien culture.

And unbeknownst to them, in the warrens, the Extinction Rite reached its conclusion, and the will of the ghouls was made known to their god.

And so the Maggot spoke. Not just to these children, but to every ghoul in the city under the hill. A pulse of approval, a wordless will to proceed.

The Maggot said, DO IT.

What happened then was an accident. The Extinction Rite was not meant to affect the people of Hob’s Landing at all. If Wormcake and the others had been at home, where they belonged, the Maggot’s imperative would have caused them to destroy themselves. But they were not at home. And so what they heard was permission to indulge the desires of their hearts. And so they did.

Slipwicket fell upon the nearest child and tore the flesh from his skull like the rind from an orange, peeling it to the bone in under a minute. Stubblegut, caught in the spirit of the moment, chose to help him. Bright streamers of blood arced through the air over their heads, splashed onto their faces. They wrestled the greasy skull from the body and Slipwicket gave it a mighty kick, sending it bouncing and rolling in a jolly tumble down the midway.

Wormcake made his way back into the tent, slashing out with his sharp little fingers at the legs of anybody who failed to get out of his way quickly enough, splitting tendons and cracking kneecaps, leaving a bloody tangle of crippled people behind him.

Above them all, the cemetery on the hill split open like a rotten fruit. From the exposed tunnels beneath the upturned clods of earth and tumbling gravestones came the spirits of the extinguished city of the ghouls: a host of buzzing angels, their faceted eyes glinting moonlight, their mandibles a-clatter, pale, iridescent wings filling the sky with the holy drone of the swarm.

People began to scream and run. Oh, what a sound! It was like a symphony. It was just what Wormcake and his friends had been hoping for, when they first looked down at the fair and heard the sounds carrying to them on the wind. They felt like grand heroes in a story, with the music swelling to match their achievements.

Slipwicket and Stubblegut batted the skull between them for a few moments, but it proved surprisingly fragile when careening off a fencepost. Of course there was nothing to do but get another. So they did, and, preparing for future disappointments, they quickly decided that they should gather a whole stockpile of them.

Wormcake opened Bruno’s cage and smashed the Orchid Girl’s glass dome, but he was afraid to smash the mermaid’s tank, for fear that she would die. Bruno — who had become great friends with her — lifted her out and hastened her down to the water, where she disappeared with a grateful wave. When he returned to the party, the ghouls were delighted to discover that he was called the Eater of Children for very good reason indeed. The Orchid Girl stood off to the side, the unfurling spirits of the cemetery rising like black smoke behind her, the unfurled petals of her head seeming to catch the moonlight and reflect it back like a strange lantern. Wormcake stood beside her and together they watched as the others capered and sported.

Beautiful carnage. Screams rising in scale before being choked off in the long dark of death, people swarming in panic like flies around a carcass, corpses littering the ground in outlandish positions one never finds in staid old coffins. Watching the people make the transition from antic foolishness to the dignified stillness of death reassured Wormcake of the nobility of their efforts, the rightness of their choices. He recognized the death of his home, but he was a disciple of the Maggot, after all, and he felt no grief for it.

What did the two of them talk about, standing there together, surrounded by death’s flowering? Well, young master Wormcake never told me. But I bet I can guess, just a little bit. They were just alike, those two. Different from everyone else around them, unafraid of the world’s dangers. They recognized something of themselves in each other, I think. In any case, when they were finished talking, there was no doubt that they would take on whatever came next together.

It was the Orchid Girl who spotted the procession of torches coming from Hob’s Landing.

“We should go to the mansion,” she said. “They won’t follow us there.”

What happened next, children, is common knowledge, and not part of tonight’s story. The Orchid Girl was right: the people of Hob’s Landing were frightened of the mansion and did not follow them there. Wormcake and his friends found a new life inside. They found me, and the rest of the Frozen Parliament, up in the attic; they found the homunculus in the library; and of course, over time, they found all the secrets of the strange old alchemist who used to live there, which included the Orchid Girl’s hidden history. Most importantly, though, they made themselves into a family. Eventually they even fashioned a peace with Hob’s Landing, and were able to build relationships with people in the town.

That was the last night the Cold Water Fair was ever held in Hob’s Landing. With fourteen dead children and a family of monsters moved into the old mansion, the citizens of the town had lost their taste for it. For the better part of a generation, there was little celebration at all in the little hamlet. Relations between the Wormcake family and the townsfolk were defined by mutual suspicion, misunderstanding, and fear. Progress was slow.

Thirty years later, relations had repaired enough that Mr. Wormcake founded the Skullpocket Fair. To commemorate the night he first came to Hob’s Landing, found the love of his life, and began his long and beneficial relationship with this town, where he would eventually become the honored citizen you all know him as today.

How wonderful, yes, children?

And now, at last, we come to why the Maggot called you all here!

“So many lies.”

This is what Mr. Wormcake tells me, after Uncle Digby ushers the children from the drawing room. The sun has set outside, and the purpling sky seems lit from behind.

“You know, he tells the story for children. He leaves out some details. That night in the freak tent, for instance. The people gathered around the mermaid were terrifying. There was a feral rage in that room. I didn’t know what it was at the time. I was just a kid. But it was a dark sexual energy. An animal urge. They slapped their palms against her tank. They shouted at her. Said horrible things. She was curled away from them, so they couldn’t see her naked, and that made them angry. I was afraid they would try to break the glass to get at her. I think it was only the fear of Bruno the cannibal, in the other room, somehow getting out too, that stopped them. I don’t know.

“And that bit about me recognizing my ‘destiny’ when I saw the Orchid Girl — Gretchen. Nonsense. What child of that age feels romantic love? I was terrified. We all were. We’d just seen a flower disguised as a girl. What were we supposed to think?”

“I’m curious why you let Uncle Digby call her the Orchid Girl to the kids, when the name obviously annoys you.”

“It’s simplistic. It’s her freak name. But you humans seem so invested in that. She was no more ‘the Orchid Girl’ than I’m ‘the Gentleman Corpse.’ I’m not a corpse at all, for god’s sake. But when we finally decided to assimilate, we believed that embracing the names would make it easier. And the kids like it, especially. So we use them.”

“Is it hard to talk about her?” Probing for signs of blasphemy.

“No,” he says, though he looks away as he says it. The profile of his skull is etched with lamplight. He goes on about her, though, and I start to get a sick feeling. “He would have you believe that she was a princess in a castle, waiting to be rescued by me. It’s good for mythmaking, but it’s not true. She did need rescuing that night, yes, but so did Bruno. So did the mermaid. He doesn’t talk about my ‘destiny’ with them, does he?”

I don’t know what to say.

“Nothing but lies. We didn’t want to go to the mansion. We wanted to go home. When we saw our home spilling into the sky, transfigured by the Extinction Rite. we were terrified.”

I shake my head. “You were children. You can’t blame yourself for how you felt.”

“I was frightened for my parents.”

I put a hand up to stop him. “Mr. Wormcake. Please. I can understand that this is a moment of, um. strong significance for you. It’s not unusual to experience these unclean feelings. But you must not indulge them by giving them voice.”

“I wanted my parents back, Priest.”

“Mr. Wormcake.”

“I mourned them. Right there, out in the open, I fell to my knees and cried.”

“Mr. Wormcake, that’s enough. You must stop.”

He does. He turns away from me and stares through the window. The bay is out there somewhere, covered in the night. The lights in the drawing room obscure the view, and we can see our reflections hovering out there above the waters, like gentlemanly spirits.

“Take me to the chapel,” I tell him quietly.

He stares at me for a long moment. Then he climbs to his feet. “All right,” he says. “Come with me.”

He pushes through a small door behind the chess table and enters a narrow, carpeted hallway. Lamps fixed to the walls offer pale light. There are paintings hung here too, but the light is dim and we are moving too quickly for me to make out specific details. The faces look desiccated, though. One seems to be a body seated on a divan, completely obscured by cobwebs. Another is a pastoral scene, a barrow mound surrounded by a fence made from the human bone.

At the end of the corridor, another small door opens into a private chapel. I’m immediately struck by the scent of spoiled meat. A bank of candles near the altar provides a shivering light. On the altar itself, a husk of unidentifiable flesh bleeds onto a silver platter. Scores of flies lift and fall, their droning presence crowding the ears. On the wall behind them, stained glass windows flank a much larger window covered in heavy drapes. The stained glass depicts images of fly-winged angels, their faceted ruby eyes bright, their segmented arms spread as though offering benediction, or as though preparing to alight at the butcher’s feast.

There is a pillow on the floor in front of the altar, and a pickaxe leans on the table beside it.

The Maggot summons fourteen children to the Skullpocket Fair every year. One for each child that died that night in the Cold Water Fair, one hundred years ago, when Hob’s Landing became a new town, guided by monsters and their strange new god. It’s no good to question by what criteria the children are selected, by what sins or what virtues. There is no denying the summons. There is only the lesson of the worm, delivered over and over again: all life is a mass of wriggling grubs, awaiting the transformation to the form in which it will greet the long and quiet dark.

“The church teaches the subjugation of memory,” I say. “Grief is a weakness.”

“I know,” says Mr. Wormcake.

“Your marriage. Your love for your wife and your friends. They’re stones in your pockets. They weigh you to the earth.”

“I know.”

“Empty them,” I say.

And so he does. “I miss her,” he says. He looks at me with those hollow sockets, speaks to me with that borrowed mouth, and for the first time that night I swear I can see some flicker of emotion, like a candle flame glimpsed at the bottom of the world. “I miss her so much. I’m not supposed to miss her. It’s blasphemy. But I can’t stop thinking about her. I don’t want to hear the lies anymore. I don’t want to hear the stories. I want to remember what really happened. We didn’t recognize anything about each other at the fair that night. We were little kids and we were scared of what was going to happen to us. We stood on the edge of everything and we were too afraid to move. We didn’t say a single word to each other the whole time. We didn’t learn how to love each other until much later, after we were trapped in this house. And now she’s gone and I don’t know where she went and I’m scared all over again. I’m about to change, and I don’t know how or into what because I left home when I was little. No one taught me anything. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me. I miss my wife.”

I’m stunned by the magnitude of this confession. I’d been fooled by the glamour of his name and his history; I’d thought he would greet this moment with all the dignity of his station. I stand over him, this diminished patriarch, mewling like some abandoned infant, and I’m overwhelmed by disgust. I don’t know where it comes from, and the force of it terrifies me.

“Well, you can’t,” I say, my anger a chained dog. “You don’t get to. You don’t get to miss her.”

He stares at me. His mouth opens, but I cut him off. I grab the mound of ripe flesh from the altar and thrust it into his face. Cold fluids run between my fingers and down my wrist. Flies go berserk, bouncing off my face, crawling into my nose. “This is the world you made! These are the rules. You don’t get to change your mind!”

Fifty years ago, when Uncle Digby finished his story and finally opened the gate at the very first Skullpocket Fair, we all ran out onto the brand new midway, the lights swirling around us, the smells of sweets and fried foods filling our noses. We were driven by fear and hope. We knew death opened its mouth behind us, and we felt every living second pass through our bodies like tongues of fire, exalting us, carving us down to our very spirits. We heard the second gate swing open and we screamed as the monsters bounded onto the midway in furious pursuit: cannibal children, dogs bred to run on beams of moonlight, corpse flowers with human bodies, loping atrocities of the laboratory. The air stank of fear. Little Eddie Brach was in front of me and without thought I grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him down, leaping over his sprawled form in the very next instant. He bleated in cartoon-like surprise. I felt his blood splash against the back of my shirt in a hot torrent as the monsters took him, and I laughed with joy and relief. I saw Christina leap onto a rising gondola car and I followed. We slammed the door shut and watched the world bleed out beneath us. Our hearts were incandescent, and we clutched each other close. Somewhere below us a thing was chanting, “Empty your pockets, empty your pockets,” followed by the hollow pok! of skulls being cracked open. We laughed together. I felt the inferno of life. I knew that every promise would be fulfilled.

Six of us survived that night. Of those, four of us — exalted by the experience — took the orders. We lived a life dedicated to the Maggot, living in quiet seclusion, preparing our bodies and our minds for the time of decay. We proselytized, grew our numbers. Every year some of the survivors of the fair would join us in our work. Together, we brought Hob’s Landing to the worm.

