Carnival (22 page)

Without hesitating, Martin reached inside his jacket and pulled out the Colt Commander. He jacked the hammer back and shot the carnival man in the chest.

Nabo smiled. “Finally got a reaction from you. I was wondering when that might occur.”

They could all see where the slug had struck the man in the center of his chest. They had all heard the bullet tear through him, rip out the back, and clang off the metal of a bob-truck.

Nabo smiled at them.

Susan picked up a rock and threw it at the man, striking him in the face. The rock did no damage. Nabo laughed at them.

“You'll pay for that,” he said.

“Ghoul!” Gary Jr. yelled at him.

“And you as well,” Nabo looked at the boy.

Then he vanished.

“What the—” Dick muttered, blinking his eyes.

“Where are Susan and Gary?” Janet yelled, turning in a slow circle.

The group looked around.

Susan and Gary Jr. were missing.

* * *

They were in total darkness. Susan felt for her brother's hand and found it. “Hold on to me, squirt. Let's figure out where we are.”

“I gotta pee!”

“Don't think about it. Grab onto my belt. That's it. Now hold on tight and don't let go.”

With both her hands free, Susan felt around her. Her hands found a smooth surface, on both sides of her. Glass. They were in a small corridor.

Gary felt with his free hand. Felt like glass. “We're in a glass house, Susie!”

Something began pulling at the boy. He yelled in fright. “Something's got me, Susie!”

“Hold on, Gary.”

He felt his small fingers slipping from the leather of her belt.

“Susie!”

Then he was gone.

“Gary!”

Darkness and silence.

The silence remained. The darkness slowly became pocked with soft light, the light reflecting off of mirrors. Many mirrors. Susan knew then where she was. The house of mirrors. She calmed herself, forcing her mind to slow down, to think rationally. If there was a way in, there had to be a way out. Problem was, finding it.

She deliberately did not allow herself to think about how they—she—had gotten to this place.

No, it was they. But where was her brother? She heard movement from behind the mirror.

Gary stood in a house of horrors. Monsters all around him. His heart was beating so fast he really thought it might explode. The monsters were all great grotesque-looking things.

He forced himself to calm down, close his eyes, and take several deep breaths. He opened his eyes. The monsters were still there, but they hadn't moved or snarled or growled or anything. He poked one in the belly. It did nothing.

Gary felt better. “Fake,” he muttered. But he knew it wasn't fake that he had been separated from his sister by some kind of magic.

Black magic. Or so he guessed, although he really wasn't sure exactly what that meant.

Was he scared? You bet he was!

Then he heard a giggling. But it wasn't a very nice giggling. Evil, the word came to him. More giggling. He knew that giggling. He'd heard it before. Alma Sessions. That little creep.

“You crummy jerk!” another voice penetrated the near-darkness. “Now you gonna get what's comin' to you.”

Gary knew that voice too. That dumb David that ran with Alma, Norm, Bette and Virginia. They were all really bad.

“I'll kick your butt, David!” Gary called, his voice carrying through the semi-gloom of the house of horrors. All fake horrors. Gary had to keep believing that. Fake, nothing but fake.

Then Davy told him what they were going to do to him. Gary was petrified. He kept his mouth shut and quietly slipped to the wooden floor. On his belly, he looked under a horrible hairy beast-thing. That really wasn't real. Thing was on a metal stand of some sort. Wires running to it. Big fake was all it was. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Sure looked scary.

Gary could see the tennis-shoe clad feet of Alma and her punky gang. They were standing in a small corridor that ran behind the lines and rows of fake monsters. Could he slip under the hairy things? He thought so. But first thing was to get Alma and her gang out of there.

Easing his small one-blade pocket knife out of his jeans, Gary opened the lock-back blade and silently slipped under the hairy beast and worked his way closer to the feet of Alma and her gang. Maybe, the thought came to him, he could jab her in the foot so she couldn't walk—or something.

“Gary?” he heard Virginia call. She was as bad as Alma. Maybe worse. She liked to hurt animals. “Gary, you better answer me.”

Gary remained still and silent.

“Little brat is gone!” Alma said, anger in her voice. “He tricked us. Come on. Let's get over to the monster side.”

