Carnival

by William W. Johnstone

  “I only have to make a deal with the devil, right?” Ed asked.

  “Crudely put, young man. But... yes.”

  “Sorry. But I’m not interested.”

  Janet spotted Gary in the dim light from the fading fires and the midway. The doctor was in the middle of his metamorphosis, his face that of a horrible beast. Janet screamed just as Mark triggered the crossbow. His aim was true, the bolt taking the creature directly in the center of his chest. The transformation continued as death began flapping its wings and cawing the demon home.

  Nabo looked with disgust in his eyes at the thrashing doctor with a bloody bolt piercing his chest, driving deep into the black heart. He cut his lens covered eyes to the boy with the crossbow in his hands.

  Mark had cranked the string in place and inserted another bolt, holding the stock to his shoulder, his finger on the trigger.

  “They were too impatient,” Nabo said with a sigh. “We could have had it all. But they could not contain themselves.” He cut his eyes to Martin. “You won’t deal, you won’t gamble, and you won’t compromise?”

  “That’s the size of it, Nabo.” Behind him, Frenchy was trying to comfort the sobbing Janet.

  “Well ... I’ll still beat you, Mr. Mayor. But it will be a hollow victory for me.” He half turned, then once more faced Martin. “You’re quite a man, Martin. As a matter of fact, each person in your group is quite unique. Unfortunately for me.”

  He turned and walked slowly into the gloom. Then, once again, he paused and turned around. “You know where you and your group must meet me to bring an end to this, don’t you?”

  “I’ve had a feeling about that,” Martin called. He pointed to the midway.

  “That is correct, friend. Fun for one and all.” He laughed in the night. “The carnival is in town.”

  THIRTEEN

  Mayfield slowed and stopped in the middle of the street. “Look over there.” He pointed. “Couple sitting on the front porch. Let’s walk over and see what they have to say.”

  Davidson reluctantly nodded his head and both men got out of the car. They carried their weapons slung and set on full automatic. The middle-aged man and woman watched them approach. They said nothing. Mayfield and Davidson both noticed that the man and woman’s eyes were very strange looking. They were both dressed in formal wear. Very outdated formal wear.

  “Good evening,” Mayfield said.

  “Hubert and I are going to the prom in a few minutes,” the woman replied.

  “The ... prom?” Mayfield asked.

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  Hubert grinned. He looked like an idiot, sitting on the porch dresed in white sport coat that he could not button across his big belly. He had taken house paint and painted his shoes white. A pink carnation—made of paper—was pinned onto his lapel. His trousers were black. The woman was dressed in a formal that looked as though it had been packed away in a trunk for thirty years. Her hair was done up in ’50s style.

  “Ah ...” Mayfield cleared his throat. “Isn’t it a bit late to go to the prom?”

  “Not at all,” Hubert replied. “Some friends are coming to pick us up at 9:15. Oh! There they are now.”

  Both troopers looked around. No other car in sight. They glanced at their watches. Blinked when the hands read 9:15. But both knew it was a lot later than that. More like 11:30.

  “Aren’t you boys going to the prom?” she asked. “Don’t you have dates?”

  “Ah ... no!” Davidson told her. “We... ah, have to work. Yeah, that’s it.”

  “What a drag. Totally uncool. Bye now.”

  Hubert did a bop step on the sidewalk while the woman was engaged in conversation with somebody, or something, that neither cop could see.

  “Well, pooh on you!” the woman said. “We’ll just walk to the gym. Come, Hubert.”

  Both cops heard the sounds of a car pulling away, tires squalling on the pavement. Music from the 1950s was filling the air. But there was no other car in sight.

  “Holy mackerel!” Mayfield found his voice.

  “What next, Captain?”

  “Follow them. But I have a hunch I know where they’re going.”

  “To the fairgrounds?”

  Mayfield nodded his head. “Yeah. Come on. Let’s go find Frenchy.”

  * * *

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” Mark asked, walking up to his father. “You have a funny look on your face.”

  “Nabo lied. Again.” The others gathered around.