But standing over this whimpering creature, I find myself thinking only of Christina Laudener, her eyes a pale North Atlantic gray, her blond hair flowing like a stilled wave over her shoulders. We were children. We didn’t know anything about love. Or at least, I didn’t. I didn’t understand what it was that had taken root in me until years later, when her life took her to a different place, and I sat in the underground church and contemplated the deliquescence of flesh until the hope for warmth, or for the touch of a kind hand, turned cold inside me.

I never learned what she did with her life. But she never took the orders. She lived that incandescent moment with the rest of us, but she drew an entirely different lesson from it.

“You tell me those were all lies?” I say. “I believed them. I believed everything.”

“Gretchen wasn’t a lie. Our life here wasn’t a lie. It was glorious. It doesn’t need to be dressed up with exaggerations.”

I think of my own life, long for a human being, spent in cold subterranean chambers. “The Maggot isn’t a lie,” I say.

“No. He certainly is not.”

“I shouldn’t have survived. I should have died. I pushed Eddie down. Eddie should have lived.” I feel tears try to gather, but they won’t fall. I want them to. I think, somehow, I would feel better about things if they did. But I’ve been a good boy: I’ve worked too hard at killing my own grief. Now that I finally need it, there just isn’t enough anymore. The Maggot has taken too much.

“Maybe so,” Wormcake says. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

He gets up, approaches the windows. He pulls a cord behind the curtains and they slide open. A beautiful, kaleidoscopic light fills the room. The Seventieth Annual Skullpocket Fair is laid out on the mansion’s grounds beyond the window, carousels spinning, roller coaster ticking up an incline, bumper cars spitting arcs of electricity. The Ferris wheel turns over it all, throwing sparking yellow and green and red light into the sky.

I join him at the window. “I want to go down there,” I say, putting my fingers against the glass. “I want another chance.”

“It’s not for you anymore,” Wormcake says. “It’s not for me, either. It’s for them.”

He tugs at the false mouth on his skull, snapping the tethers, and tosses it to the floor. The tongue lolls like some yanked organ, and the flies cover it greedily. Maybe he believes that if he can no longer articulate his grief, he won’t feel it anymore.

And maybe he’s right.

He removes the fly-spangled meat from my hands and takes a deep bite. He offers it to me: a benediction. I recognize the kindness in it. I accept, and take a bite of my own. This is the world we’ve made. Tears flood my eyes, and he touches my cheek with his bony hand.

Then he replaces the meat onto the altar, and resumes his place on his knees beside it. He lays his head by the buzzing meat. I take the pickaxe and place the hard point of it against the skull, where all the poisons of the world have gathered, have slowed him, have weighed him to the earth. I hold the point there to fix it in my mind, and then I lift the axe over my head.

“Empty your pockets,” I say.

Below us, a gate opens, and the children pour out at a dead run. There goes the angry girl. There goes the weepy, buzz-cut kid. Arms and legs pumping, clothes flapping like banners in the wind. They’re in the middle of the pack when the monsters are released. They have a chance.

They just barely have a chance.

THE MYSTERIES

by Livia Llewellyn

1

It is that unnameable time of a late December morning, that nighttime hour that bleeds into tired dawn. My great-great-great-great-grandmother sits in the living room, in the dark. I hear the rustling of her ancient newspaper as she turns each delicate page. The furnace has shut down after its daily muted roar, and a distant tick sounds through the walls as the metal ducts contract and cool. Other than the paper’s whispers, it is the only sound in the house.

In the same dark, around the corner, past the foyer, I stand in the middle of the hallway, in my stained nightgown and robe, the ones I left behind some fifteen years ago when I left this place, my childhood home. My mother’s house, so lovely and modern and clean — before the Grand moved in and took over, like she takes over everything. The outline of my overweight body hovers in the large black-stained mirror at the end of the hall, by the always- locked front door. A distorted Pierrette with a marshmallow body and mouthless face. I raise my hand. A second later, the creature in the mirror reluctantly moves. I can’t blame it, I know why. The Grand can’t see me, but she knows I’m there. She reads in the dark. She outlines her lips bright red in the pitch black of windowless closets. She embroiders tiny, perfect stitches in absolute gloom. Even during the day, the curtains in all the rooms are drawn, the lamps turned off. — This is how it used to be, she tells me over and over again. — When I was a child, we didn’t have electric lamps. We didn’t have radios. There were no televisions or computers; we weren’t compelled to entertain ourselves all day. We were self- contained. Everything we needed came out of ourselves, out of our own family. This is how it was in the world. This is how it will always be for me.

I open my robe and pull the nightgown up. If there is a demarcation between fabric and flesh, mercury and air, the creature and me, I cannot see it. I search for the familiar black triangle between my legs. Even that has vanished. I am no different than the bare, cream walls around me. Outside of us, nothing can be seen. Yet within — a carnelevare of the numinous, waiting for release. Everything I need will come out of me.

— What are you doing? the Grand calls out from the living room. — Are you up? As she speaks, I hear her sniffing me out, and my blood runs peppermint hot and cold. She likes it like that.

I let my nightgown drop, and shuffle and squint my way around the corner. Morning presses against the thick curtains, to no avail. Everything glows, but dimly so. Against the far corner of the couch she curls, a fragile mound of bones and skin dressed in soft, flowery clothes. The open newspaper obscures the upper half of her body. I see only legs and knife-sharp fingers, the leaves of dark print flapping back in between. Her feet are small and perfectly formed, with nails like mother-of-pearl. She hasn’t walked in a hundred and fifty years. She hasn’t needed to.

— Give your great-grand a sweet breakfast kiss, she says, floating up from the cushions. The newspaper flutters to the floor.

2

— It’s time, my sister said. Her voice poured out of the phone like poison.

— No. Not yet. No.

— The Grand is sending for you, she continued over me, as if she couldn’t hear my voice.

— I don’t want to go.

— You don’t have a choice. Check your e-mail — I sent the plane ticket to you already. You have a month to pack up and say goodbye.

— I have a life here.

— I had a life, too. And now I get it back. But only if you come. You know what happens to me if you don’t. She’ll use me up until there’s nothing left.

— You know I’d never let that happen. But why so soon?

— She’s tired of me. I don’t please her anymore, or so she says. At any rate, I’ve done my time. It’s your turn now.

— This is wrong. You know that.

— It doesn’t matter. We can’t change it. This is why we were born.

It was late summer, back then, and my city was a volcano of bright life. I took her call at work, in an empty corner office. I gave an obfuscated answer that pleased us both and hung up. Outside, day was racing down into the shimmery fires of night. Twenty floors down, clogged streets were transforming into long-running strands of rubies and diamonds, winding around buildings slick with coruscated light. I pressed my hand against the glass. Hard and hot. When I took my hand away, a thin film of perspiration remained, outstretched against the avenue as though trying to grasp it. The ghost hand of a ghost girl. Within seconds, it disappeared.

I said my goodbyes at work without telling them I’d never return, and bought boxes on the way home, just enough to ship a few piles of books and clothes. My small room in the SRO building didn’t hold that much, anyway. I’d always known this moment would come, and so my decisions had already been made, years ago, how I would live my life and how I would defend it. I was more prepared than my sister could imagine, and more ruthless than the Grand could ever be. Desperation made me so. In a way, I was no different than her.

The next morning I settled my account at the SRO, made a stop at the post office, then walked twenty blocks south, down through my beautiful city. Past blight-tinged gentrification, past markets and parks and coffee shops and wide bustling avenues; and then west, over to the edge of the river, to block after block of monolithic warehouses and factories, moldering in shadowed silence and brick dust until their moment in history came again. It was like I’d walked this path just yesterday, even though a decade had passed. — When you’ve made your decision, be it tomorrow or a million tomorrows from now, you’ll find us, he had said with his yellow-teethed smile as I looked over his exhibits and wares. — You won’t ever need a map.

3

She leans into me in the queer morning light for her kiss, and my mouth slackens and my head lolls back. Every day is the same, and night no different than day. Darkness, rain needling against the rooftop and windows, wind thundering through distant trees. She never sleeps. Her need keeps her running hot and constant, a nuclear reactor of hunger that can never be shut down. — It’s not so bad, my sister said, the few times I spoke with her until she stopped taking my calls. — She takes from you, but she gives you something back, in a way. It’s almost an even exchange. — What does she do, what is she, how can she be? I asked over and over again. — Is she a vampire? A ghoul? An insect? Why do we submit?

— I don’t know, my sister always replied. — Who can say?

Sometimes, at night, I awake in the dark and feel her hovering over me, a weight and emotion I sense but never feel or see. Paralyzed, I breathe all my damp terror and fear into the emptiness of my childhood room. Above, mote by mote she sucks it in. Sleep itself is no refuge. In my dreams I rise to the ceiling, my skin brushing against the faded outlines of spiraling galaxies my mother painted for me long ago. And then the ceiling, the stars, soften and yield — her arms are around me, mouth against mine, while in the waking world, my body moans and shivers, ten feet above my bed. The days are worse. I can’t hide in my room forever, and so I venture out into the house, wandering like a restless ghost of myself through the still rooms. Everywhere, vestiges of the life I had before, of my sister and me as children, of my mother and the father I too briefly knew. Cobwebbed tableaus of toys and dishes. Photos of distant summers, succumbing to speckled mold. A faint scent of my mother’s perfume rising from a dresser of musty clothes. Old folders of school homework, boxes of books my aching eyes could no longer read in the ever-dim light. And I, always never knowing where she is, in what room, squeezed into what tight corner or closet or crack. Never knowing when she will ooze out and ignore me, or play with me, or pounce.

— You’re different, she says this morning, her vulpine face hovering just above my head. — I don’t like it. I smell animals. I smell fire and sugar and rust. The words wash over my face like gasoline fumes, and tears dribble out of my eyes into my mouth. My flesh grows heavy and prickly-numb. Her face is an amorphous stain, a blur. I open my mouth to speak. All that comes forth is a burp, loud and wet. Bile dribbles down my lips and chin. It tastes like rotting grapes.

The Grand recoils. — You’re sick, she hisses. She hates any hint of illness or disease.

— No, I’m not, I garble. Thin pine needles slide out of my running nose and onto my tongue. — It’s the carnival.

— You’re delirious.

— It’s coming.

— What are you talking about?

A slow, long tremor erupts throughout my belly. My tearing eyes shut tight, and I smile. I am horrifying and new. She leans back into me, curious. Lips and breath against my cheek, mouth open, seeking, seeking. — Tell me everything, she whispers. — Fill me up with everything.

I lift my wet nightgown. — Stay with me, and you can take everything you need.

I drop to the floor, back arched, thighs apart. The second contraction rips through me, and I howl. The barker said there would be pain, and he didn’t lie. He said it would be the eighth wonder of the world.

4

The barker stood where I had seen him a decade ago, as if he had never moved from the spot: on a wood-planked platform in the middle of a vast dirt and sawdust-covered warehouse floor, surrounded by rows and rows of broken and abandoned caravans and carousels and fair rides in fading pastels, painted canvases depicting creatures and humans of sublime beauty and deformity, statues and stuffed beasts, tanks and cages, carts and costume-choked trunks. It took an eternity of footsteps to walk to him. The musk of animal and tang of sea creature and the green of chipped wood filled my lungs — none of it had moved in ten years, none of it had changed. Bits of jewel-colored glitter floated through the smoky, popcorn-scented air. Antiques, it said on the crumpled brochure I’d found blowing about on the street that spring day so long ago, and had carried in my purse ever since. Rare Circus Items Curated from America’s Golden Age of Entertainment. Powerful Carnival Artifacts Rescued from Civilizations Lost Forever in the Mists of Time. A Veritable Cornucopia of Wonders, Mesmerizing and Terrifying. This Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity, Only for You.