When the feet were gone, Gary slipped all the way under the hairy beast on the stand and rolled to the canvas next to the corridor. He cut a slit into the canvas and peeked out. He could see some of the nutty-acting people on the midway. But another tent blocked most of his view. He tried to remember what was next to the horror house.

The house of mirrors! Sure. That's where they'd been. That's what he'd felt while he was standing behind his sister.

And that's where Susan was right now, he'd bet. He had to get over there. He had a knife. He could help his sister get free.

“The little creep is gone!” Alma's voice came to him. “But that ain't possible. The front door is blocked.”

“Maybe they lied?” Norm asked.

Gary didn't wait to hear the reply. He slipped through the slit in the canvas and dropped to the ground, running across the short strip of grass to the next tent. He climbed up on the wooden walk-ramp outside the tent and cut a long slit into the canvas, then slipped into a maze of reflecting gaze.

Gary stood for a moment, startled by the many reflections of himself, all distorted. He listened for any sound.

“Stop it!” his sister's voice, low and muffled, came to him. “You're hurting me!” That was followed by a moan and a slap. His sister cried out in pain.

But where was she?

All Gary could see was his own reflection, about ten zillion times.

He thought he heard footsteps behind him. He started to turn around just as a hard hand clamped over his mouth, cutting off his yelp of fright as strong arms jerked the boy off his feet.

* * *

Frenchy stepped in and blocked Gary's path. “It won't do anybody any good for you to go off half-cocked, Doctor. Just calm down. We'll find your kids.”

“All right,” Gary said agreeably. Too agreeably, it seemed to Frenchy. Had they been her kids she would have been climbing the walls and screaming.

She cut her eyes. Martin had noticed it as well.

He shrugged.

“Where did they go?” Janet's voice was edged with hysteria. “They couldn't have just disappeared. That isn't possible.”

“Don't bet on that, Janet,” Ned Alridge's voice was calm. “It's just now getting through to me that we're really dealing with the supernatural. We'd all better acknowledge that and act accordingly, by accepting that anything is possible.”

Dick was looking at Gary as if he could see something that no one else could see. The man is taking the disappearance of his kids just too calmly, the foreman was thinking. He looked at Linda. She was seemingly unconcerned about the vanishing act of her best friend. Something is all wrong here. But what? And why did no one come to investigate the loud booming of Martin's Colt Commander.

Something is very wrong within this group.

But he didn't know what.

“What are we going to do!” Janet persisted.

“Relax, honey,” her husband told her, about as much emotion in his voice as telling a patient that a shot isn't going to hurt.

“I'll go look for them,” Rich volunteered.

“You stay put,” Martin told him. “Let's just all calm down for a few minutes and try to think this thing out.”

* * *

The breath was hot and stinking and whiskey-smelling on Gary's neck. But the little boy kept his wits about him after just a few seconds of panic. Like he'd seen done on the TV, he palmed his knife, hiding the blade from unfriendly eyes. His assailant cuffed him on the side of the head, bringing a yelp of pain from the boy.

But I still got my knife! Gary thought. You big drunk bully! You'll see.

“You don't open your mouth, you little brat! ” the man's voice hissed. “You gonna get to see your sister git hers.”

The man pushed on a mirror and the glass opened, moving inward. Gary looked at his sister in the dim light, half naked on the floor, and moaning like she was in pain.

His captor dropped him to the floor, on his feet, and slapped the boy on the side of the head, bringing involuntary tears to his eyes. “You behave, you little punk! ”

Gary spun around, driving the blade of his knife into the man's lower belly. He stabbed him three times and then ducked as the man screamed and tried to hit him. Gary darted under the blow and stabbed the man again.

Gary ran to his sister just as the man between her legs was crawling up on one knee, cursing. Gary drove the blade into the man's face. With a cry of pain, the rapist jerked backward, both hands to his face. Gary stepped over his sister's bare legs and drove the blade into the man's throat. He gurgled in pain as his blood squirted. He fell back, the blade pulling free.

Susan jerked on her jeans and fastened her belt just as her brother was slashing a hole in the canvas. The kids jumped to the ground and hit it running.

“Somebody grab them!” a woman yelled, pointing at the running kids from her spot on the midway.

