Carnival of Death (5 page)

Matt started to sweat. “Tell me.”

“Not now. Come to my trailer when you get cleaned up. We can talk there.”

Matt thought it over and decided he didn’t really think he had much of a choice.

“Half an hour,” he said. “Maybe the rain will have stopped by then.”

Gloria nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”

The rain was still coming down, but lightly now. It was more like a fine mist that hung in the air. The thunder was a dim sound in the distance, and the occasional lightning flash was too far away to give any light to the carnival grounds. Matt wiped the mud that had accumulated on his shoes on the side of the steps leading to the door of Madame Zora’s trailer. Then he knocked.

“Just a second,” Madame Zora said from inside, and then Matt heard the unlocking of the door.

“Come on in,” Madame Zora said, and Matt entered the trailer. It was much nicer than the one he shared with Ken, but then the fortune-teller had been with the carnival for a long time and had earned enough to have something a little upscale. Not that it was fancy. It was just bigger, cleaner, and better furnished than most of the others. There were even a couple of comfortable chairs in the small living area, along with a forty-two-inch flat-screen TV and a bookcase overflowing with paperbacks. The place smelled of apples and whiskey. Not a bad combination.

“You watch a lot of TV?” Matt said, just to get the conversation started.

“Not to speak of, but I have a satellite dish, and I can pick up just about anything I care to watch.” She paused. “Not that there’s much to watch. You know the old joke. Five hundred channels and nothing worth looking at.”

Matt nodded. He sat in one of the chairs and Madame Zora sat in the other. She had changed from her faux gypsy outfit into jeans and a men’s blue work shirt. Her dark hair, still wet from her shower, hung down to her shoulders. Her eyes were as dark as her hair.

“You want something to drink?” she asked Matt.

“What do you have?” Matt asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

“Ezra Brooks.”

He’d expected something a little more refined, but that was close enough.

“Not exactly sippin’ whiskey,” Matt said.

“It gets the job done.”

“Yeah. Sure, I’d like a drink.”

The little kitchen was only a couple of steps away. Madame Zora poured a stiff drink in one glass and a smaller one in another. She handed the stiff one to Matt.

“You’re not a drinker?” he said.

“I’ve had a couple already.” Gloria raised her glass. “To better days.”

“Better days,” Matt said and took a drink. The raw whiskey burned its way down to his stomach, where there was a small explosion. Warmth spread over him like a thin blanket.

“Look,” he said after a couple of seconds, “I don’t know what your real name is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not Madame Zora.”

“Gloria,” she said.

“It almost rhymes.”

“That wasn’t the intention. I think I saw it in a book somewhere.”

Matt took another drink and found that the whiskey was almost gone. It hadn’t affected him other than the first rush of warmth. “You mentioned that you knew my real name.”

“Matthew Cahill,” Gloria said. “And you’re dead.”

Matt held up a hand to stop her. “All right, fine. You know who I am. I don’t want to hear all that. You could get it from Google.”

“I don’t think Google could tell me about the things you see, the rot in people’s souls.”

Matt felt a chill, almost as if for a moment he was buried under the snow again. Ever since his rebirth, he could see evil on people as a physical decay…as if they were decomposing right in front of him…maggots crawling out of their eye sockets, pieces of their flesh rotting off their bodies like melted wax. Those were the gruesome, unmistakable signs of Mr. Dark’s touch, and Matt had grown more weary of seeing them than he could say.

But until now he thought he was the only one who could.

“How did you know that?”

Gloria took a sip of her drink. “I just knew. I don’t know what’s happened to me. It’s strange. It’s scary. I could never really tell fortunes before, but now, all of a sudden, I…know things.”

That pretty much confirmed the rumors Matt had heard about her. The talk among the carnies was that she’d been telling some real fortunes for a good while now. It had them spooked a little. Matt didn’t doubt it was true. He’d experienced too much to question the possibility.

Under the current circumstances, her newly acquired ability just added to the weirdness of the other things that had happened that night. What he needed to know was whether whatever had suddenly given her the power to see the future was connected with Mr. Dark. And if it wasn’t, was there anything she could tell him about Mr. Dark, or about his own future?