— Are you ready? he called out, and his words echoed back and forth between the high walls before dying out in a faint burst of calliope music. — Have you made your choice? He lifted his cane and pointed down. Below the stage sat a massive flat-topped megalith, with five black marble boxes resting on its rough surface, each carved on the top with the name of an ancient carnival, culled from histories lost forever, as the brochure had said. Within each box, though, anything but dry history resided. Chaos, essence, power, folding in on itself in infinite spirals. Waiting for an incubator, a warm walking womb to carry it to its new home, to release. Unchecked primal appetite, that could consume anything, even a woman with an endless appetite of her own. I felt my breath shallow out, my heart beat fluttery and weak.

I reached out and touched the box labeled Kronia. It vibrated slightly under my fingertips. After a pause, I pushed it back.

— Masks and merriment, as I recall. Too weak, I said. The barker nodded and smiled.

I picked up the box labeled Navigium Isidis, and immediately placed it on top of the Kronia box. — Floats, processionals, parades. I think she’d be amused. I don’t want to amuse her.

At the far edge of the floor, a chair moved. I felt the contents of the space shifting, as if rousing itself from a too-long dream. A low sigh wafted across the room, or perhaps it was only the wind, or the ghost of a dream of the wind.

Three boxes were left on the stone. — Bacchanalia, I said, picking up the one to the left. I placed it on top of the stack. — Savage. She’d be disoriented, repulsed. But not incapacitated.

— Are you certain, madam? the barker said. — Wine-soaked madness and lust in the night? Nothing to stop you from partaking as well, if you desire. If you aren’t dismembered, that is.

But I had moved on. Saturnalia, said the next box. I lifted it up.

— What’s this one again?

— Pageants. Very theatrical, said the barker. — I must warn you: there will be many, many clowns.

I added Saturnalia to the stack. A single box remained. Dionysia, it said. I ran my fingertips over the carved letters. The barker smiled.

— Great festivities within, he said. — A carnelevare of god- frenzied transformation, which subsumes and liberates all.

— I don’t want to transform her, I said, adding the box to the stack. — I don’t want to liberate or destroy her.

For the first time, the barker looked unsure. — What is it that you want, then?

— I want something so wondrous and primal, she’ll never be able to leave it. I want to fill her up, completely. I want her to fall in love.

The warehouse floor grew quiet. — There are no boxes left, the barker said. — There are no more choices.

I reached out, placing both hands flat on the megalith as I contemplated the stack. The stone was warm and smooth, except for spider-thin scratches. I moved my fingers over them. Back and forth. A sixth name, in a language I did not recognize, running across the surface. A secret, sixth carnelevare.

— No more choices, the barker repeated.

— There never was a choice. This is the one I’ve always wanted, I said. — The carnival with no name.

— The first. Do you know what it is you’re asking for? The barker motioned to the dusty rides and ruins scattered across the warehouse floor. — It won’t be like any of these. No sequins or carousels or quaint colored lights.

I pointed to the black boxes. — The other carnivals I considered were nothing like that.

The barker’s cane came to rest on the pitted surface of the megalith. — Nothing since the dawn of history has been like this.

I said nothing. There was nothing more to say. After a time, the barker nodded.

— As you wish, he said. — The conception will be — complex. I will need time.

— I have thirty days.

— Thirty days out there, you mean. He pointed to pale blue sky outside the high windows. — In here, it will be as long as I need it to be.

— All right.

— I am compelled to caution you: your body will change. Your mind will change. And there will be pain.

— I’m a woman. There always is.

5

Outside the house, days have come and gone. Months have bled away. Within these walls, the universe pauses to watch.

In the undiscovered country of my torso, from out the limitless valleys of my most intimate self, another monster emerges, another child of the carnelevare, horns and hooves slicing through skin and muscle and bone and capillaries. By my side, the Grand struggles, but I do not lessen my grip. Massive clawed hands clutch at my slick thighs, hoisting its heavy furred body up and out and into a room so spattered by my blood that I cannot tell where my body ends and where the house begins, except there is no beginning and ending, it is all one and the same, an ouroboros of continual birth. And the monster cleans its bull-shaped face against my stomach and licks my breasts, and crawls away, far into the house, and something else begins to emerge from my body, worse or better, I cannot tell. This is the sixth carnelevare, the great removing and raising of the flesh, the coming of a god so old it does not remember its name, and with it all its attendants beautiful and hideous, bursting forth from every orifice of my flesh to celebrate the mystery of all mysteries.

The floor beneath me shudders beneath my sudden burgeoning weight, and I hear the crackling of tree limbs, the cracking of bones. The dislocation of my jaw, the colossal clang of bells. Vastness pours out of me like an ocean. And the backwash of darkness rolls over my mind like a breaking wheel, and I float in the spirals of those faded painted galaxies of my childhood, holding my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s slender hand. Who lives around all those stars, can they see us, what are their names, my nine-year-old self asks her as the ghost of my mother daubs specks of gold and silver paint across the fathomless blue, and my grandmother replies, I am the only human in the world who will ever know.

Together we look up, and up, and up, and from our starry perch we see the deep woods of all the worlds, the labyrinths and groves, we see the satyrs and stags and bulls and the wolves and women and men. Masked and naked, they dance and contort around frightened fires, they chant their prayers and pleas into the shadowed cracks of the world, they laugh and crash together in god-fevered horror and cry out as the sparks of their devotion float up and wink out with their ecstasy. They gyre together and pull apart transformed, endless variations of monstrosities kaleidoscoping out of their frenzied couplings. And I am the night, and out of the night and the woods their god comes to them, into them, into her, in the strike of lightning and the shuddering of the earth, in the terminal vastation of his song.

— Close your eyes, I whisper.

— Never.

I sigh, and the fires wink out one by one, and I sink back down to the floor, to a room filled with clear light and the silk rattle of morning through the tree’s wintery bones.

I force my sticky eyelids open. My body feels empty, still. I blink, and the ceiling swims in a thin wash of red. I can’t tell if I’m dead or alive. I’m not breathing, and I cannot feel the beating of my heart. There is no pain, I realize in shock: the complete absence of such an all-consuming presence makes me light, free. I roll slightly, slowly, and sit up. I am covered head to toe in blood, and I am whole. My right hand holds the mangled, broken wrist of a woman’s severed arm, the grip so tight and deep beneath her flesh that I cannot see my fingertips. Crimson-brown gobs of placenta and blood cover every inch of our joined skin. Under the drying gore, I recognize the Grand’s flower-carved wedding ring. I leave the ring on the couch, with the arm.

Outside, gossamer trails of night-blue mist waft through the backyard like torn strands of the Milky Way, sparking with millions of little pinpricks of pure white light. They drift and catch on the sleeping faces of the women and men pulled from their neighboring homes in the carnelevare’s orgiastic wake, settle into their hair and over their bare tangled limbs, crash and break apart against tall pine trees and dissipate with the rising sun. A thread of it trails against my bare leg, disappearing beneath the triangle of matted hair. The effluvium of a nameless carnival as it blew in and out of town. I gently pull it out and let it float away.

At the edge of the yard, legs tucked under thighs white and hard as marble, the small body of a woman with a missing left arm rests under a large tree. I walk over, and kneel before the Grand. She looks no older than me. Her pale green eyes are open, wide, blank. They stare through and beyond me, up into the sky. Her face is raised and lips are parted, as if being forced to drink from a bottomless cup. Or perhaps, as if about to speak a name.

6

A blood-orange sun was sinking slowly into the edges of my city’s wide electric edges, and I raised my worshiping hands and face like a grateful Akhenaten into its early autumn heat. I had lost a month, and so much more. It was time to go home, all the way home. Behind me, just within the shadows of the open warehouse doors, behind the boundary he could not see or cross, the barker stood, hesitant.

— What does it feel like? he asked.

— This? I turned, hand on my stomach, already slightly curved.

— That. All of it, the god and the power and the mysteries, folded into something so small and insignificant as you. To be so full. And — the sun. The weight of the air on your body. The pleasure of bearing so much pain. Being a part of the world, while knowing you’re not really a part of anything at all.

— I couldn’t tell you. I don’t have any answers.

He stared at me, waiting, disappointed yet still expectant; and then his eyes glazed. I could see him moving beyond me, his mind traveling to that invisible realm beyond the carnelevare’s end, where all questions are answered, all hunger sated, where all the endless pleasurable and terrifying variations of the chase dwindle down to a dead and desiccated end.

— Do you really want to know?

He looked up into the sky, then smiled his yellow-teethed grin.

— No.

SCREAMING ELK, MT

by Laird Barron

One night, a trucker dropped me at a tavern in Screaming Elk, MT, population 333. A bunch of locals had gathered to shoot pool and drown their sorrows in tap beer. CNN aired an hour-long feature on survivors of violent crime. The Jessica Mace segment popped around halfway through and I told the bartender to switch it pronto. A sodbuster on the next stool took exception, started to bark his offense, then he did a double take at the file photo of me larger than life onscreen and things went from bad to ugly.

“You’re that broad! Yeah, yeah, you’re her!” Shitkicker had crossed over to the dark side of drunk. “Nice rack,” he went on in a confidential tone. “I wouldn’t pay a nickel for anything above the tits, though.”

I threw a glass of whiskey in his face, as a lady does when her appearance is insulted by an oaf. No biggie — I’d been nursing the cheap stuff. A couple of his comrades at the bar laughed. He recovered fast — animals are like that — made a fist, and cocked it behind his left ear. I puckered my lips. Don’t suppose that I enjoy getting punched in the face. It’s simply that I can make it work for me if it comes to that.

Despite my gravelly voice and rough edges, I know how to play the femme fatale. I can also hold my booze. It’s a devastating combo. My brothers Elwood and Bronson were the brawlers, the steamrollers. Elwood has gone to his reward and Bronson crashes cars for a living. Me? Let’s just say I prefer to rely upon a combination of native cunning and feminine wiles to accomplish my goals. Flames and explosions are strictly measures of last resort.

I’ll put my life in mortal danger for a pile of cash. No shock there, anybody would. Goes deeper, though. I’ll also venture into hazard to satisfy my curiosity, and that’s more problematic. The compulsion seems to be growing stronger. Violence, at least the threat of violence, is a rush. I’m addicted to the ramifications and the complications.

As the CNN story so luridly explained, I did for that serial killer up in Alaska, the Eagle Talon Ripper, and nothing has been the same. It’s as if the stars and the sky don’t align correctly, as if the universe is off its axis by a degree or two. Since pulling that trigger I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with myself. I wander the earth. It would be romantic to say I’m righting wrongs or seeking my destiny. Feels more like I’m putting my shoe into one fresh pile after another.

A good friend who worked in the people-removing business for the Mafia once told me there aren’t coincidences or accidents, reality doesn’t work that way. Since the first inert, superdense particle detonated and spewed forth all that gas and dust and radiation, everything has been on an unerring collision vector with its ultimate mate, and every bit of the flotsam and jetsam is cascading toward the galactic Niagara Falls into oblivion.

The dude possessed a more inquisitive nature than one might expect from an enforcer by trade. He said, Jessica, you’re a dancing star being dragged toward the black hole at the ragged edges of all we know. Drawn with irresistible force, you’ll level anything in your path, or drag it to hell in your wake.

Load of horseshit, am I right? Sloppy, I-love-you-man drivel. Yet his words come back to me as I travel east, ever east. I’m starting to believe him. I’m a dancing star and my self-determination is a façade.

Cut to the drunken asshole in the bar rearing back to knock me into next Tuesday. Not so fast, Tex, said the universe.

A rugged, burly fellow in a safari shirt and work pants stepped in and introduced himself with a left hook to the sodbuster’s jaw. Put the cowboy to sleep with one blow. I hadn’t needed a white knight. I’d palmed a steak knife and knew exactly where to stick it if necessary. But, I must admit, the crunch of the cowpoke’s jawbone and the fast-spreading blood on the scuffed floorboards thrilled me a little. A lot.

Mr. White Knight rubbed his hand. All those nicks and notches on his knuckles, like rocks that had been smacked together a thousand times.

“I’m Beasley. What are you drinking?”

“Ah, the beginning of another beautiful friendship.”

Mist flooded across the marsh and erased the country road. Rounding a bend, we were transported from present-day Montana to Scottish moors circa 1840s, or a Universal Studios sound lot with Bela Lugosi poised to sweep aside his cape along with our feeble protestations.

“Can’t-find-your-own-ass-with-both-hands-and-a-flashlight weather,” I said to cut the tension.