Gary and Eddie appeared between concessions. Gary had the Diamondback in his hand and a very odd expression on his face. He leveled the pistol and shot the woman in the head. Her feet left the sawdust and she fell in a boneless heap, a hole in her head.

Eddie said some very uncomplimentary things about life in general and certain types of people in particular just as the kids ran past him.

But no one on the midway paid any attention to the dead woman with a bloody hole in her head or to the doctor with the smoking gun in his hand.

“Fun! Fun! Fun!” the loudspeakers blared the message. “Come one and come all to the fun house. It's crazy, friends. Bring the entire family. Fun! Fun! Fun!”

Gary looked at the loudspeakers, grimaced, and then ran to join his family.

“That was Mrs. Jamison you killed, Gary,” his wife told him, one arm around Susan. Rich had Gary by the hand.

“She was expendable,” he replied. “Come on. Let's go.”

“Where?” She looked at his face. There was a very strange look in his eyes. And that expendable bit was a very odd thing for him to say.

His smile was not pleasant. He turned and walked away.

Nabo suddenly popped up in the middle of their group, startling them all. He smiled at them. “Oh, good moves, people!” he complimented them. “Very good. Showed a lot of initiative on your part. This is going to be such an exciting evening.”

“You son of a bitch!” Janet cursed him. “Look what you've done to my daughter. You think it's exciting and fun.”

“People are only doing what they have always wanted to do, Mrs. Doctor. Like the old song, ‘Anything Goes.'”

“But you could stop it!”

“Au contraire,
Mrs. Doctor. I cannot. I am powerless to stop them. It is completely out of my hands.”

Janet was trembling with rage. She turned away from the evil smug face. She wanted to slap him.

“Then who can stop it?” Ned demanded.

Nabo smiled at him. “You are a man of the cloth and have to ask that, Preacher? Your god and my god can stop it. That's who. Why don't you ask your god to intervene? That should be good for a laugh.”

Ned stared at the man for a moment, his expression grim. “Perhaps I shall. But bear this in mind, worshipper of the devil: my god works in strange ways.”

“Then He'd better get off His ass and start working,” Nabo replied. “For your time is growing short.”

Then he was gone.

The group looked around them for some trace of the man. There was none.

“Let's walk the fence,” Dick suggested. “Surely they can't be guarding the entire length of it.”

“One man with a rifle every hundred yards or so would be sufficient,” Martin said.

“Yeah,” the foreman said glumly. “I already thought of that.”

And that was the way it turned out. And the men were on the outside of the fence, behind cars and trucks, reasonably safe from any gunshots that might come from inside the fenced area.

Gary had never said one word about his daughter being molested, and his lack of concern was beginning to irritate Martin.

As they walked, Gary, Linda and Joyce in the rear of the group, Martin asked, “Did you know the man who raped you, Susan?”

“Just his face. I think he works for some ranch. I'd never seen the other man. Mr. Holland? What's wrong with my father?”

“I don't know, honey. I was about to ask you the same question about Linda.”

“And Mrs. Hudson?”

Martin nodded.

“They sure are acting weird, I know that.”

“I agree.”

The group had walked about half the fenced area, and were now behind a livestock pavilion, and the irony of that had not escaped Martin.

“Listen to them,” Rich said, disgust in his voice. “They're in there talking about the price of cattle and breeding stock and so forth. Like nothing has happened. It's like . . . we don't exist, or something.”

They stopped to rest under a huge old tree.

“I sort of understand
what
is happening,” Janet said, “but not the
why
of it.”

“Perhaps there is no why of it,” Ned said with a tired sigh. “Although I'm sure there was to begin with. From what you've all told me, revenge was originally the why of it. But I believe that probably got lost along the way as this Nabo and his people made their pact with Satan. I'm no expert on the supernatural, folks. I'll admit that I never really believed in it. We always left exorcisms and the like to the Catholics. Somebody remind me, if we get out of this situation, to apologize to the first priest I see.”

“We'll get out of it, Ned,” Martin said, with more assurance than he felt.

“There has to be a why to it, Reverend Alridge,” Jeanne said.

