Carnival

by William W. Johnstone

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not, really. If we can accept any of this... outrageousness, we can accept that friends can be a part of the other side.” She paused in her speech. “I’m sorry about Linda. Very inadequate words, I know.”

  “It’s odd. But I can’t bring to mind’s eye how pretty she was. All I can see is that horrible demonic face I witnessed.”

  “Keep that in mind, Martin. That will make it easier... when the time comes.” Again, she paused. “Do you want me to? ...”

  She let that dangle.

  Before he could reply, the carnival strong man, Samson, stepped out from between a row of vehicles. He was wearing a cowboy hat that was much too small for his huge head. He grinned at the man and woman.

  “Five will get you ten that’s Don’s hat,” Martin said, taking Frenchy’s arm, making her continue walking.

  “He looks grotesque.”

  “I can’t hate him, Frenchy. I can’t hate any of them. I don’t feel sorry for them. But I can’t hate them personally. I can hate what they stand for, but not them.”

  She glanced at him. “What an odd thing to say.”

  “Not really. Think about it. They were not evil people when they were killed. Everything points to them being pretty nice people, really. The townspeople killed them, and did it horribly. I don’t know how they changed; became what they are. But I know why.”

  They walked on past Samson. The huge man made no attempt to approach them. He watched them walk by and then turned his back and strolled off in the other direction.

  “Revenge,” she finished it for him. “But that doesn’t excuse them from aligning with Satan.” She shook her head. “Those words seem so odd on my tongue.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Of course not. But the thought keeps returning to me; I wonder if all of them are aligned with the devil?”

  * * *

  Ralph Stanley McVee, known as the Dog Man, met in the darkness at the rear of the Ten-in-One with Balo, JoJo and Baboo.

  “We’ve been tricked,” he said, the words forming awkwardly on his long animal-like tongue.

  Balo stroked the sixteen foot long King and nodded her head. “I suspected that a few days ago. But we’re trapped.”

  “I want my vengeance,” Baboo said, his face grim. “That is my right. But I will take no part in the deaths of innocent people.”

  “I think Dolly has made up her mind,” JoJo spoke, his long ape-like arms dangling to his knees. “She has accepted Nabo’s god and is not to be trusted.”

  “That is not the point,” the Dog Man persisted. “The point is: do we assist the small group fighting Nabo, or do we wreak our vengeance and then do nothing more?”

  A wild, pain-filled shriek of horror ripped through the canvas. The sounds of breaking bones and the slurping and smacking of wet lips reached the small group meeting in the long tent.

  Just behind the tent, the Geek had broken the back of a man and was busy ripping long strips of flesh from the living being and stuffing them into his mouth.

  The Dog Man cocked his canine head and listened. “That is not an innocent,” he finally spoke. “But as the dusk approaches, and night falls, the innocents will suffer just like the guilty.”

  “I say we cannot permit it,” Balo said. “While none of us will ever attain Heaven, we have been promised protection from Hell. If we do nothing, we might lose that protection.”

  “Nabo is not sure of us,” Baboo cautioned the others. “Someone is always watching us. I observed Jake following me earlier.”

  “Slim was watching me,” Balo said.

  “It will be easier when the night comes,” the Dog Man told them. “It is agreed then? We help the small group?”

  It was agreed.

  “But they have traitors among them,” JoJo warned. “And I am not sure they know that.”

  “They know,” the Dog Man yapped the words. “The mayor possesses the gift.”

  “I wonder if he knows the danger he is in?”

  “If he doesn’t, he won’t live to see the night.”

  * * *

  “There’s been another death on the midway,” Nicole told them when they returned from their walk. “Audie and me found what was left of Mister Coleman. Looks like somebody ate his flesh.”

  “The Geek,” Martin guessed accurately. “I’ve been getting strange messages in my head. I told Frenchy about it. That’s why we returned so soon. But they’re very confusing messages.” He looked at the deputy and the city cop. “Frenchy has something to tell you. While she’s doing that, I’ll speak to the others.” His eyes swept the area where his group had been waiting. “Where’s Gary, Joyce and my ... daughter?”