Beasley stepped on the pedal. His face by dashboard light put me in mind of Race Bannon and Doc Savage. The unbuttoned safari shirt contributed nicely. Ten, maybe fifteen years my senior, but some juice left in him; I loved that too. A crucifix dangled from the rearview mirror, also sprigs of dried flowers. More dried flowers peeked from the ashtray. I wondered if these details meant anything; made a note.

We were rocking and rolling like a motherfucker now. That rickety farm truck’s tires cried mercy. But when the moon hove nine-tenths full and full of blood over the black rim of night and screamed white-hot silver through the boiling clouds, everything stood still.

“The Gallows Brothers Carnival, huh?” I said after I caught my breath. I would have said anything to break the spell. “I heard that name somewhere. Want to say a news story. Which means somebody got maimed or murdered. Wouldn’t be news otherwise.”

He grunted and hit me with a sidelong glance.

“So, uh, you know how to shoot a gun?” Maybe he meant the rifle rattling in the window rack behind our heads. A light-gauge shotgun, nothing fabulous. “And would you say you’re fast on your feet? On a scale from a chick in high heels to Carl Lewis sprinting from a lion.”

“I hate it when dudes ask me that. The line of inquiry seldom leads anywhere pleasant.”

“You dames have all had bad experiences.”

I laughed, low and nasty.

“Yeah, it’s weird. Can’t figure what the common denominator might be.”

He shut his mouth for a while, smarting. Guy like him, pain didn’t last long. A whack upside the head with a two-by-four was positive attention.

My thoughts went to a previous fling with another brutish loner type: a coyote hunter in eastern Washington. I hoped my luck was better this go-around. I hoped Beasley’s luck was better too.

“You’re not really a carnival roadie,” I said a few miles later. “You lack that particular something or other.”

“Well, I wouldn’t get on any of the rides.”

The Gallows Brothers Carnival had set up shop in a pasture a few miles outside of town. Unfortunately, I had missed the last show. The great machinery lay cold and silent and would soon be dismantled. Beasley lived in a modular at the end of a concourse of shuttered stalls, Tilt-a-Whirls, and tents. All very Beaver Cleaver 1950s. The night breeze swirled sawdust and the burned powder of exploded firecrackers.

A wolf howled from the north where the forest began.

Then we were inside Beasley’s shack, barring the door behind us. Down, down into the darkness we dove, to the bottom of a blue hole at the bottom of the earth. The wolf howled again. Its pack answered and the ponderosa pines closed ranks, as Beasley’s Herculean arms closed me in.

A hazy nightlight fumed at the foot of the bunk. Beasley, with a physique straight from a picture book of Norse gods, could’ve wrestled bears, looked as if he’d done so on occasion. Once Beasley and I got going he held back for fear of breaking me, the fool. I wanted to tell him it was only really good once it started to hurt, but I’d gone past the vanishing point and dissolved into another, primal self, the one that doesn’t speak English.

He performed as his swagger advertised, or close enough. Afterward, he lay slick and aglow, perfectly scarred. I asked him if he did any acting, because he radiated mucho charisma. He only smiled boyishly and took a swig from the bottle, took it in like water. I suspected his fate would be to die horribly of cirrhosis, or under the claws of a beast, and young, or to turn fifty and appear as if he’d gone face first into a wall, haggard as a kerosene-swilling bum. Probably the dying-young deal: I kept seeing a bleached skull when I caught him in my peripheral vision.

“Gimme some sweet, sweet nothings,” I said to keep him from nodding off and leaving me alone with my two a.m. thoughts, and alone with the howls in the wood.

“Look, doll, I’m a man of action. Sweet talk ain’t my bailiwick.”

“Your wick isn’t going into my bailey again if you don’t humor me.”

“As you say.” He cleared his throat. “How can you be sure you’re here?”

“What, think you were humping your pillow?”

“Sorry, Jess, you started this. Maybe all of it is a projection. Or a computer program. You’re a sexy algorithm looping for eternity.”

We shared a cigarette. Not my brand.

“Kinda smart for a dumb guy,” I said. What I knew of Beasley’s past derived from a few hours over pints — ex-army, ex-footballer, a hunter, a bodyguard, expert driver. Man-at-arms slash valet and satisfied with the role. College had served as a central hub for womanizing, boozing, and playing ball.

“No offense taken, or anything.” He even made petulance sound manly.

“Don’t get riled, handsome. Playing dumb is your protective coloration. It’s how you fool the predators. Most of us are fooled.”

“My protective coloration is a surly disposition and a buffalo gun that’d blast a hole through a concrete bunker.”

“Neither of those require smarts.” I squinted at a movie poster of Robby the Robot carrying unconscious Anne Francis against a backdrop of shooting stars, and another of Lon Chaney Jr. bursting the buttons of his natty white shirt as a devil moon blared through evergreen branches.

“Wait a second. Is that wolfsbane in the pot?”

“Jessica. you’re not a hologram, you’re a dream.” He kneaded my breast. “It had to be the right woman, but I hoped it would be a flake, a bumpkin. I was afraid you’d come here. Ever since I dreamt of you there’s been a dark spot floating in my mind. A mote.”

“Make sense, man!”

“Yeah, it’s wolfsbane.” He rolled away from me, the oldest trick in the book.

I woke to a little girl screaming her heart out, out in the darkness. Beasley gently clamped his hand over my mouth, his other arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn’t going anywhere unless I took extreme measures. Not so much of a turn-on in this context.

“It’s all right.” He spoke so softly, I almost didn’t catch it. “They say an elk screams like a child. Go back to sleep.”

A long time and a lot of silence passed before he let me go.

* * *

Oatmeal and kiwis for breakfast in the commissary. Beasley introduced me around to the early risers. Hey, everybody, this is Jessica Mace. She’s wandering the earth. Make her feel at home. Damned if I didn’t despite their clannishness. Free food is free food.

Strongman (actually a strongwoman, after a double take), bearded lady, wolf girl, Poindexter the Geek, the knife thrower, Ephandra the Contortionist, and Perkins and Luther — head carpenter and electrician respectively. The Gallows brothers, Benson and Robert, weren’t on hand. The proprietors had departed on a hush-hush mission, or so Beasley intimated when I asked to meet the gents.

Beasley’s request notwithstanding, I received the hairy eyeball from the company. Nobody said two words to me except for Earl, the Illustrated Man. Earl repeatedly inquired where oh where on my delectable body I might be inked. Answer: nowhere, jerk. I kind of hoped Beasley would bust his jaw too, but it didn’t happen. Several children lurked on the periphery. The oldest, an adolescent girl; the youngest, a grubby boy maybe a year or two out of diapers. They gawped at me from a safe distance, until their minder, a matronly lass named Rocky, swept them away with brisk efficiency.

After breakfast, Beasley escorted me on a tour of the environs. I tasted snow. A lot of the stuff covered the mountain peaks.

“This doesn’t jibe,” I said. “Are you hiding from the law, or what?”

We’d moseyed a distance from the encampment. He wore a battered Australian drover’s hat, light jacket, work pants, and lace-up boots. He also carried a big-ass hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Double barrels, very serious.

“Whatever happens, don’t get scared.”

“Scared of what? And, too late.”

“Of nothing. I’m not on the lam, by the way. Vacation.” He knelt and traced flattened grass with his entire hand. We were surrounded by an ocean of it, tall and white, dying.

“How everybody spoke to you, you’ve been here a while.”

“Ten months next week.”

“Ten months! Sounds more and more like you’re on work release.”

He laughed. Nice white teeth. Considering the battered condition of his face, it was a small miracle he’d kept most of them.

“I live back east. My regular employers are having a disagreement.”

“Dare I ask what they do?”

“Big brains. Quantum physics, exobiology, anthropology. They’re famous, infamous, one of those things. A pair of mad scientist types. They’d love to build a time machine or a doomsday device for the kicks.”

“Sounds like wacky fun. I could use a spin in a time machine, for sure.”

“Backward or forward?”

I shrugged, bored.

“Sorry your bosses are trying to kill each other. Family feuds are the worst.”

“It’s all the shooting that made me nervous.” He turned away and scanned the ground again.

“What’s the argument about?”

“The ethics of temporal collocation of sapient organisms.”

“No shit?”

“I shit you not. Mainly, they’re at each other’s throats about a dog.”

“Oh, I get that. I’d kill over a good dog.”

“Hmm. This one sure as hell is. Or it will be, after they build it.”

“Build it? Are we talking about a robot?”

“A cyborg. It — he — is a war machine. Weapons contractor is financing the project. My bosses are making history. Rex has a positronic brain. First of its kind, and Toshi and Howard are fighting over the ethics. Look, stick around a few days, we’ll fly to the compound, I’ll show you. Easier that way.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Man, I wish Rex was online. We’d make short work of. ” He cleared his throat and stood. “Be seven or eight years before the prototype is even in alpha phase. Gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Do what the old-fashioned way? Aren’t you on vacation?”

“So to speak. Personal business. I traveled with this carnival as a kid. Ran away from a bad scene at home. The Gallowses took me in, gave me a job, made sure I got an education. They’re my uncles and they’re in trouble.”

“A debt of honor. How sweet.” Sweet like rat poison. Daddy the Marine had taught us kids a whole lot about honor. Honor had put him and my eldest brother into early graves. Can’t say I have much use for the sentiment.

“I didn’t pick you out of that bar just because you’re a looker,” Beasley said. “You’re something special.”

“Huh, that’s some heavy duty charm you’re laying down.”

“Yeah, it’s exhausting. I’ll stop.”

“Since you’ve already had your way, I’m steeling myself for the worst.”

“The Gallows Carnival is cursed. I’ve come to put things in order.”

“Wait, what? A curse?”

“Right.”

“Like voodoo, desecrated-Indian-burial-grounds kind of curse?”

He pointed to a splotch of maroon on the grass.

“Stay tuned.”

I decided to give Twenty Questions a break. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and tagged along as he inspected a rusty overgrown fence. Soon, he found a break in the wire. A black funnel bored through a copse of pine trees, juniper, and nettles. The hole had obviously been formed by the crush of a massive body wallowing its way through the tangle.

Then the breeze shifted and the reek of putrefying flesh almost knocked me down. Beasley handed me his hat and unlimbered his rifle. He carried a flashlight in his left hand. Its beam didn’t cut very far into the darkness.

Motioning for me to stay put, he crouched and moved into the burrow.

“Bad idea, Beasley. Bad, very bad.” Over the stench of death, I whiffed something else, something born of musk, dank fur, sweat, and piss. This was the lair of a ravenous beast, a creature of fang and lust. The combination of scents, the crimson aura of the den, made me dizzy, made my nipples hard and my thighs weak. I slapped myself across the mouth and that shocked me out of my little swoon.

Maybe slightly too effective. Every birdcall, every snapped twig caused me to twitch. The shadows in the trees became sinister. I gave serious thought to leaving Beasley there, strolling back to camp. I’d have coffee with a nip of bourbon and wait to see if he ever returned.

“Jess.” His voice floated from the tunnel, muffled and strange. “Dial 911. Ask for Sheriff Holcomb. Tell him to come right away.”

I made the call and identified myself. The dispatcher asked the usual questions and said a squad car would be on site shortly. Beasley crawled from the den, shirt torn and stems in his hair. He tossed a man’s severed head on the ground. Dead two or three days at most. The left eye was still intact. Blue as milk. Hours later, I still saw my shadow reflected in it, the beetles and the flies crawling around, unsure where to start.

“Five or six bodies in there,” Beasley said in a hoarse voice. He lighted a cigarette. Reached for his hip flask of whiskey, glanced at the sun, and reconsidered. Then reconsidered again and down the goddamned hatch. “Gonna have to reassemble the pieces to know for sure. Lotta pieces.”

“Cops are on the way.”

I’m not sure if I said it to reassure myself or to warn him that there’d be no more axe murdering on my watch. I ninety-nine percent dismissed the possibility of his involvement in a massacre. My instincts are hellishly sharp when it comes to detecting the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. Beasley had issues. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t one.

The sun inched across the sky. Beasley checked his watch every couple of minutes.

