Carnival of Death (6 page)

Her parents felt nothing but contempt for the Kingstons, who hired a crew to come by once a week and do their lawn and weed the flower beds. On her parents’ scale of values, people who didn’t do their own lawn care ranked somewhere below the homeless.

Sue Jean had thought she was hungry, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to eat. She went into the den, turned on the TV, and flopped down on the couch. There wasn’t anything she wanted to watch. NASCAR, for God’s sake. She scratched her forehead. She had all kinds of little itches under her skin, but she still felt great. Hating on Madison and Freddie had done wonders for her.

She was a little sleepy, though. Her parents would be in the yard for hours, and then they’d probably power wash the driveway, so Sue Jean pulled a couch pillow under her head and drifted off.

Her parents woke her up arguing in the kitchen. It was well past noon, and they were all worked up over whether it was time to plant the petunias or whether they should wait until next week. Sue Jean wished they’d shut up, but they could go on for hours about things like that.

She got off the couch and looked around. What the hell, she didn’t have to stay there and listen to them. She had a better idea. A much better idea. She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans and called Madison.

“Want to go back to the carnival?” she asked when Madison answered.

“Well,” Madison said after a second’s hesitation, “Freddie’s supposed to meet me there.”

“I won’t be in the way,” Sue Jean said. “I promise. I just want to see you for a while. Then you and Freddie can have all the fun you want to.”

“Well, OK. I’ll meet you out front.”

Sue Jean was smiling when she ended the call.

Earl had felt funny all day—not sick exactly, but not right, either. It wasn’t his wrist. For some reason, his wrist didn’t hurt at all. He’d thought it was broken, but today it felt just fine. He’d taken a couple of aspirin, but that was all. He didn’t know aspirin had healing qualities, but maybe it did. It wasn’t like he was a doctor or anything.

In spite of the fact that his wrist was OK, he’d been pissed off all day. Pissed off at that whore Sue Jean, who probably put out for every guy at school but didn’t want him and his homies even to have a sniff of it. And pissed off at that asshole from the carnival who’d interrupted them.

Earl didn’t like being pissed off, and it was time he did something about it. His old man worked on Saturdays, and neither he nor his father had seen Earl’s mother in years. She went off one night with some guy at a bar and never came back. It didn’t bother Earl, and it didn’t seem to have bothered his old man either.

Earl went into his father’s bedroom and looked in the sock drawer of the wardrobe. He pushed the socks aside and found the pistol. He’d first found it a couple of years ago when he was snooping around for condoms, not that he’d have any use for one, considering his record with the opposite sex. That was another thing that pissed him off.

The pistol was an old .38 revolver. Earl picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, and it was loaded. Earl didn’t know much about guns, but he’d seen plenty of movies. All you had to do was point the pistol and pull the trigger.

He stuck the .38 in his back pocket. It felt right back there. Like he should carry it with him always. He made sure his shirttail hung down far enough to cover it. It did. He was feeling really good now. He thought he should take aspirin more often.

It was time to call Harry and George and see if they wanted to have a little fun. Well, it was going to be a lot more fun for him than it was for them, the assholes. They’d blamed him for what had happened with Sue Jean, and they’d whined about it for blocks after they’d left the carnival. They’d be sorry about that. Earl grinned just thinking about how sorry they were going to be.

Buford Dorman was pissed off too. The bastards at the ringtoss booth had treated him like shit, and they’d made him look like a fool. If he hadn’t been outnumbered, he’d have shown that smartass who’d twisted his arm a thing or two.

And then there was Marcy. She should’ve supported him. Kicked one of those fuckers in the balls or something. That was the least she could do for him. She was his wife, after all. Instead she’d let them bully him and make him look bad. And he didn’t even get the fucking bear. OK, he’d gotten it, but he’d been so angry that he’d ripped it apart. Same thing.

Buford opened the closet in the bedroom. His deer rifle was in the back, behind his shirts, and there was a box of ammo on the floor. He pushed aside some shirts and bent down to pick up the box of .30-30 cartridges. He tossed it on the bed and got out the rifle. He hadn’t been hunting for a few years, so the rifle was a little dusty, but he’d cleaned it before he’d put it away. It would be fine.

He filled his pockets with cartridges from the box on the bed and then loaded the rifle.

“Marcy,” he called. “Come in here for a second.”