  Audie caught the hesitation; said nothing about it. “They got up and walked away right after you and Frenchy left. They didn’t say where they were going. Martin? What’s up now?” Ned had joined them, listening.

  Martin looked at his watch. Four o’clock. About two and a half hours to dusk. “Frenchy will bring you up to date while I’m speaking to the others. God help us all, I hope Doc Reynolds was wrong, but I know he wasn’t.” He walked away, moving to his son’s side.

  “Brace yourselves, people,” Frenchy told them. “This is going to be hard to take.”

  Martin met the eyes of the kids. Mark, Rich, Jeanne, Susan, Amy, Ed. Gary Jr. was curled up on the ground beside his mother, both of them napping. Don was stretched out on the ground; Martin could not tell if he was awake or asleep. Eddie was sitting with his back to the group, some distance away. Martin stared at the man’s head and was shaken when Eddie’s thoughts entered his head. Shaken not only by his ability to read another’s thoughts, but by the savagery in his friend’s mind: Eddie believed his wife was having an affair with Gary, and it was in his mind to kill them both.

  He averted his eyes from Eddie’s head and returned his gaze to the young people “What I’m about to say is going to be very hard for you to accept, gang.” He met his son’s eyes. “Especially you, son.” He looked at Susan. “And for you, honey. But . . .”

  “I looked at my father about half an hour ago, Mr. Holland,” Susan interrupted him, her voice low. “But it wasn’t my father I was seeing. I don’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it was horrible. Demon-like. I couldn’t see it in Joyce and Linda, but I could feel it. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Martin did not trust his voice. He nodded his head and cut his eyes to his son.

  “The daughter is like the mother and the son is like the father, right, dad?” Mark asked.

  Martin found his voice. “Yes, son. I’m afraid so.”

  “Me, Sis and Gary?” Rich asked, a touch of fear in the question.

  “You’re not affected.” He leveled with the kids about what he’d seen while on the speaker’s platform. About Alicia, Mike Hanson, Matt Horton, Chief Kelson. The townspeople who were the devil’s own in disguise. He told them every word that Doc Reynolds had said to him.

  “Grandpa is coming... back?” Mark asked.

  “Yes. According to Doc Reynolds. After all this,” he waved his hand at the carnival midway, “I think anything is possible.” He looked at the kids and marveled at the way they were taking it. Or was it that they really did not understand? He rejected that. They knew. But like the adults, they had deliberately numbed their minds. “I’ll ask Ned to speak to Eddie.”

  “I’ll tell mother,” Susan volunteered.

  “I’ll tell Don,” Jeanne said.

  Martin hid a smile. Young romance in the midst of fear and death. Well, he thought, she could do a lot worse than Don Talbolt. “All right, kids. You hang in there. We’ll make it.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” his son summed it up.

  * * *

  An hour later, Martin knew that his daughter, his best friend, and Joyce would not be back. They had deserted the group, their families, to join their true kind. It made things much easier to Martin’s way of thinking. He walked over to Eddie a
nd sat down on the ground beside the lawyer.

  “I was married to that... creature,” he spat out the last. “Loved her. I don’t think I’ll ever feel clean again.”

  “Believe me, Eddie, I do know the feeling.”

  The lawyer cut his eyes and tried a smile that almost made it. “Yeah, I guess you do at that, Martin. We’ve both lost a wife and a kid.”

  “You can’t be sure about Missy, Eddie.”

  “Don’t try to con a good lawyer, buddy. We both know her soul is as black as a coal mine. It’s amazing to me that we’re all taking this as well as we are. It’s tough on young Ed, though.”

  Martin kept silent, letting the man talk it out of his system.

  “What do you figure our odds, Martin?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” he replied honestly. “Maybe not that much. But I have the strangest feeling that I’m getting more and more powerful—mentally.”