“Did the carnival lose a tiger?” I said. “Or a lion? The neck wound is. chunky. That’s how a big cat might savage its prey.” As if I knew jack shit about big cats or mauled corpses. My mouth pops into gear when I’m nervous.

“The Gallowses own three panthers. All accounted for. This ain’t a wild animal attack. This is a whole other thing.”

I couldn’t stop staring at the head, its mouth agape, teeth and tongue clotted in gore. I ran my thumb along the scar on my throat, felt a sympathetic pang, and relived the searing slash of the blade as it sawed on through.

“Here’s the sheriff,” Beasley said. He looked me in the eye, hard. “Be careful.”

“We’re hunting rabbits?” I always try to be brave.

“Don’t get cute with him. He’s not your friend. Take my word.”

I decided to heed his warning. A bad black vibe pushed forward thick as the dust from the cop cars tearing along the road.

Two Lewis and Clark County police cruisers nosed into the field. Several cops in midnight blue suits and white Stetson hats trudged the rest of the way to us. They patted the guns on their hips. One had a German shepherd on a leash. Poor dog wanted fuck-all to do with the murder scene. He pissed himself and cowered between the legs of his mortified handler, a lantern-jawed gal in mirrored shades.

Beasley shook hands with the sheriff. Two dogs deciding whether to sniff asses or just get to tearing each other apart.

Blond bearded and heavy through shoulders and hips, Sheriff Von Holcomb seemed at least a decade underseasoned for the post. On the other hand, one glance at the austere panorama and I concluded that finding a taker for the position might mean the electorate couldn’t afford to be too picky.

“Huh, well fuck a duck.” Sheriff Holcomb toed the severed head. He covered his mouth with a bright red handkerchief. His deputies took tape measurements and snapped photographs of the crime scene. The unluckiest of them all, a goober with a painfully large Adam’s apple, got sent into the burrow with a Maglite and a camera.

“Any idea who we’re lookin’ at here?”

“Alfred Fenwood.” Beasley passed the sheriff a bloodied driver’s license. “Don’t know him. Drag the bars, you’ll find Al likes cheap beer and long walks along the highway after dark.”

“We got missing-person reports galore over the past three weeks. Hikers, ranch hands, some folks snatched out of parking lots. Lots of wild animal calls, too. Ripped-to-hell pets, the usual sort of crap.” The sheriff glanced at me slyly, propped his boot on the head like a kid resting on a soccer ball, and slipped off his wedding band and made it disappear.

“Oh, man, are you kidding?” I stepped back and gripped the Ka-Bar under my coat. Come to it, I’d stab a hillbilly psycho, badge or not. My shiny new policy.

“You snuffed the Eagle Talon Ripper,” he said.

“No surprise you’re the lead detective in Timbuktu,” I said. A mistake because his smirk suggested he mistook contempt for flirtation.

“See my girl Friday with the dog?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Know why she wears them mirror shades? My mama was a gorgon. Deputy Cooper thinks some of the evil runs in my blood. She’s afraid to look me in the eye.” He grinned when I didn’t answer. Ogled my scars. “Wow. It’s true, you Alaska broads are tough as leather. Bastard really did slice your throat from ear to ear. Then you rose from the dead and sent him to hell. Amazing. Marcy at Dispatch ran your name. It’s flagged, big time. I suppose we’re gonna have to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting our fair state. Mm-mm-mm.

“How you survive something like that, eh? Don’t seem possible. Don’t seem possible, ’t all. That freak cut you anywhere else?” He actually reached for my collar and I tensed, ready to shorten his fingers by a knuckle or two.

“Von,” Beasley said, saving the day. “We’ve got a situation. Best to focus.”

“Plainly.” Sheriff Holcomb grudgingly lowered his hand. “The Gallowses think Injun ground gonna do the trick when nothing else ever has?”

“This ground represents a full circle. Fifty years, Von.”

“Ain’t sacred. Ain’t holy. It’s elk shit and dirt.”

“Red moon last night.”

“I ain’t blind.”

“We proceed with the plan. Gallowses’ orders.”

“Ha! Oh, as if I jump when they yell froggy.”

“Today you do.”

Sheriff Holcomb watched the shepherd twist himself into a pretzel and snap at his deputy K-9 partner. The cop in mirror shades swore and danced to avoid losing a hunk of her flesh.

“Things fallin’ to pieces around here,” the sheriff said.

“And you gotta keep a lid on this mess,” Beasley said. “Unless you want the feds on it like flies.”

“Be serious, amigo. The feds won’t figure into this.”

“Fifty years is a high-water mark. I assume nothing. Hell could be waiting in the wings.”

“And her?” The sheriff jerked his thumb at me. “Where she fit into your plan?”

“She’s our secret weapon.”

“You mean bait.”

“Same thing.”

“Bait?” I said.

“Secret weapon,” Beasley said.

* * *

“The sight of blood doesn’t faze you,” Beasley said after he got me back to the camp. We sat at a bench while two bearded guys in coveralls loaded boxes onto a trailer.

“Are you kidding? It fazes the shit outta me. Just that I see more than my fair share. I’m building a tolerance, one snakebite at a time.” I took a slug from Beasley’s flask. Too early in the day, even by my bohemian standards, but I’d earned it. “Let us recap. There’s a pile of human bodies in yonder animal den. You knew they’d be there. Or, like me, you’re super-duper unflappable.”

“Ain’t a den. It’s a trophy room. We’re not dealing with an animal. Not in the strictest sense of the term. I’m not very cool, either. Scared spitless, honestly.”

“Uh-huh. These murders are revenge oriented, sex fantasies, rituals, what? You said something to your sheriff pal about fifty years. ”

“Revenge ritual. The Gallows curse. Goes back to the fall of 1965. There was an. incident, I suppose you’d say. I’ll have Conway fill you in. He’s our knife thrower. Been with the carnival since the sixties.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“A curse?”

“What they call it,” he said.

“Going to stop you right there, big fella. I don’t live in a hut in the Dark Ages.”

“Well, my uncles swallow the whole bit. Power of suggestion cannot be denied.”

“Fine. Go on.”

“They say it clouds the minds of outsiders. The carnival settles into an area, some gruesome murders occur, the carnival pulls stakes and moves on. The cycle repeats. Reports get filed, news stories are written. Locals squawk. Nothing comes of it, though. The outside world forgets, as if the incident is erased from memory. It becomes an urban legend, a woolly tall tale to scare the kids, and everybody accepts it as myth.

“Only family remembers the details. Blood kin and those who are so tangled up with the carnival they may as well be kin. Company members who flee? They disappear or wind up in pieces. Doesn’t matter where they run. Our last sword swallower made it to Malaysia. Authorities found his arm in a hedge.

“The Gallows travels far and wide, nonetheless, the cycle continues. Sometimes it goes weeks, sometimes months, maybe even a year or two. The company members aren’t the ones who suffer the worst. Those victims in the woods? Locals. The curse cuts down innocent bystanders like a lawnmower through grass. I was around for the last occurrence. Ohio. Seventeen citizens in three weeks. Horrible, horrible shit. Not a peep in the national news.”

I gave this a few seconds to percolate in my imagination.

“Some freak has a hard-on for your uncles, okay. Obviously it’s an inside job.”

“Could be. Might be something stranger.”

“Either way, you gotta have a theory.”

“Sure, I’ve got suspicions. About all I got, though.”

“How many people work this joint?”

“A couple dozen.”

“Kinda narrows down the suspect list.”

“Jess, you don’t understand. This isn’t simple.”

“Doesn’t seem complicated either. Can’t the cops catch this murderer? Must be a trail of corpses strewn across the country. Clueless as law enforcement tends to be, brute force will out eventually. For the love of god, all those bodies, dude. Where’s Nancy Grace and Geraldo? This is national news. A CNN spectacular.”

“You’d think so,” he said.

“My instincts are razor blades, else I’d figure you were running a con, Bease. Is this reality TV? Got a camera crew stashed nearby?”

“Trust your instincts.”

“Dude, I’m open minded, as you are intimately aware. What I saw in the field, how the cops reacted. None of it adds up. Sheriff Blondie seems to be in it to win it, though. What’s his story?”

“His great-grandfather was sheriff in ’65 when the, ah, inciting incident occurred. Vinette, a woman who worked at the carnival, got butchered by a jealous suitor. That suitor went on to terrorize the countryside until Grandpa Holcomb helped bring him down with a load of double-aught buckshot. He didn’t get reelected. Von’s the first Holcomb to be appointed sheriff since the curse took hold.”

“You keep using that word as if it’s not superstitious bullshit.”

Beasley dragged a cardboard box from under a table. He emptied its contents onto the bed — a meticulously dissected series of clipped newspaper articles and photographs. The oldest were blurry, preserved from the decade of Flower Power and Vietnam; the newest had been shot recently. Articles about wild animal attacks, mysterious slayings, missing persons, all connected by some elusive thread. The connection seemed patently obvious — every article covering these incidents was juxtaposed with another featuring the Gallows Brothers Carnival.

He watched me thumb through the clippings.

“Curses might be country bumpkin nonsense, sure. I just try to see it from the rustic perspective. Forget curses. Imagine. Imagine there’s a conspiracy. Nasty, violent, spans generations, and we’re going to put an end to it. You and me.”

“Conspiracies I can sink my teeth into.”

“Now we’re speaking the same language.”

“The authorities can’t make a dent in this case, what makes you think I can help?”

“Because we only need you to play a role — you get to stand in for the woman who got murdered back then. The Gallowses, Victor, our resident guru, they believe a reenactment of that original crime will allow them to interrupt it and break the curse. None of the ladies with the carnival has the guts to act as a decoy. I’m good at taking a person’s measure. My hunch is, you’ve got a gift for survival.”

I had another sip.

“Bait doesn’t sound fun.”

“Bait just hides the hook.”

“This is about Alaska. Oh, boy, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think Eagle Talon qualifies me for what-the-fuck-ever freak Olympics you got going on here.”

“Damned right it’s about Alaska. Alaska was the crucible that made you. Your life ended when that man slashed your throat. The old you went up in smoke. You’re a dancing star.”

“What did you say?” Fear stirred in my heart. Fear and an incongruous trickle of exultance. A sense of deeper purpose.

Beasley retrieved his flask.

“I recognized your face the second I walked into that tavern. What’s more, I recognized the light in your eyes. I wasn’t there looking for Ms. Goodbar or a heroine to pull our fat from the fire. I went there to get drunk because we’d failed to find a leading lady for the big night. Meeting you is fate. Can’t be anything less than the machinery of the universe clicking into place.”

“Flattering, except I still don’t understand what you want. Eagle Talon doesn’t mean anything. I went head to head with a creep and lived to tell. The media tried to spin the hero angle. That ain’t me. I’m a survivor, not a savior.”

“Remains to be seen, Jess. Come on, you need to speak with Conway. He was there during the bad days.”

“Ask the dismembered people in the den, they’d probably say these days are pretty lousy,” I said.

“The other bad days.”

On the way to the knife thrower’s tent, we crossed paths with Victor, the carnival’s resident fortune-teller/mentalist. Youngish guy, seven or eight years my senior. He dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Lacking the glamour and glitz of a stage, his salt-and-pepper goatee belonged on a ski bum rather than a fortune-teller or magician.

Victor did a double take at the sight of me. He clutched my hand and kissed it with unctuous ardor.

“Oh, you magnificent man,” he said to Beasley. “You have accomplished the impossible. She is perfection.”

“Yeah?” Beasley said. His cheeks seemed ruddier than usual.

“No question. Ephandra must be wild with jealousy.” Victor finally released my hand. “My dear, it is a pleasure. You must visit Conway. Go, go! Time is short.”

The interior of the tent lay in gloom, although it didn’t matter — Conway, the knife thrower, blindfolded himself and continued to chuck the knives with eerie accuracy.

“Oh, Beasley, what have you done?” he said. He spoke in a deep, trained voice that made me marvel why he wasn’t an actor instead of a knife thrower. Tall, and muscular. Wouldn’t have guessed him for his midseventies. Raw boned with the hands of a pianist. The ace of spades tattooed on his left forearm.

