And for heaven’s sake, there was no reason to be afraid of a stupid man in a costume.
She picked up her pace deliberately, to prove to herself that she wasn’t the least bit frightened.
Even though her heart was racing and her palms were sweating. Even though she was feeling cold in the eighty-degree weather.
At the end of the makeshift walkway, there was a sign that read, Brace yourself for something so horrifying, you won’t believe your eyes.
Calla gulped. It’s not too late to turn around, whispered a voice inside her head. What are you trying to prove, anyway? Who’s even here to see?
She ignored the voice. She wasn’t afraid of this stupid, dinky carnival attraction.
She stepped forward, out of the hallway.
Inside the tent, there were strings of rope lights that ran over the ceiling. The resulting light was dim and ghostly.
She blinked a few times, letting her eyes adjust. There was a raised dais in the center of the tent—a stage of sorts. Calla raise her gaze to see a huddled form in the middle of the stage.
At first, all she could see was fur. In the scant light, she couldn’t quite make out the color. It could have been brown or gray, but she could see that it was thick and that it covered the huddled form. She also realized that she was the only other person in the tent. No one else had paid to see this attraction, apparently. She was going to get her own personal performance.
But it didn’t seem like it was going to be much of a performance if the Beast Man was sleeping.
Calla felt a slight jolt of uneasiness.
Sleeping?
That didn’t make any sense. If this was a man in a costume, there was no reason that he’d be sleeping or huddled up on the stage. No, he’d be a performer. He’d leap out at her, roar, pretend to hurt her. If the furry thing up there were actually sleeping, then maybe it was an animal after all. But how would the carnival make an animal seem like a man?
The thought of attaching fake human legs to an animal struck her as much more perverse than dressing up a man in animal skins.
She stepped closer, trying to get a better look at the huddled thing on the stage.
All she could see was the fur and the steady up-and-down motion that indicated it was breathing.
It’s alive, she thought to herself. And then she let out a hysterical giggle. She wasn’t sure what the hell she was doing in here. Trying to prove that she wasn’t afraid, she supposed. But that wasn’t working, because she recognized now that she was scared. And nothing inside this tent was making her feel better.
She should leave. She looked back the way she had come, at the sign about bracing herself. It looked slightly crooked from this angle.
“Welcome,” boomed a voice suddenly.
Calla jumped, looking around. She realized that voice had come from a set of speakers above the stage.
She also realized that the thing on the stage was stirring.
The booming voice continued. “You won’t believe your eyes as you watch the Beast Man—half man, half beast. Abandoned by his horrified mother at birth, the Beast Man could only belong here at the carnival.”
The furry thing shook itself like a dog. It raised its head, and Calla saw a snout and a set of ears. And a pair of dead, dead eyes.
She took a step backwards.
The thing reared up on all fours. It made a growling noise, but its mouth never moved. Now, Calla could see that its legs were tied, shackled to long, strong chains that were attached to the stage. Its legs were human. Its feet were too, and both of them were bare.
The Beast Man had muscular legs, covered in dark hair.
But it was just as the sign outside had said. He wasn’t a man on the top. On the top, he was some kind of animal, and since that part held his brain, maybe that explained his behavior. Maybe he was truly savage.
The Beast Man growled again, lunging forward. He seemed to want to leap off the stage.
But the chains on his feet held him fast.
He whined in anger and frustration, turning his face to the place where his shackles bit into his legs.
That was when she realized it, and she felt ridiculous for not having seen it earlier.
The animal face wasn’t real. It was a costume, just as she’d predicted. She could now see that the reason the eyes looked so dead was because they were fake.
This Beast Man was a performer, just as she’d suspected. But he was good at what he did. She’d been almost convinced, here in the half-light. He was good at his job.
But she was reassured now, and she moved closer to the stage, smiling and wanting a better look at the thing that had so deceived her. Now that she was looking at it, she couldn’t understand why she’d been duped by the costume. It seemed so obviously fake now. She let out a little laugh.
The Beast Man turned to her, and the fake animal face flopped back and forth by the force of his movement. He made a snarling sound, and he lunged at her.
She knew it was all part of the show, but it unsettled her nonetheless. She was closer now, and the Beast Man was only inches from her face.
“Stop,” she said, glaring at it. She’d reverted to her no-nonsense-Mrs.-Reynolds-is-not-pleased voice, simply out of habit. Teenagers in her classes often unsettled her, and she’d cultivated a certain voice and look to try to control them. Sometimes it didn’t work, but more often than not, it did.