  Frenchy said, “The midway is deserted. Where has everybody gone? And what do you mean, Nabo lied?”

  “The man who jumped off the ferris wheel, the woman who died with that dart in her head. The men Doc Reynolds killed and those I killed. Those men and women who burned to death just a few moments ago ...”

  “All right. What about them?” Dick asked.

  “We may be locked inside this ... whatever it is surrounding the town ... but we’re all very much human and intact. You can’t kill a soul by fire or with a club or knife or gun. Nabo lied.”

  The calliope began playing a tune from out of the 1950s, “Johnny B. Goode.” Jeanne pointed to the midway.

  “They’re dancing over there!”

  “If you call that dancing,” Mark said.

  “What is that silly stuff?” Amy asked.

  “It’s called the bop,” Martin informed the young people.

  “Gross!” Jeanne offered her opinion.

  “Totally primitive,” Susan said.

  Martin looked at Don. “You got anything to add to that, boy?”

  Don wisely played the diplomat. “I always sort of liked it, myself.”

  Dick chuckled. “I told you the boy was no fool, Martin.”

  “Now that I think some on it,” Ned said, “I agree with you, Martin.” He held up a cut finger. “I snagged my finger on a broken bottle not twenty minutes ago. That’s real blood. So we’re real, whole people.”

  “But he must have told us all that for some reason,” Janet said, her voice soft in the night. She had not looked at the body of her dead husband once since Mark had put the crossbow bolt through his heart.

  “Either that or the man, creature, whatever he is, is a pathological liar,” Dick offered. “But I’ll wager he had his reasons for lying... and convincingly, too.”

  The calliope was belching out “Shake Rattle & Roll,” and the midway was rocking.

  Rich had just returned from a visit to the van, checking on his little brother. Gary was asleep, covered with a coat that Balo, or someone, had found. Balo had smiled at him, saying nothing.

  “Rich,” Martin said, facing the boy. “While this Nabo tells one lie after another, a few things he said were true. One is, we can’t get out. Two, this battle is for our survival. Three, it’s going to take place on that midway over there.” He pointed. “And that is where some of us have to go. I’d feel better if you were back at the van with your brother. What do you say?”

  The boy didn’t want to appear a coward, but back at the van seemed like a darn good place to be. As long as he could sit up front with that pretty Balo and the snake stayed in the back with Gary. The boy swallowed hard, remembering that Balo was dead!

  “Sounds good to me, Mr. Holland.”

  “Fine. How about you girls?” But he also knew by the set of their chins they weren’t about to leave the group.

  They shook their heads.

  Martin had to make one more try, for their safety and for his peace of mind. He knew, or at least felt, that once they got on that midway, there would be no turning back for any of them. And Martin did not have even the foggiest notion what any of them might be facing. “Girls, I can’t tell you, any of you, what we’re going to be up against over there. It may very well end up to be every person for themselves. Probably will turn out that way. I wish you’d reconsider.”

  They stood firm.

  Martin looked at Dick. The man minutely shrugged his shoulders.

  “Mart
in!” the loudspeakers blared. “Oh, Martin! Come to the midway, Martin. Let’s have some fun.”

  Martin looked at the group. “Frenchy, Mark, Amy, Ned, Janet, Don. You’re with me. We’ll go in from that end.” He pointed. “Dick, you take the other group. I have no idea what we’re going to find there. I know only that we can’t live like this. Time has stopped. So let’s join hands and ask Reverend Alridge to say a prayer for us.”

  “I’m afraid my thoughts are not very Christian at this moment, Martin. Peace and love and all that,” the pastor said.

  “I don’t intend to go on that midway promoting peace and love, Ned,” Martin told him and the group. “I intend to go in there with every intention of killing just as many people as it takes to bring this thing to its conclusion.”

  * * *

  “How you doin’ back there, Ruth?” DocReynolds stuck his head out of the window and hollered when Holland finally managed to bring the pickup to a halt. Sort of hard to do with no brakes.