Matt looked at Gloria again. She was probably in her early thirties, but her skin was smooth and clear. She wore no makeup now, and she really didn’t need it. She usually hid herself beneath the gypsy garb of robes and scarves but had no reason to hide that Matt could see. She was an attractive woman with no sign of the corruption that would have told him she was somehow associated with Mr. Dark.

Matt knocked back the rest of his drink and asked Gloria what else she knew about him.

“That’s all. I’d tell you if there were more.” She finished her own drink. “You don’t have to worry about me telling anybody who you are. There are plenty of people here who don’t want anybody talking about their pasts.”

“Do you know their stories, or just mine?”

“I’ve heard a few of their stories, but I don’t know how true they are. Their stories don’t matter, anyhow. They’re not part of what’s happening. I’m sure about yours, though.” She frowned. “Do you want another drink?”

Matt looked into his empty glass. “No, I think I’ve had enough. You don’t know anything about a…darkness that’s associated with me?”

Something showed in her eyes. Fear? Matt couldn’t tell.

“This knowing, this sensitivity of mine, started when you came,” she said. “I don’t know why or how, but you have something to do with it.”

“But you don’t know what it is?”

“I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you,” she said, turning the whiskey glass in her hands.

“You might be able to find out,” Matt said. “That’s why you asked me to come here, isn’t it?”

“I…I don’t know. I have a…feeling that I’m supposed to do something, but I’m not sure I want to do it.”

Matt didn’t blame her. The strangeness of the night would have been enough to make anybody uncertain.

“You showed up at Serena’s tent just in time,” Matt said. “I don’t think it was because you heard the shouting.”

“I did hear something, but there was more to it than that.”

“Another feeling?”

“You’re making fun of me now.”

“I’m the last person in the world who’d make fun of something like that,” Matt told her. “Believe me.”

She looked into his eyes. “I believe you.”

“You handled yourself very well in that tent. Better than Ken did.”

“Some people have a problem with snakes. I don’t.”

“Maybe it was the blood he had a problem with.”

“That doesn’t bother me either.”

“You’re awfully tough, aren’t you,” Matt said.

“Not really. It’s just that I’ve learned to face things when I have to. And that’s what I should be doing now.” She put her glass on the floor by her chair. “There’s no use putting it off any longer. Give me your hand.”

Matt hesitated. “If you don’t want to do this…”

“It’s not what I want that matters. This is something I have to do. You understand?”

He did. It was why he left his home, ax in hand, and went out searching for Mr. Dark, hoping to stop the evil that he spread.

And if there was something she could tell him, answers to the questions that had plagued him since his resurrection, he wanted to know it. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. He wanted to know it.

Matt knew this might be a trick, that she could be some willing, or unwilling, puppet of Mr. Dark’s, but he had to take the chance.

He leaned forward in his chair, set his glass down on the floor as she had done, and put out his hand.

Madame Zora…Gloria…closed her eyes and sighed. Matt waited, his hand extended. Gloria opened her eyes after what seemed quite a long time and said, “I can’t promise you anything.”

“I don’t want promises,” Matt said. “I just want to know.”

“Knowing can be dangerous.”

“Yeah. I’ve found that out.”

“I can’t promise you the truth either.”

Matt pushed his hand forward. “Just have a look. After you tell me, we can worry about what’s truth and what’s lies.”

“All right.” Gloria closed her eyes again and took his hand.

When Gloria touched his fingers, it was as if a mild electric shock went through him, all the way down to his toes. If Gloria felt anything, however, she gave no indication. She held his hand in hers and stared down at it for several seconds.

Then she dropped it, slumped forward, and fell onto her side on the floor.

Damn,
Matt thought.
That can’t be good.

He raised Gloria up and got her back into her chair. She was breathing heavily and her face was flushed, but otherwise she seemed OK. He would have liked to think that she’d just had too much to drink, but he knew that wasn’t the problem. He rubbed her wrists, then put a hand on her shoulder and shook her.