  “You really read my thoughts awhile back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think that is a gift I’d want.” He cut his eyes. “Powerful, how?”

  “In all ways. I know now why it’s called insight. I can see fear, joy, distrust, uncertainty. And I’m getting the feeling that I can destroy with this gift. Strange term for it, I guess.”

  The attorney looked at his watch. “Getting down to the wire, buddy.”

  “Not long.”

  Frenchy joined them. “Have you noticed the subtle change in the noise coming from the midway?”

  They listened, with Eddie saying, “I can’t tell any difference.”

  Martin nodded his head. “It’s grown impatient, angry—no, sullen. Yes, a definite change in the crowd.” With his eyes on Frenchy, he added, “You do have the gift.”

  “I guess.” She shrugged it off. “If I do, I never knew it before now.”

  “Nor did I. You feel brave?”

  “Not particularly. What do you have in mind?”

  “Taking a walk. Let’s size things up before it gets full dark.”

  * * *

  Martin Holland rattle-banged along on the pavement, the rotted rubber long since thrown off the rims. The rims were kicking up sparks on the concrete as he rolled along at a stately 25 MPH. One leathery arm was hanging out the window, his bony right hand on the steering wheel. He was still many miles away from the town of Holland. But he wasn’t worried; he’d get there in plenty of time to help his son and a few of his old friends. By now, he felt, his son would have learned he had the gift, and would be experimenting with it. And the father knew the son would soon discover how dangerous it was. He only hoped he learned it in time.

  And, although the second mental request was not nearly so important as the first, the man hoped he got to the Holland fairgrounds in time to see his son put the gift to work.

  SEVEN

  Over the objections of the others, Frenchy and Martin went for a walk along the midway. Both of them were armed, with the pistols concealed. They were shocked at the change of attitude of the people who milled around on the midway. Fights were breaking out every few yards, men fighting men, women fighting women, and men fighting women. The crowds pushed and shoved and cussed. They saw two women holding a man down on the ground, forcing him to eat huge wedges of cherry pie.

  “Tell me my pie is no good, huh, you son of a bitch!” a woman swore at him. She drew back and slugged the man on the jaw. The second woman knee-tackled another man and brought him down, straddling him, sitting on his chest, and hitting him in the face with both fists.

  “And they’re not even married,” Martin tried a joke.

  Frenchy chuckled until her eyes drifted to a dark space between two concessions. A body of a young man lay on the ground, naked and bloody.

  Frenchy walked over to the body and knelt down, touching his dead flesh. “Still warm. This wasn’t done that long ago.”

  “Sure wasn’t,” Linda’s voice came from behind Martin.

  He turned to face his daughter. Blood was splattered all over her clothes.

  She laughed at the expression on her father’s face.

  Martin backhanded her, knocking the girl flat on her back in the sawdust.

  A man who worked just up the street from Martin’s hardware store began screaming curses at Martin, charging at him with a club in his hand.

  Frenchy’s .357 barked once, the slug striking the cursing man in the neck, turning him around like a bloody human top on the midway. He danced for a few seconds, then fell to the sawdust, a gaping hole in one side of his neck.

  Linda had scrambled off, but not before Martin had watched the girl almost begin her demonic metamorphosis. She had crawled off into the darkness before the change could be completed.

  Sudden hate almost consumed the man, heating his blood to a blinding fever. He turned and saw Jim Watson looking at him, grinning, his face melting into a hideous mask. The words that rolled from the beast-like mouth forever damned the man. “We’re one with the devil, Holland.” The laughter was tinged with evil from the darkest places of Hell.

  Martin felt a trembling take hold of him as his eyes bored into Satan’s own.

  Jim Watson began changing back to human form as flames licked at him, the fire coming from out of the air. Martin’s eyes changed into yellow embers as Frenchy stood back and watched the crowds vacate the area. Within seconds there was no one within a hundred yards of the three of them. And one of them was a rolling mass of flames. Howling came from within the lashing flames; a screaming like nothing she had ever heard before.