  The woman with a meat cleaver stuck in her head waved the meat cleaver in her good hand. “I’ll get out of here, Doc. I don’t know why Matt did this to me. I don’t know why I’m not dead. I don’t know what it’s going to take for me to find peace, but whatever it is, I know it’s here. And I know I’ve got to help your boy.” She lurched off toward the brightly lighted fairgrounds, her stovewood leg clopping on the pavement.

  “Impossible,” Doc muttered. He looked at Holland. “And for that matter, so are you.”

  On the midway, the young man who had taken a header off the ferris wheel moved his hand and opened his eyelids, exposing empty sockets where his eyes had burst on impact. He did not try to rise.

  The woman with the darts in her body moved behind the concession. Sat up, her back against a support post of the tent-covered concession. She opened dead eyes.

  Just outside of town, several hundred dogs and cats, all of them horribly maimed, crushed heads and entrails dragging the ground, had gathered. The leader, a big German shepherd with one side of his head caved in from the deliberate impacting of Karl Steele’s pickup truck tire, looked around him. He sensed it was not yet time. But very close. When it was over, they would have had their revenge and then could go to that special place, set aside for animals who had suffered cruelly at the hands of man. And there they could find relief from their pain and find what they had always wanted: someone to love them. For they did not understand why some humans would deliberately hurt them.

  For several minutes, both Davidson and Mayfield had sat in the parked patrol car, silent, each with his own private thoughts.

  “It isn’t our fight, Captain,” Davidson finally broke the silence.

  “Looks like we’ve been sharing the same thoughts, Gene. Or orders,” he added.

  “Orders, Captain? From who?”

  “I don’t know, Gene. But I can make a guess and so can you. But this isn’t our fight; you’re right about that.”

  “Frenchy? ...”

  “That bothers me. But she voluntarily requested to come off of leave, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir. As soon as she did, she was ordered to stay and investigate whatever was happening here in Holland.”

  The men were parked outside the fairgrounds. They had spotted no one with a gun and no one that even looked like a guard. What they had seen were hundreds of people, the men dressed in out-of-date jackets and the women dressed in bursting-at-the-seams old formal gowns streaming into the fairgrounds.

  Captain Mayfield made up his mind. He pointed toward the front gate. “We stay out of there until we hear gunshots or see violence.”

  They both heard the rattle-bang of the old pickup truck. Without looking around, both knew the leathery, bony old man would be behind the wheel, grinning his death-smile and waving at them as he passed, the old doctor on the seat beside him.

  As the truck passed, they noticed the naked lady with the meat cleaver in her head was missing.

  “If she was real at all,” Mayfield muttered. “If any of this is real.”

  “You didn’t stand in the middle of that dark evil place, Captain,” Davidson reminded him. “If you had, you’d know it was real.”

  Mayfield sensed his sergeant’s words were true and he was very glad to have missed Davidson’s experience. He nodded his head and spoke very softly. “Yes. I know it’s real, Gene.”

  * * *

  The women embraced and the men shook hands. None of them felt it was a bit overly dramatic. They all sensed that some of the group would not survive, although none of them said it aloud.

  “Our new friends are watching us,” Frenchy whispered.

  Martin turned in the direction of her eyes. JoJo, the Dog Man, and Baboo were standing in the shadows, looking at the group.

  “We will assist you in a small way,” Baboo said. “The only way that we can. You are all approaching the climax of this ... game. You are all standing very close to death. Be very careful on the midway, and keep in mind that simply because you see something, that does not mean it is what it appears to be. We can tell you no more than that.”

  In unison, they stepped back into the night and vanished.

  Weapons were checked, nerves were steeled, and eye contact was, for the most part, avoided. The music on the midway had slowed, with Nabo—Martin assumed it was Nabo playing the calliope—doing a slow 1950s hit. The group could just make out the people on the midway slow-dancing.

  The group walked toward the midway.