She stiffened, opened her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“You want to tell me about it?” Matt asked.

“Not really.” Her voice shook. “I need another drink.”

Matt took her glass and stepped into the kitchen, where the bottle of Ezra Brooks still stood by the sink.

“A little or a lot?” he said.

“A little. I’ll be fine. I was just caught by surprise.”

Matt poured the drink and handed it to her. She was a bit shaky, but she took the glass with both hands and took a sip.

“What was the surprise?” Matt asked.

Gloria took another sip and looked at him with something like pity. “You’re wrapped in darkness. It’s like another person that you carry with you.”

“I know all about the darkness,” Matt said. “I even know his name. What I’d like to do is get rid of him.”

“I’m not sure you can. He…
it
is too much a part of you.” She trembled. Matt knew she must be frightened by what was happening, though she was trying not to show it. She had guts—he’d give her that. “Have you ever heard of Loki?”

Matt shook his head.

“Loki was one of the Norse gods,” she said. “He was a trickster, a shape-shifter, a father of monsters. He loved disorder and chaos. It was like a game to him.”

“That sounds a lot like someone I know,” Matt said. “I call him Mr. Dark.”

“I’m not saying that it’s Loki you’re dealing with. Just someone similar, someone who’s powerful and who likes to play games. I guess Mr. Dark is as good a name as any.”

Whoever he is, he told me we’d have fun. He said that at the very beginning, but I don’t want to play his games. What’s fun for him isn’t good for anybody else.

Games. Matt remembered the way the stake had appeared when he needed it and then disappeared afterward. The carnival was all just part of a game Mr. Dark was playing with him.

“Is Mr. Dark responsible for what happened tonight?” Matt asked.

“I think so,” she said. “But he’s hiding himself from me. There was more to see, but I could see only as much as he wanted me to.”

“I don’t get it,” Matt said.

“Neither do I, but I know I’m a part of it now, whether I want to be or not,” she said. “And it terrifies me.”

“I know how you feel,” Matt said.

But it was much more than that. He felt a sense of kinship and relief that almost overwhelmed him.

Finally there was someone who understood, who saw…or at least sensed…what he did.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

When Sue Jean woke up the next morning, she didn’t feel well. She couldn’t quite decide what was wrong. It wasn’t quite a headache, and it wasn’t quite a stomachache, but it was something sort of in between.

She thought about what had happened the night before. That didn’t make her feel any better. She and the carnie guy had given those turds something to remember her by, but somehow that didn’t seem satisfactory now. She wished she’d been able to do more to them, hurt them worse, maybe done some permanent damage. Jail wasn’t the answer, though. She was sure of that.

It was Saturday, so she didn’t have to go out if she didn’t want to. Her parents didn’t care. They were probably working in the yard, pulling weeds or planting flowers or poisoning ants or something. She couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to do any of those things, but it was fine with her if they wanted to, just so they left her alone and didn’t try to make her help them. Maybe if they got really lucky they’d win the “Yard of the Month” award and get their picture in the paper. What a thrill that would be.

Sue Jean lay in bed until around noon, listening to tunes on her iPod and wishing she felt better. After she finally got out of bed, she cleaned herself up and put on makeup, noticing, as she often did, how much prettier she was than her former BFF, Madison, that horse-faced bitch. She supposed that Madison and Freddie had survived their night together at the carnival, since her mother hadn’t come in and told her about anybody meeting with a horrible accident.

Too bad. The more she thought about the two of them falling off the Ferris wheel or getting crushed between a couple of the bumper cars, the better she felt. That was strange, but it was true. She imagined them being impaled on spikes, and that made her feel better still. She didn’t know why. Evil thoughts had never affected her that way before, but then she’d never felt bad in quite the same way that she had earlier. Now she seemed to be feeling just fine.

She went down to the kitchen, where she heard the lawn mower and the gasoline edger roaring in the backyard. She looked out the big bay window and saw her mother, wearing goggles and green gardening gloves. She guided the edger along the bottom edge of the wooden fence that separated their backyard from the Kingstons’.