  “That’s enough, Martin!” she yelled at him.

  Martin’s eyes changed. His trembling ceased. Jim Watson fell to the earth and sawdust and sizzled and bubbled and kicked as whatever sort of life was in him died yet another death.

  Frenchy grabbed Martin by the arm and literally shoved him out of the main midway, to the darkness between concessions. She pushed him behind the concessions and toward the livestock pavilions.

  “I’m all right,” he finally spoke. “You can turn me loose, Frenchy! Can you believe that I did that back there? I just thought it and it happened!”

  “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving... creature. I can assure you of that. How do you feel?”

  “Drained. Tired. But I’m recovering fast.”

  “He admitted he was the devil’s own. I wonder if he has known that all along?”

  “I doubt it. Doc told me that someone like Nabo has to come along; that brings it out. Old Doc. I forgot about him. Did you see him on the midway?”

  “No. Where was it he said he was going?”

  “To buy us a little time and to meet my father. He said something about a ride. I don’t know what he was talking about.”

  “I hope he’s all right. He sounds like a very brave old man.”

  * * *

  Doc Reynolds brought his heavy cane down on the head of a man and smiled in satisfaction as the man dropped to the earth, his skull caved in. Doc took a closer look at the man. He had delivered him forty-odd years back.

  “Trash,” the old man muttered, as he stepped back into the darkness between concessions. “And didn’t have to be.” After more than a half century of practicing medicine, Old Doc Reynolds was as knowledgeable about human nature as most psychiatrists: he had seen the best and the worst. The dead man was no demon, but he was just as bad: he would follow anyone with a half-baked idea—just as long as that idea involved violence against some decent person.

  Doc glanced at his watch. His old friend Martin should be coming along in about an hour, and Doc wanted to be sure to stay alive long enough to see him.

  He looked up and down the midway; what he could see of it from his hiding place in the darkness. His smile was grim. He had guessed correctly: most of the people were resting, gathering strength for the destruction they would wreak between the hours of eight and midnight. Just like back in ’54. It was being repeated almost to the second.

  Movement at the far end of the midway caught hi
s eyes. He squinted, trying to make out who it was walking up the deserted midway. He softly cursed under his breath.

  Old man Tressalt, and from the way he walked, he looked like he’d fallen off the wagon and taken him several good snootfulls of hooch. As he drew closer, Doc could see the pistol shoved down in the man’s pants. “No!” Doc whispered softly.

  “Gary! Pete! Frank!” the father shouted, his voice carrying over the now-softened voices of the midway. “I know what you are, boys. Come out here and face me. Damn you all to the pits of Hell—come out here.”

  The music from the empty rides stopped. No loudspeakers blared. The old man stood alone on the midway.

  Doc didn’t know where all the people could have gone to. Only that they were gone.

  All but the carnies. Those manning the concessions stood or sat and watched as the old man began walking slowly up the midway. Doc could see that their faces were no longer of a human form. They were dreadful looking creatures. Their laughter was demonic as the slobber leaked from fanged mouths and dripped over animal lips. They snarled at Tressalt and pointed clawed fingers at the old man.

  “Spawns of Hell!” Tressalt shouted at the creatures behind the game concessions. “Filth of Satan!”

  The creatures hooted, snarled, and howled at the man.

  Gary, Pete and Frank stepped out onto the midway, about a hundred feet from their father. They stood looking at him.

  “Your dear mother passed away this afternoon, boys. But not before she told me about her suspicions of all of you. It didn’t come as much of a surprise. Only you, Gary. That was something I could not believe. Now I guess I don’t have much choice in the matter do I?”

  His sons stood in the center of the sawdust midway and stared at him.

  Martin, Frenchy, Dick and Ned had slipped back to the midway after hearing the music fade. They stood in the shadows, listening and watching.

  It was Frenchy who first noticed the slight white movement at the very end of the midway, just before the concessions began. She pointed it out.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Ned whispered. “I can’t make out anything except a blur.”