  FOURTEEN

  The big shepherd turned his mangled head to look at the dogs and cats behind him. A silent animal communique passed down the line. The animals began moving, slowly, because many of them had to drag themselves along using front paws, their crushed hindquarters useless. Wolves and coyotes had joined the group, and as was their way, they helped each other. A huge gray wolf with a missing back paw and a gunshot wound in his side joined the big shepherd. They looked at one another and made peace with body language and head movement. The animals moved toward the fairgrounds, the lights just visible in the distance.

  Saint Francis was not pleased with this trek by those he looked after, but the animals would deal with that later.

  Those who were so badly mangled that they could scarcely move at all—for many of them, their condition brought on by the uncaring ruthlessness of Karl Steele, his perverted mind and deadly pickup truck—kept the procession to a slow crawl. They could feel. They had to give up part of the immunity granted them in their afterworld to make this quest. And part of that surrendering was the ability to feel—once more—the searing pain that had eventually killed them ... although for some that final end to life had taken days. That agony brought on by human beings—and not just Karl Steele. There were others like Karl, and on this night of retribution, they would pay.

  The animals crawled, limped, staggered and pulled themselves on. But they did not whimper, did not whine, showed no outward signs of the terrible agony they were experiencing as they inched through the bloody trail left by those who fronted the pack.

  Heading for the fairgrounds.

  The carnival was in town.

  * * *

  Martin was the first to step out onto the midway. His pistol was in his holster; he had given the big mag to Ned, after the preacher had asked for it, assuring Martin that he could and would use it.

  “I’m a preacher,” he told Martin. “But I despise the godless.” And he let that remark stand on its own.

  Warily, cautiously, the group walked the length of the midway. Nothing happened. The dancing, laughing couples did not give them a second glance—or in many cases, a first glance.

  The two groups met in the center of the midway and Martin motioned Dick to head his group into the shadows behind the rows of tented concessions.

  “Highway patrol car parked just outside the main gate,” Dick told them. “It’s unmarked but the emblem is on the door.”

  If Frenchy wondered why the man or men in the unit didn’t come
in and assist them, she kept it to herself. But meeting her dark eyes, Martin could see the puzzlement lingering there.

  “And I think your father is here, Martin,” Dick added. “There is an old rusted-out pickup truck sitting on its rims just inside the gate. Two men inside. One of them is Doc Reynolds.”

  Martin felt a hard surge, a myriad of emotions. But he knew he could not let them show. He knew that he could not show any signs of breaking. And he also knew that the others were watching him closely.

  “I’ll deal with that when it comes,” he finally spoke. “Right now, I’m open to suggestions. I don’t know what Nabo wants of us. He told us the midway was the place where we’d bring an end to all this ...” Martin continued. “No. No, that’s not right. He did not say that. I suggested it and he agreed. But we’ve wandered the midway and nothing happened.”

  “Maybe he meant the shows, Dad,” his son suggested. “Maybe he meant we have to go inside those things.” He pointed through the tents to the House of Wax, directly across from them, then moved his hand up and down the midway.

  All the group grew a bit uneasy at that thought. “I’ve never seen anybody go into those places,” Dick said. “Or,” he added, “anyone coming out of them.”

  A roaring sound overrode the calliope, with screaming following that. The faint sounds of flesh being crushed and ripped could be heard.

  “What was that? ...” Martin mouthed the words. They were not audible because of the roaring and screaming on the midway.

  Martin stepped between the tents and stood rooted to the spot, like so many other sights over the past hours, this was just as mind-boggling.

  A rusted, tireless, dirty pickup truck was bucking and lurching and snorting blue smoke, hammering its way up the center of the midway, the rims digging into the sawdust, the nose of the truck slamming into people, knocking them sideways, the bodies mangled and bloody. The fenders on the old truck were flapping like curved wings.

  Two men in the truck: Doc Reynolds ... and Martin’s father. Both of them grinning.

  Martin stood in the shadows, not exposing himself to the dead eyes of the driver. The others gathered around him, silent, watching the carnage on the midway. As the calliope pumped out music, men jumped onto the hood and into the bed of the truck, clubs and stakes in their hands. They hammered on the top of the cab and on the hood.