“Not necessarily, child. While, as I said, I'm no expert on the supernatural, I do come with some degree of expertise on the subject of Satan. He's the great destroyer. The ruiner. Creator of havoc. Nabo was right. It's nothing more than a game to the Dark One. Tweaking the nose of God. That's all this is. There is nothing more to it.”

“A game,” Amy spoke softly, as she held Mark's hand.

“I'm afraid so, child,” the pastor told her. “All in the blink of an eye,” he whispered.

“And when they're finished here in Holland? . . .” Eddie asked.

Ned shrugged. “Who knows. Who is to say that even should we survive, we'd remember any of what has happened? I can't say. You'd have to ask either God or Satan about that.”

“Why us, Pastor?” Dick asked. “Why were we . . . spared, for the want of a better word? I'm certainly not a religious man.”

“It was for a reason. Of that I'm sure. But the specific reason? ... I don't know.”

The ferris wheel was slowly making its circles, music from the midway reached them along with shouts and shrieks of laughter. But the laughter was darkened with an evil sound.

“Mr. Holland?” Susan touched his arm.

Martin cut his eyes.

“The carnival people haven't done anything that obvious, and I don't think they're going to. Do you see what I mean?”

“I'm not sure I do, honey.”

“Well, if—
when
—we get out of this, what can we say for sure that the carnival people have done? That we could prove or that anybody would believe? They haven't done anything that I've seen. It's all been townspeople. I don't think the carnival people are going to destroy the town. I think they're going to sit back and let the townspeople do it. So if the cops were to come in while all this was going on, Nabo and his people are clear. It would just be sort of a reverse play on what happened back thirty-odd years ago. You see what I mean?”

“I think she's right, Martin,” Eddie spoke.

He nodded, cutting his eyes to Gary, sitting with Joyce and Linda. They all three had odd expressions on their faces, and a strange look in their eyes.

Joyce met his eyes and smiled at him. But it was not a pleasant smile.

What was going on? “One thing for sure: Nabo can't afford to have us talking when it's all over. He's got to get rid of us.”

“Kill us, Mr. Holland?” Jeanne asked.

“Maybe not,” Ned broke in.

Eyes turned toward the preacher. “Would you explain that, Ned?” Janet asked.

“Not if he could convert us. The devil would much rather do that than see us dead. That would be a much greater victory for him. And wager on this: the Dark One will really increase the pressure on us as the night closes in. Divide and conquer, I should imagine.”

“I think you're right.” Dick met the man's eyes. “But there has to be something we can do.”

“Oh, there is.” Ned took out a small pocket Bible and opened it. “I would suggest prayer for starters.”

* * *

Audie and Nicole had gone boldly onto the midway and returned with armloads of hamburgers and Cokes.

“No one bothered us,” Audie said, passing out the hamburgers as Nicole handed around the large Cokes. “In a manner of speaking.”

“People would look at us or stop us and chat like it was old times,” Nicole said, before Audie could elaborate on his last remark. “But I didn't know what they were talking about half the time. They were talking about things and people and events that I never heard of.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.

“Well . . . Mr. Harris kept talking about a basketball game between Holland and Chadron and about the big fight afterward.”

“That was in '59,” Martin said. “I remember it. What else?”

“Well, he kept using terms like ‘groovy' and ‘neat' and ‘cool' and ‘hip.' And he asked me if I was going to the sock hop this evening.” She looked at Martin. “Mr. Holland—what is a sock hop?”

“It's a dance. Usually held on a basketball court. You take off your shoes so you won't scar up the floor. Dance in your socks.”

“Oh, yeah. I've seen that in the movies. I—” She stopped as Gary and Joyce both started snapping their fingers and singing “The Boy From New York City.”

“What is that?” Audie asked.

“A song that was popular back when we were in high school,” Martin told him. “Back in '64 or '65—somewhere along there.”

“They look stupid!” Rich summed it up, watching his father and Joyce.

Gary and Joyce shifted vocal gears and began singing the old Dave Clark Five hit “Bits and Pieces.”

“I don't get this,” Frenchy muttered. “And I don't think I like it either.”

Nicole shook her head. “That guy that jumped off the ferris wheel? He's still laying out in the open, gathering flies. And the woman that Dr. Tressalt shot is still in the middle of the midway.”