He threw a brace of specially balanced knives at a slowly rotating wheel with a busty silhouette for a non-bull’s-eye. A scantily clad assistant would occupy the blank heart of the wheel whenever the curtain lifted again. I’d seen the chick, Gacy, stumble from the animal wrangler’s shack, hung over and falling out of her sun and moon robe. Every fifth or sixth cast of a knife thunked solidly in the center of the silhouette. Obviously Conway knew where she’d slept too. I’d caught a gander of Niko, the Lord of Beasts, and he was easy on the eyes. Conway had run afoul of an immutable law of physics — chicks dig a guy who knows his way around cats.

“I’m not sure if I should go into family matters with young Jessica,” Victor said. “For her own protection. It is unethical to inveigle her into our wretched troubles.”

“I agree,” I said. “This whole deal seems extremely personal.”

Beasley smoked a cigarette. His hair stuck out every which way from crawling into the bushes. He smelled rank. Still sexy.

“There’s a bus station half an hour down the road, Jess. Say the word.”

I didn’t give the word. Could be my heart in my throat blocked the way. My ever-intensifying death wish might’ve compelled silent complicity, or whatever wish it was that had followed me since the debacle in Alaska. There was also the distinct possibility I desired round two in the sack with Beasley. What can I say? I’m a complicated woman.

“Okay, tell it,” Beasley said to his pal the knife thrower.

Conway shrugged and orated a real potboiler. Back in 1963 when the Gallows Carnival was purchased from a central European mountebank who shall remain nameless, some of the original players immigrated to the US and continued under new management. Chief among them, a pair of star-crossed lovers: Artemis, the animal trainer, and Vinette, lovely assistant to the Magician from the Black Sea. The magician was a handsome and acerbic, mature gentleman named Milo. Milo, a longtime widower, coveted sexy, young Vinette and schemed to win her affection from his rival Artemis.

Predictably, nothing good came of this situation. Milo failed to woo the object of his affection through honest means. He turned to skullduggery, black magic, and plain dirty tricks. It failed. Then Artemis and Vinette announced their engagement and Milo lost the remainder of his wormy, rotten mind.

On the couple’s engagement night, while everyone else attended the celebratory feast, Milo slinked into the tent where the dancing bears, big cats, and wolves slept in their cages. Some beasts he poisoned and they died, foaming at the muzzle. Others he slew with a carbine. The aftermath proved so disturbing, even hardened veterans of World War II (and there’d been several on staff) wept to see the carnage.

Ah, the worst remained. Innocent Vinette, who had no conception of the magician’s sickness, considering him a dear and trusted friend, slipped away from the supper to collect him. After searching high and low for the magician, she came upon the scene and screamed in horror to witness Milo skinning Artemis’s prize animal, a black wolf. A massive and terrifying beast, originally captured along the Mackenzie River, the wolf hadn’t gone down without a struggle — a savage slash of its fangs took a swath of the magician’s face to naked bone.

Legend insisted that Vinette fled blindly, Milo on her heels. She in her dinner gown, he wrapped in the dripping pelt of the wolf, his face flayed. He brought her down in the field and tore her flesh with nails and teeth. When he had done for her, the magician fled into the hills. His wounds festered, as did his madness. Over the course of a fortnight, he roamed the land, murdering farmers, truck-stop waitresses, untended children, and other hapless folk.

Eventually, he took shelter in an abandoned wolf den on a desolate mountainside. The men of the carnival, led by an enraged and grieving Artemis, came with lanterns and rifles. Milo charged the hunters and they cut him down in a blaze of gunfire. He cursed them with his dying breath. And lo, a few years later, the carnival troupe became aware of a dark presence haunting the show. Mysterious and brutal killings began. Beasley had filled me in on the rest.

“Tonight is the fiftieth anniversary of Milo’s murder of Vinette,” Conway said.

“Of course it is.” I considered a void, then a crack of white light, all the fire pouring forth, and a sweet young thing’s face contorted in screams at the heart of the inferno.

Beasley leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Please help. The Gallowses will make it worth your while.”

We’d see, wouldn’t we?

* * *

Benson and Robert Gallows returned from wherever in an antiquated flatbed truck. Fraternal twins, middle aged, dressed in fleece and plaid and denim. It appeared Benson was the drinker of the pair. His hair had gone white. Gin blossoms patterned his squashed nose. Robert’s hair was dark, his features somewhat delicate. No burst blood vessels or cauliflower ears. Both wore revolvers under their coats and wolfsbane garlands around their necks.

Beasley explained that I knew the history of the alleged curse and that I hadn’t entirely decided to play the role of doomed Vinette.

“What do you think?” Benson Gallows said.

“She doesn’t resemble Vinette,” Robert Gallows said. “However, the proper spirit counts for everything. There’s also the factor that we have little choice.”

“Agreed.”

“Hello, boys,” I said. “You two could try talking to me since I’m standing right here.”

“You were with Beasley when he discovered the remains,” Benson Gallows said. “You haven’t hightailed it for the hills. That is an intriguing sign.”

“Technically we’re in the hills. Also, I think you’re a bunch of kooks, or you’re having me on.”

“Come now, you saw the corpses,” Robert Gallows said. “No chicanery there.”

“I’ve some experience with murderers and none with mumbo- jumbo curses. Primarily because murderers are real while curses are not.”

“The belief some hold in them is real enough to draw blood. Leaving that aside, what would it take for you to indulge us our role-playing exercise tonight?”

“Role-playing?”

Robert Gallows nodded.

“Easy as pie, my dear. You dress to the nines, enjoy a world-class supper with the company, and then retrace Vinette’s path from the night she died.”

“From the night she was horribly murdered, you mean.”

“Yes. While you’re wandering in the field, the rest of us will enact—”

“We’ll perform our mumbo-jumbo,” Benson Gallows said.

“Your hoodoo is going to do what? Trap the ghost, or werewolf? My bad, I don’t know what you boys are calling your fairy nemesis.”

“It’s a revenant, a spirit of vengeance. We want to trap it in a circuit. Then open that circuit. Not your concern. Your concern is to look pretty and follow a scripted sequence of movements.”

“So, how much?” Robert Gallows said.

I thought fast.

“Uh, ten grand. Cash.” The ol’ Mace piggy bank rattled emptily of late. My heart sank when the brothers smiled as one.

“Done,” Robert Gallows said. “Let’s make you presentable, shall we?”

“Keep that creepy sheriff away from me. He’s a deal breaker.”

“As you say. Sheriff Holcomb will not come within a country mile of your person. Right, Beasley?”

“A country mile,” Beasley said without enthusiasm.

“Then we have a deal,” Benson Gallows said. “I must warn you, however. A deal really is a deal. Sealed in blood as far as we’re concerned.”

“Indeed,” said Robert Gallows. “Should you renege on our arrangement, there will be consequences. The sheriff sounds as if he’s taken a shine to you, Ms. Mace. I am sure he’d be amenable to drumming up any number of phony charges to lock you in his jail for a while. Vagrancy and trespassing on private land among others.” At least the bastard had the decency to seem embarrassed. He shuffled his feet and glanced away. “Apologies for this element of threat. The warning is necessary.”

“Beasley,” I said.

“Hey, you shook hands.” He too averted his gaze.

Benson Gallows sighed in exasperation.

“Please, please, everyone. Dispense with the melodrama. No one is going to jail. Keep your word and all will be well. Simple as that.”

“I’ll alert the girls,” Robert Gallows said. “They’ll prepare you for the festivities.”

“Blow it out your ass,” I said. But I went along.

Mary the Magnificent and Lila the Bearded Lady took me into their trailer to get ready for the “dinner and a séance” portion of my upcoming date with Beasley. I had doubts about Mary — her spine was so twisted with muscle she hunched; her hands were enormous and rough as cobs. Nonetheless, she could’ve had a chair in a Beverly Hills salon if the magic she worked on my snarled mane with a jug of warm water and a washtub was any indicator. After bathing and styling came the glamour detailing. I’m okay with makeup, though I don’t usually apply much, if any. The ladies laid it on thick. Lila took charge, and she too exhibited a deft touch. After the detailing, they put me into a dress that would’ve done well for a night on the town visiting swanky 1960s hotspots. White and flowing, open in back and slit up to here on the side. Entirely too seductive for supper in a carnival tent in the middle of nowhere, Montana.

When they finally handed me a mirror I gasped.

The ladies’ reflections smiled at one another. I turned my head and dark clouds descended.

“Lila and I ran away from the circus,” Mary said. “This is where we landed.”

“A grave mistake,” Lila said. “Carnivals are much direr.”

“Because of the psycho killers?” I admired my cleavage. “Or because this one killed the clowns? Seriously, what gives? I’ve hunted high and low and seen nary a trace. Isn’t that carnival sacrilege?”

Mary smiled venomously.

“Scoff. We thought the curse was a joke too. Bitterly, bitterly we’ve learned otherwise. We are trapped.”

“Someone should do something,” I said, dry as toast.

“We’ve tried,” Lila said. “This is beyond our reckoning.”

“It’s not beyond mine. People’s heads are getting severed. Kinda physical for a ghost.”

“Perhaps you are an expert in this area,” Lila said.

“I straighten horseshoes with my bare hands. I can lift a grand piano on my back.” Mary flexed her massive biceps. “Even I could not hope to confront the terror in the hills and survive.”

“Run,” Lila said. “And don’t look back. You aren’t a part of this yet.”

“She won’t run. Ever seen a more stubborn jaw? Our friend is a warrior. She will fight.”

“Who’s out there?” I said. “Really, no bullshit.”

“Some sort of Jungian manifestation,” Lila said. “The shadow personified.”

“Baby, that’s the best description I’ve ever heard.” Mary kissed the bearded lady’s cheek. “Whatever the truth, don’t mess with it, it’ll turn you to mincemeat.”

“A shadow? Here I thought we were dealing with the wolf man. Silver bullets, belladonna, all that jazz.” I sighed. “Come on. I’ve seen the horrible shit man does to man. No need for werewolves or shadow monsters.”

They exchanged unhappy glances.

“A shadow personified,” Lila said, emphasizing each word. “Whether it’s man or beast is irrelevant for it is most certainly a distilled and concentrated horror that exists on the edge of human experience. Tread lightly.”

Mary lifted my dress and strapped a stiletto in its sheath to my thigh. Snugged it against the stocking. All right, that improved my mood.

“Your Ka-Bar is a good blade. Won’t help. Mine is cold iron and it has been blessed. Doubt it’ll help either. Still, you’re okay. I like you.”

“See you two at the event, I guess.”

“No,” Lila said. “We’ve decided to skip this one. Good luck, Ms. Jessica.”

“Remember to take off those heels if you need to start running,” Mary said.

“Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs,” I said.

I thanked them and tottered out the door.

Benson Gallows handed me a bag with scads of rolled hundred- dollar bills stuffed inside. I stuffed the bag under Beasley’s bunk and we gathered to head for the big top and supper. The boys could spin whatever fantasy they liked. Made no difference to me. Besides, I trusted Beasley, insomuch as I trust anyone. More importantly, I trusted myself and the derringer I’d swiped from his footlocker and slipped into my sweet little handbag.

Beasley and the Gallows brothers carefully explained my duties, which were negligible, considering the amount of dough they parted with to secure my participation. They assured me that all aspects of the ritual had been assiduously researched and rehearsed. As long as I followed my cues, events would unfold smoothly. In some respects this seemed similar to the slavish preparations of hardcore Civil War reenactors. Except for the actual pile of human heads and assorted parts in the back forty.

“I’ll be out in the field tonight, just in case.” Beasley had squeezed into a cream-colored number, slicked his hair down, the whole bit.

“In case of what?”

“Uh, in case you run into a rabid coyote.”

“Or a rabid elk,” I said. “Mary and Lila seem to think—”

“Those broads are eccentric,” Beasley said.

“This is a carnival. What else would they be?”

“Yeah, well, even for a carnival.” He offered his arm.

The séance cum last supper, or whatever you’d care to name the ritual, occurred in the big top. The roadies had broken out a massive mahogany table inlaid with granite and matching chairs. They left a flap open in the ceiling. No moon yet, but plenty of stars sprinkled against the black. Jazz piped in soft and slow.