Serena of the Serpents still couldn’t believe that Clem and Clementine were dead. She was thirty-one years old, unmarried, and unlikely ever to marry, considering that she was of the sapphic persuasion and the kind of marriage that might have interested her was currently, if unjustly, illegal in most states. Clem and Clementine had been like the children she’d never have, and while she could replace them, what person in her right mind would want to replace her children? Clem and Clementine had had their own slithery personalities and were as distinct to Serena as any two human children could be, and no replacement could ever replicate their cute little ways.

The thought of the coldhearted way that the security guy had killed her darlings chapped Serena’s ass. Sure, he’d used the excuse that he’d had to kill them to save her, but that didn’t mean anything to Serena. She didn’t know why her babies had turned on her. The thunderstorm? The pounding of the rain on the tent? It didn’t matter. Not now. Now they were dead, and somebody had to pay for that.

Who had to pay? For some reason, that didn’t matter either. It would be just fine if the security guy…what was his name, anyway? Matt? Serena thought that was right. Matt. She’d like to see him flattened. Flat Matt. It would be just fine if he paid the price, would make her feel good all over, but that Madame Zora, the fake gypsy, was in on it too. She should get hers. And even Cap’n Bob. He was there, ordering people around and yelling about her babies. He should pay if anybody did. But if she couldn’t get to any of them, she’d just find someone else.

Like Gloria, Serena had her own trailer, and it had a tidy little kitchen. In one of the drawers of the tidy little kitchen there was a foot-long butcher knife. Serena kept it sharp because she liked to have everything in good order. She had a nice sharpening steel, and she went into her tidy little kitchen, took the steel and the knife out of the knife drawer, and began to draw the knife blade slowly up and down the steel, honing the edge to a fine sharpness. She liked the sound of steel on steel almost as much as she was going to like the sound of the screams she’d be hearing later on.

The carnival opened at noon on Saturday, and Matt was uneasy and watchful as he moved among the crowds. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, the humidity was low, and the air was cool. A perfect day. The people laughed, joked, played the games, took in the shows, and ate cotton candy and corny dogs. They didn’t mind the little bit of mud from last night’s rain. They didn’t have a care, or if they had one, they’d left it at home when they came to the carnival. The cheerful music from the rides at the end of the midway matched their mood.

Matt’s talk with Gloria had left him feeling worried and uneasy. The dreams he’d had later that night after he’d finally fallen asleep had only made things worse. He couldn’t remember them, but he’d awakened feeling sad, empty, and apprehensive. He was sure that Mr. Dark had been involved in all the strange things that had happened, but he didn’t know how or why.

Maybe everything would be all right after all. Maybe Mr. Dark had done all that he intended to do.

Matt almost laughed at his moment of hopeless optimism. He hadn’t seen the physical signs of decay on anyone yet, but he knew that Mr. Dark was around and that he wasn’t finished.

Because nobody had died yet.

But maybe now, between his sight and Gloria’s, he finally had an advantage over Mr. Dark…and could actually stop whatever it was from happening.

As Matt neared Gloria’s tent, he saw that she hadn’t opened for business. He didn’t know if that was bad or good. A dozen or so people stood outside the tent, milling around, talking among themselves. Matt heard enough to know that they were wondering when the fortune-teller would show up or if something had happened to her, but they weren’t worried. They just wanted to have their palms read because they’d heard that the gypsy was the real thing, someone who could really see into the future. They smiled and talked and waited, their moods light.

Everybody was having a fine time at Cap’n Bob’s Stardust Carnival.

Gloria didn’t want to be Madame Zora anymore. She wanted to go somewhere far away and forget all about telling fortunes, true ones or false ones or any fortunes at all.

That wouldn’t do, however. She knew there was no escaping whatever was to come. She swathed herself in her skirt and blouse and robes and scarves and left her trailer and books behind, wondering if she’d ever see them again. She couldn’t see her own future at all.

Maybe she didn’t have one.

She could see something about Matt, though, and while it wasn’t clear to her, she knew that she had to tell him something and that he wasn’t going to like it. Beyond that, she had no idea what might happen, other than that it was going to be bad. Very bad, indeed.

Sue Jean met Madison at the entrance of the carnival. Sue Jean sniffed.

“You’re wearing your mother’s perfume,” she said.

Madison blushed. “I thought Freddie might like it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he will.” Sue Jean smiled. “Is he meeting you inside?”

“At the ringtoss. He’s going to win me a bear.”

“Great! You deserve it. There’s something I want to show you before we go in, though.”