“And nobody is paying any attention to them?” Martin asked.

“No one.” Nicole grimaced. “And they're beginning to smell.”

“I saw Lyle Steele,” Audie spoke to Martin. “He told me to give you a message.” He cut his eyes to Linda, snapping her fingers to the song Gary and Joyce were singing.

“Say it, Audie.”

“Well...”

“Go ahead, Audie. The whole message. Intact. I told you the other night that I thought I'd have to kill Lyle someday. Just give me a good excuse to do it.”

The deputy sighed. “Okay. He said that at first he was gonna screw your daughter and then give her to his men for a good old time. But something better has come up for you.”

Martin's brow furrowed. “What is he talking about?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Susan,” Martin asked, “just before you were taken away, did you feel anything strange at all?”

“No, sir. Nothing. And I've thought about that. One second I was with the group, the next second me and squirt were in that dark place.”

“Hey!” Jeanne said. “Where's Don?” She looked around her. “He was right here a second ago.”

They all looked around them. All but Linda, Joyce and Gary. The three of them were sitting and looking at each other in total silence.

The young cowboy was gone.

“I just handed him a couple of hamburgers!” Nicole said. “He was eating one.”

Don was standing amid some of the strangest creatures he had ever seen in his life. Tiny towered over him, while Samson stood looking at him as though he would like to break every bone in the young man's body. Which he would cheerfully do if Nabo would cut him loose.

“A gentleman's agreement, young man?” Nabo asked with a smile.

Don looked around him. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. “What kind of deal and how did I get wherever I am?”

“You are neither here nor there, young man,” Nabo told him. “You are in limbo.”

“I don't understand.”

“You are behind the veil. You are between lives. For the moment, you are neither dead nor alive. Is that explanation sufficient?”

“I guess. What do you want?”

“Oh, I think you know.”

Don lifted his right hand. Still had his hamburger, half eaten. He smiled and offered it to the man. “Care for a bite?”

“Don't be absurd!”

“Just thought I'd ask.” He took a bite of the hamburger. It was tasteless. He looked at the sandwich. “What's wrong here? ”

“You may experience only what I wish you to experience. And I assure you, pain is not an option.”

He recalled Ned's words. “I won't sell my soul to the devil or betray my friends, if that's what you're suggesting.”

“Don't be too hasty, young man. I would suggest you give it careful thought.”

Don started to tell the man to shove it. But the words would not form on his tongue.

Nabo suddenly became angry. “Interference! Why?” he shouted.

Don couldn't understand who or what he was talking about. Or talking to.

The dark lenses of Nabo's glasses turned to the young man. “How would you like to spend eternity listening to your flesh burn, and living in the most excruciating pain you could possibly imagine . . . forever!”

“That would probably be unpleasant. But I don't think my God will allow that to happen.”

Nabo spat in his face.

Don met the man's eyes. Or lenses. He was scared, but refused to let Nabo see the fear. “I may not be the most religious man in the world, Nabob, or whatever your name is, but I try to be a good person. I'm kind to people, I'm kind to animals. I don't even like to brand stock. And I was raised in the church. You want to hear me sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'?”

“What?”

Don started singing as loudly as he could. Lot of echo in this place.

“Enough!” Nabo shouted. “The words are offensive to me.”

Don kept singing.

Nabo slapped him across the face, bloodying Don's lips, silencing him. “I should have Samson tear your arms out of the sockets and then throw you back to your friends. How would you like that?”

“I wouldn't,” Don replied honestly. “You always have to have others to fight your battles and do your dirty work for you?”

“I should tear your tongue from your mouth. You're a fool!”

Don didn't try to argue that. Maybe he was. He looked first at Samson, then at the giant, Tiny. The hate in their eyes chilled him. Scared him. But this came to him: If Nabo was going to do something, why didn't he just do it and stop talking about it?

He met Nabo's dark lenses and wondered if the man could read his thoughts?

Nabo smiled as he walked around and around the young man. Don didn't know where he was, but it was weird, no doubt about that. All black and foul-looking. But shiny enough to see. Dead silent and dark as hell. Then the thought came to him: Maybe that's where he was. Hell.