Our fateful supper included a honey-braised roast, wild rice, pineapple and grapes, sorbet, and plenty of red wine. I may have proved slightly unladylike in my enthusiasm for the various dishes. Free meals this swanky were rare.

I had nothing better to do than stuff my face, anyhow.

The girls wore dresses, although none as nice as mine, and the boys were in suits.

“Yowch!” I said as Beasley pulled out my chair. “Did I tell you how hot you look?”

His melancholy expression merely flickered.

“Do me a favor and don’t argue,” he whispered. He slipped the crucifix from his truck around my neck.

I would’ve given him grief except for the fact that bit of adornment drew the attention of every man at the table who hadn’t already surreptitiously ogled my bosom since I’d strolled in.

Though I was supposed to be the centerpiece of the evening, it seemed as if the entire company had secretly agreed to exclude me from the conversation. Fine, the silly bastards could stare at my tits and leave me out of it.

Ephandra, the lovely, long-in-the-tooth contortionist and apparent paramour of Benson Gallows, eyed my vampy dress, silver choker, purple eye shadow, and hair piled high. She smirked with voluptuous malice, pulled on a pair of ermine gloves, and lit a cigarette. She smoked it in a holder, Greta Garbo style, or somebody like that.

“Tell me more about the séance,” she said to Benson Gallows.

“You’re a little séance virgin?” His white eyebrows lifted.

“Oh, I did a séance in spectacular fashion. And you?” She stared at him now, like a cat at a bird.

“There was this one time. Me and a couple of my cousins spooked each other on an overnight camping trip. I was in middle school.”

“Did you make contact with the beyond?” Ephandra said.

“I made contact with my cousin’s boob for a second or two,” Benson Gallows said.

Victor the Fortune-teller frowned at this exchange.

“Perhaps this is not the occasion for jocularity.” He’d gone the extra mile and decked himself out in a fabulously extravagant black silk cape and a red turban studded with gemstones.

“Nice, Ben,” Ephandra said, dismissing Victor with an eye roll. “Weren’t we supposed to hit a séance gig together once?”

“No. Wait, yes — we were on a break. You called, but I had a date with, what’s her name? Crazy blonde who dragged me to the pool hall every other night.”

“Ginny the psych student? Her dad had a place in Coeur d’Alene. Slut. Whore. Bitch.”

“Yes, you met, apparently. I never got past first base, then you snatched me off the market.”

“Sorry, honey.” She stretched to stroke his arm, digging with her shiny white nails.

“What was the deal, anyhow?” he said.

Ephandra shrugged.

“The medium slaughtered a cat. Slit its throat.”

“Ahem! Now that we’re all in the proper mood — thank you, Ephandra — I propose a toast,” Robert Gallows said.

I reached for the wine and Poindexter deftly snatched the bottle.

“Vinette did not touch a drop the evening of her, er. demise. Here, try the cider.”

“Sorry, dear.” Benson Gallows poured a glass of cider from a ceramic jug and set it near my left hand. “Absolutely no blood of the vine for you. We must not risk spoiling the ritual, hey?”

I gritted my teeth. Ten thousand dollars bought this cuckoo crowd a tiny bit of forbearance. I tasted the cider and nailed Beasley with my most reproachful glare. He wilted, then raised a glass of cider in a gesture of solidarity.

“Did you folks know that Sheriff Holcomb’s mom is a gorgon?” I said.

Victor sighed.

“The Gorgon. There’s only one. Von’s a liar.”

“Most definitely a liar,” Ephandra said. “The only creature that let his bloated sack of lard father touch her was a hick sheepherder maid from Butte. Probably not twice, either.”

Perkins the carpenter killed the electric lamps and the music. The chamber fell into shadow, illuminated by a candelabrum and the edge of the moon now shining through the screen in the roof of the tent. The moon burned with a ruddy light.

Robert Gallows tapped his glass with a spoon.

“I propose a toast — to the memory of those poor souls taken before their time, and to a reversal of our own prolonged misfortune. Thank you, Jessica Mace, for making this restoration possible.”

Everyone drank. Beasley rose, gave a courtly bow, and exited the tent. My mouth dried and I instinctively touched the crucifix before I realized what I’d done. Stupid, inane, social programming at its worst.

“Shall we begin?” Robert Gallows said. “Jessica, be so good as to stand over there — perfect. Victor, I cede the floor.”

Victor waited for complete silence.

“Join hands.” He inhaled deeply and blew out the candles.

Took a few moments for the moonlight to kick in.

“Milo,” Victor intoned. “Milo, are you with us, you scurrilous fuck? We’ve brought you an offering. Come among us and claim your prize, if you’ve the balls.”

Well. I am not too proud to admit this spiel caught me flatfooted.

Chairs creaked. A staccato thumping emanated from the table; it and the chair creaking grew louder, becoming violent. Knuckles, rings, and bracelets clacked against wood as the shadowy company trembled and twitched, caught in a mass seizure. Their spasms ceased and the enclosure fell silent.

Was this a con job? Or had they taken a psychotropic drug and were frying together? Damned weirdoes. The lovely vision of ten grand in a bag steadied me, although I was tempted to step forward and shake Ephandra, see if she was playing possum.

“Girl, that’s your cue,” Perkins said, inches from my elbow. He didn’t seem quite himself in the near darkness.

“Gah!” I thought about having a heart attack.

A dozen chairs squeaked as the company unfolded to their feet in a unified motion. All of them stood stock still and regarded me in eerie silence. Their eyes blazed white with captured fire from the moon.

Hell of a cue. I got going.

Outside, a cold breeze sliced through my barely there ensemble. I called upon my reserves of hardcore Alaskaness and merely shivered.

Stars flared and died. The moon burned a hole through the black and into my mind. I decided to heist a truck and haul ass for town, or anywhere directly away from the remnants of the carnival. Keys were in everything around here. I didn’t heist a truck. I decided to fetch my loot from under Beasley’s bed and ride shank’s mare in a straight line until I hit something like civilization. Didn’t do that either.

Sensible action slipped my grip. I walked toward a massive rectangular tent, domain of Hondo the Panther Lord, as I’d been instructed. My flesh tingled the way it does when I’ve gone over my limit of booze. Weird, since I hadn’t had a snort since early in the day. I wiggled my fingers and clucked my tongue to test the theory. All systems go.

An offering, Victor had said. A human sacrifice, he’d said. Okay, he hadn’t said that, merely implied it. How much danger was I in? My hair-trigger alarm system kept sending garbled messages that filtered through static. Meanwhile, there went my sun-darkened hand on the mesh screen, and there went my feet, bearing me into a den of beasts, and there awaiting my arrival, crouched Satan, golden-black in the glare of a kerosene lantern suspended from a hook.

I call her Satan because she smoldered with an inner radiance that I’d intuited from a thousand glimpses of the devil’s likeness in illuminated manuscripts of the holy and the occult. Her shadow spread across the floor and up the wall, massive and primeval and bestial.

Satan, a.k.a. Deputy Cooper, wore blu-and-white uniform pants streaked in dirt, and nothing else. Broad shouldered, narrow hipped, sinewy, her feet sank into a puddle of gory mud. Before her lay the carcass of her K-9 partner, its jaws caked in red. She’d skinned it with a flint knife from the Neanderthal King exhibit.

Deputy Cooper slowly pivoted and revealed that the dog had eaten some of her face before it died. No, I didn’t vomit, quite.

“Damnedest thing,” she said. “I was chilling in the cruiser. Baxter tore through his kennel and went right for me.”

I almost didn’t recognize the deputy, for obvious reasons. She’d also ditched the mirrored shades. Her shape twisted and thickened into steroid-fueled contortions. Her hands were bigger than Mary the Magnificent’s, and those long, sharp nails weren’t press-ons. She lacked much in the way of body hair. That was incongruous, I guess. Folklore and Hollywood have conditioned us to expect pointed ears and a fur coat.

We were alone in the tent. Earlier in the day, a crew had loaded the animals into traveling enclosures and cruised toward Idaho. Victor had said that the phantom of Milo wouldn’t require the meat of a panther or wolf. The only force acting upon the Black Magician was his lust for Vinette. All else was pantomime. The dog’s corpse and Deputy Cooper’s wrecked face suggested Victor might not have possessed total command of the facts.

None of this was following the script. Dead dog, mutilated cop, me armed and dangerous.

“Good fucking god, Deputy.” I pulled the derringer from my purse, aimed at her head, and cocked the hammer. The pistol felt like a toy in my fist, in the presence of evil. Had I believed in evil prior to this instant?

She drove the flint blade into the ground and straightened. Blood oozed over her breasts, painted her belly and thighs. The blood flow showed no sign of slowing. Black-gold blood.

“You smell. great,” she said through impressive canines.

“Thanks,” I said. “Get on the ground.”

She tilted her partial death’s head. Her eyes were bloodshot and yellow.

“I’m going to eat your whoring heart, Nettie.”

“Okay, lady.” I pulled the trigger, saw a tiny hole bore into the exposed bone of her skull. A wisp of smoke curled from the wound.

Deputy Cooper blinked.

“There’s mud in your eye,” she said.

Her arm looped around fast and smacked me across the chest. Oof, let me tell you. Back in junior high a kid walloped me full force with an aluminum bat. This felt kind of similar, except somebody had filled the bat with rebar and Babe Ruth slugged me with it. A flash of insight suggested that in a parallel reality, the blow had struck claws first and my insides had splashed all over the place.

I flew backward through the tent opening and landed on my ass. Here came the skull-faced wolf woman, striding toward me. Mary, dressed in her carnival tights that showed off a lot of grotesquely bulging muscles, stepped out of the shadows and clobbered her across the back of the neck with a steel wrecking bar. The steel clanged meatily. Deputy Cooper dropped to a knee and Mary hit her again like she was chopping into a log.

Deputy Cooper caught the bar on the third swing, ripped it from Mary’s grasp, and slung it away. She covered her ruined face with her hands and wailed. Neither woman nor animal should be able to produce such a cry. The kind of sound you experience once and hope to never hear again. The deputy shuddered and collapsed into a fetal position and remained still. She appeared to diminish slightly, to sag and recede, as if death had taken from her a lot more than twenty-one grams. Made me seriously reevaluate my contempt for the Catholic Church and its hang-up with demonic possession. Sir Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. In my humble opinion, that goes double for sufficiently advanced lunacy being indistinguishable from supernatural phenomena.

“I suppose that’s one way of solving the problem,” Mary said.

“Is it solved?” I said.

“The Gallowses will have to send a postcard with the news. I’m taking Lila away from here.”

Beasley’s mention of the sword swallower who got chopped to bits in Malaysia occurred to me. I kept it to myself.

“Thanks, Mary. Adios.”

She nodded curtly and walked away. Deputy Cooper lay there, one eye glistening as wisps of steam rose from her corpse.

I gained my feet and stumbled along the concourse. Dim lights peeped here and there from the recesses of shuttered stalls. The moon swallowed all else. I swear the moon resembled Deputy Cooper’s flayed skull, and it wouldn’t stay put, it rolled across the heavens to glare at me. I staggered to an empty squad car parked on the grass between the shooting gallery and a temporary-tattoo stall.

Yep, keys in the ignition, shotgun missing from the console rack. The interior reeked of wet fur. I jumped in, got her revving, and then floored it, barefoot on the cold pedal. I raced along the dirt road that curved away from the carnival. A veil of dust covered the sky and the damnable moon in my wake.

Crippling pain set in as the bouquet of survival chemicals polluting my veins diminished. Cracked ribs for sure, deep-tissue bruises in my back, everywhere. I’d bitten my tongue and jammed my neck. My feet hurt. It began to settle into my frenzied brain that I’d commandeered a patrol car, was mostly naked, had helped murder a sworn officer of the law, and worst of all, left ten grand behind. Perhaps I should turn around and retrieve the money, at any rate. Hard to split for parts unknown without a few dollars in one’s pocket.

That’s when the wheel wrenched in my hands. The cruiser slewed violently and I couldn’t work the pedals fast enough to avert disaster. It left the road at forty-five, flipped over, and skidded upside down until it came to a halt in the bushes.

The crash tossed me around inside the cab. Ruined my hair and tore my gorgeous dress all to shit. Might’ve loosened a tooth or two as well. I was partly stunned when Sheriff Holcomb got the driver-side door open and pulled me out and dumped me onto the soft ground without ceremony. He looked pissed. The pistol in his hand accentuated my impression of his mood.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” I said with groggy reproach.

“Jumping Jesus lizards,” he said. “My rig is totaled. Biggest clusterfuck I ever did see.”

“I bet you’ve seen a bunch too.”

He holstered his pistol with an expression of regret.

“What the hell are you doing in Coop’s car? Where is she? I heard a shot. What the fuck happened?”

“Easy, easy. Give her a second.” Beasley emerged from the gloom, rifle in hand. He knelt at my side and checked for broken bones. Contusions, mainly, but I didn’t mind the attention. While he worked, I closed my eyes and related the appalling tale of the past few minutes. I considered editing out the part where I put a slug into Deputy Cooper’s brain — admittedly, it might not have killed her, the wrecking bar swung by a carnival performer who could bench a grand piano was the most likely candidate. Once I started spilling, I couldn’t stop, though.

“Real sorry about your deputy,” I said at the end and wiped my eyes to emphasize the point. “Sorry about the dog, too. He was probably a good dog.”

Beasley stood and faced Sheriff Holcomb.

“Shut up, Von.”

“Screw you, Beasley. I didn’t say anything. She’s admitted—”

“To putting down a murderous psychopath. Damned good at it, isn’t she? All those bodies? I’m sure lab work is going to connect your girl to the crime scene.”

“Shit, man. We all were there. That scene is a mess.”

“Montana’s finest,” I said.

“Put things in order,” Beasley said. “Be the hero who solved the case.”

“Huh. Think the curse is broken?”

Beasley shrugged.

“Can’t see how it matters for you. If it is, you’re sheriff for life. If the situation remains unchanged, nobody outside of our circle is gonna remember anything in a week or two. Besides, there’s Jessica’s not-insubstantial fee. Check under my bed.”

“Yeah? How much.”

“Ten grand.”

“Beasley!” I said, too weak to jump up and slap him.

That did it. The clouds cleared from Sheriff Holcomb’s demeanor. He grinned.

“Okay, then. Okay.” He clapped Beasley’s shoulder. “Yeah, okay. Reckon I’ll mosey on back to camp and straighten everything out.”

Watching the predatory smirk and swagger of the sheriff, his easy acceptance of such a dramatic turn of events, was chilling. How many two-bit criminals had he left in the woods? How many hookers had he strangled and dumped along the highway?

I only exhaled when he tipped his hat and ambled toward town.

“Lean on me,” Beasley said. “I parked not far from here.” He half carried me to his truck and put me inside. He gunned the engine and got us moving.

“I can’t believe you gave that pumpkin-headed sonofabitch my cash.”

He chuckled.

“Von’s gonna be hot. It’s behind the seat.”

I relaxed. A hundred aches and pains faded into the background and I almost smiled. Didn’t last long — the dead cop’s face would haunt my dreams, or worse.

“Where to?”

“Home. Ride with me as far as you want.”

“Oh, is it that easy? We’re done? Weren’t you planning to trap the. spirit in that den? Sure Mary and I didn’t totally blow the whole deal?”

“I’m done is all I know. Gave it the college try. You look sort of spectacular in what’s left of that dress, in case nobody mentioned it yet.”

We continued in silence until we hit the interstate and turned east.

Beasley reached over and patted my scraped knee.

“Yep, it’s over. The moon feels different.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the last thing I’d seen before I booked out of there in Sheriff Holcomb’s cruiser was Deputy Cooper’s grinning corpse, or how its eyelid drooped in a ghastly wink.

Besides, Beasley was right. The moon did feel different. Surely it did.

I gave him a cheery smile and clicked on the radio. Hank Williams Sr.’s lost highway carried me into dreams.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Nathan Ballingrud is the award-winning author of the short story collection North American Lake Monsters, from Small Beer Press. He lives with his daughter in Asheville, North Carolina, where he is at work on his first novel.

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and his Bram Stoker Award — winning collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lovecraft Unbound, Haunted Legends, and Fearful Symmetries. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York.

Dennis Danvers has published seven novels, including New York Times notables Circuit of Heaven and The Watch, Locus and Bram Stoker nominee Wilderness, and The Bright Spot (under pseudonym Robert Sydney). His short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines, webzines, and anthologies.

He teaches fiction writing and science fiction and fantasy literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and blogs at DennisDanvers.com, where a free novel, Bad Angels, has recently been posted.

Terry Dowling is one of Australia’s most respected and internationally acclaimed writers of science fiction, dark fantasy, and horror, and author of the multi-award-winning Tom Rynosseros saga. He has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, its “premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows, and its “most acclaimed writer of the dark fantastic” by Cemetery Dance magazine. His collection Basic Black won the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection.

London’s Guardian called his debut novel Clowns at Midnight “an exceptional work that bears comparison to John Fowles’s The Magus.”

Terry’s homepage can be found at TerryDowling.com.

Katherine Dunn’s third novel, Geek Love, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and for the National Book Award. Dunn is a prize-winning boxing journalist and teaches fiction in the Pacific University MFA Writing program.

Jeffrey Ford is the multi-award winning author of the novels Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year.

His short fiction has been published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies and has been collected in The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace.

Glen Hirshberg’s novels include The Snowman’s Children, The Book of Bunk, and Motherless Child, the latter recently reissued in a new, revised edition by Tor, with two sequels to follow. His short fiction has been collected in The Two Sams, American Morons, and The Janus Tree. He has won the Shirley Jackson Award and three International Horror Guild Awards.

With Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison, he cofounded the Rolling Darkness Revue, a reading/live music/performance event that tours the West Coast every fall and has also made international appearances.

He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, son, daughter, and cats.

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of fifteen novels and five collections. Most recent are Not for Nothing, The Least of My Scars, and The Gospel of Z. Up soon are After the People Lights Have Gone Off, Once Upon a Time in Texas, and, with Paul Tremblay, Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly.

Jones has had some two hundred stories published, many reprinted in best-of-the-year annuals. He’s won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, and an NEA fellowship in fiction. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU — Boulder and UCR — Palm Desert.

He lives in Colorado, and really likes werewolves and slashers and hair metal.

For more information, see DemonTheory.net or @SGJ72 on Twitter.

Joel Lane was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic, and anthology editor. Although most of his short fiction was dark fantasy or horror, his two novels From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask were more mainstream.

He won the World Fantasy Award in 2013 for his most recent collection, Where Furnaces Burn, and he won the British Fantasy Award twice. His short stories have been collected in five volumes. He died in 2013.

Livia Llewellyn is a writer of dark fantasy, horror, and erotica. A 2006 graduate of Clarion, her fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Sybil’s Garage, Pseudopod, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies, including The Best Horror of the Year. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, was published in 2011. Engines received a nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection, and “Omphalos” received a Best Novelette nomination. You can find her online at LiviaLlewellyn.com.

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including most recently Love Is the Law and The Last Weekend. His short fiction has appeared in Supernatural Noir, West Coast Crime Wave, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2013. He has written about martial arts and professional wrestling for The Smart Set, The Village Voice, and Clarkesworld Magazine. With Masumi Washington, Nick coedited the essay collection The Battle Royale Slam Book—featuring work by Sam Hamm, John Skipp, Brian Keene, and others — about the novel by Koushun Takami and the related film and manga projects.

Priya Sharma is a doctor in the UK. Her fiction has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One, and Alt Hist, as well as on Tor.com. She has been reprinted in previous editions of The Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, edited by Paula Guran, and will be in more reprint anthologies in 2014. This year she hopes to cure her morbid fear of novel writing.

More information can be found at PriyaSharmaFiction.WordPress.com.

Robert Shearman has written four short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. The most recent, Remember Why You Fear Me, was published in 2012.

He writes regularly in the UK for theater and BBC Radio, winning the Sunday Times Playwriting Award and the Guinness Award in association with the Royal National Theatre. He’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks to the twenty-first- century revival of Doctor Who, in an episode that was a finalist for the Hugo Award.

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford award. Her second, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, has recently been published. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, and others, and the anthologies Federations, After, Teeth, and more. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared at NPR.org, The A.V. Club, Strange Horizons, and io9. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks at GenevieveValentine.com.

A. C. Wise is the author of numerous short stories, which have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Shimmer, and The Best Horror of the Year, among others. In addition to her writing, she coedits Unlikely Story. For more information, visit the author’s website at ACWise.net.

N. Lee Wood was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but currently lives in New Zealand with her partner and their fat, bolshie cat.

Wood is the author of Looking for the Mahdi, which was selected as a New York Times notable book. Her other science fiction titles include Faraday’s Orphans, Bloodrights, and Master of None. Her short stories have been published in Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction.

Writing as “Lee Jackson,” she is the author of a mainstream novel, Redemption, and has also published two novels in a mystery/crime series, Kingdom of Lies and Kingdom of Silence. She is currently working on completing her eighth novel, Glass Hearts.

She holds a master’s degree in English literature and has taught creative writing to undergraduate and private students.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty years. She currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Fearful Symmetries, and a six-volume series of retold fairy tales starting with Snow White, Blood Red (the latter with Terri Windling and soon to be released for the first time as eBooks).

Forthcoming are The Cutting Room and The Doll Collection.

She’s won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for “outstanding contribution to the genre”; has been honored with the Life Achievement Award, given by the Horror Writers Association in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career; and has been awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award for 2014, which is presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.

She lives in New York and cohosts the monthly Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar. More information can be found at Datlow.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter at @EllenDatlow.

Dark Horse Books

10956 SE Main Street

Milwaukie, OR 97222

DarkHorse.com

Cover illustration by E. M. Gist

Cover design by Justin Couch

Book design by Tina Alessi

Special thanks to Daniel Chabon, Ian Tucker, and Annie Gullion

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nightmare Carnival / edited by Ellen Datlow.

pages cm

Summary: “Fourteen stories by some of the most talented writers in horror, science fiction, and fantasy provide unique and uncanny looks at the tradition of the traveling carnival, its strange denizens, and its unforgettable effects on the places it stops”- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61655-427-9 (paperback)

1. Horror tales. 2. Carnivals-Fiction. I. Datlow, Ellen, editor.

PN6071.H727N46 2014

808.83’8738-dc23

2014014043

ISBN 978-1-61655-427-9

First Dark Horse Books edition: September 2014

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Mike Richardson, President and Publisher Neil Hankerson, Executive Vice President Tom Weddle, Chief Financial Officer Randy Stradley, Vice President of Publishing Michael Martens, Vice President of Book Trade Sales Anita Nelson, Vice President of Business Affairs Scott Allie, Editor in Chief Matt Parkinson, Vice President of Marketing David Scroggy, Vice President of Product Development Dale LaFountain, Vice President of Information Technology Darlene Vogel, Senior Director of Print, Design, and Production Ken Lizzi, General Counsel Davey Estrada, Editorial Director Chris Warner, Senior Books Editor Diana Schutz, Executive Editor Cary Grazzini, Director of Print and Development Lia Ribacchi, Art Director Cara Niece, Director of Scheduling Mark Bernardi, Director of Digital Publishing

Content

Dunn Katherine, et al Nightmare Carnival

Nightmare Carnival

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

SCAPEGOATS by N. Lee Wood

THE FIREBRAND by Priya Sharma

WORK, HOOK, SHOOT, RIP by Nick Mamatas

AND THE CARNIVAL LEAVES TOWN by A. C. Wise

CORPSE ROSE by Terry Dowling

LAST OF THE FAIR by Joel Lane

A SMALL PART IN THE PANTOMIME by Glen Hirshberg

HIBBLER’S MINIONS by Jeffrey Ford

SWAN SONG AND THEN SOME by Dennis Danvers

THE LION CAGE by Genevieve Valentine

THE DARKEST PART by Stephen Graham Jones

THE POPPING FIELDS by Robert Shearman

SKULLPOCKET by Nathan Ballingrud

THE MYSTERIES by Livia Llewellyn

SCREAMING ELK, MT by Laird Barron

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ABOUT THE EDITOR