And strangely, it worked on the Beast Man too, who immediately halted. He settled back on his haunches, whining a little.
Of course it worked on him, she thought. He’s human, after all, and no human likes to feel scolded.
But then why did he react in such an animalistic way?
He was still sitting like a dog, his back human legs folded at the knee, his hands—which were encased in the fur costume—down on the floor in front of him. He lowered his head, still whining.
She cocked her head to look at him. What was this? She didn’t understand…
The Beast Man inched forward, thrusting his costumed head against her skin, like a dog who wanted to be pet.
Calla recoiled. She backed away, her whole body shaking. She should never have gotten so close.
The Beast Man whined again.
She ran from the tent, her heart rattling inside her rib cage.
When the ticket taker laughed at her, she didn’t stop or even feel embarrassed.
She simply kept running.
There was something very, very wrong with that Beast Man.
CHAPTER THREE
So, he’s the Beast Man from the carnival, Calla thought to herself. I’m locked up in a dark room somewhere with the Beast Man from the carnival, and I can’t find my way out.
She guessed it was marginally better than being locked up with an actual wild animal. She didn’t think the Beast Man was going to kill and eat her, for instance. That had to put a brighter spot on her situation.
Calla grimaced. She’d never been particularly good at being an optimist. She understood that optimists had happier lives and all of that, but she couldn’t make herself do it, basically because she felt like it was an exercise in lying to oneself.
Right now, she couldn’t hear the Beast Man anymore.
An optimist would tell herself all kinds of pretty lies. She’d convince herself that the Beast Man had gone away, or that she’d be able to fight him off, or that he wouldn’t actually be a danger to her after all. An optimist would think the most positive outcome was most likely. An optimist wouldn’t even consider the negative outcomes.
Actually, Calla had done some reading on this subject. Apparently, optimists not only believed that good things would happen to them, but they believed that when good things happened, it was because of their own efforts. When bad things happened to optimists, they brushed them off as flukes, never to be repeated. And they never blamed themselves for bad things.
To Calla’s mind, this was the height of idiocy. You couldn’t have it both ways. Either you were resp
onsible, or you weren’t. If an optimist was giving a presentation, and it went well, she’d tell herself that she was great and that she’d planned everything out well, and that she’d done a great job. If the presentation didn’t go well, however, she’d blame anything except herself for the failure. She’d say that she’d been too busy to plan it out well, or that the audio visual equipment hadn’t been up to par, or that the audience had been too sleepy to grasp what she was saying.
Calla didn’t much hold with that. She believed in taking responsibility for her own actions. If she screwed up, she wasn’t about to act as if it was someone else’s fault. She would accept blame.
If that meant she could never be an optimist…
Well, she was fairly sure that optimists were happier people, but that they were willfully stupid.
Calla was not about to try to convince herself that things were going to go well. She was locked in a room with the Beast Man, and he clearly wasn’t right in the head. Calla wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, but he seemed to literally be an animal. He might be a man physically, but he didn’t act like one.
It reminded Calla of a fairy tale she’d once read in which the prince had been changed into a frog and the frog into a prince. Even though the frog looked like a man, he couldn’t stop acting like a frog. He sat on his haunches, ribbited, and caught flies with his tongue. In the story, the princess had to find the frog and kiss him to reverse the spell and put the prince back into his own body.
Presumably, the frog had gone back into his body too, but the fairy tale hadn’t really spent much time dealing with that.
Of course, that was a fairy story with magic spells and evil witches. And this was real life. Calla didn’t have any idea what was happening to the Beast Man. She’d never heard of a mental illness that made a man think he was an animal.
Perhaps he was a wild child. She’d read about that—a child raised by wolves, who thought that he was a wolf.
At the thought of wolves, she shivered. She didn’t much like to think about that.
Besides, what it did matter what was wrong with him? He was obviously mentally damaged. He was dangerous. And she needed to get away from him. She needed to get free.
Taking a long, slow breath, she began her careful movement again. Hands against the wall, she inched down, feeling for a door with each step.
Maybe this wasn’t the best way to try to get out of this room, but she had to do something. She wasn’t the kind of person to sit around and wait for someone to rescue her. She wasn’t an optimist, so she didn’t believe that anyone actually would. No, she was going to have to rescue herself.
It didn’t take long before she reached the next corner. Now she’d begun to figure out the dimensions of the room. It seemed to be shaped like a long rectangle. She wracked her brain, trying to think of what kind of room she might be in, but she couldn’t think of any room that was typically shaped this way.
It didn’t matter. She needed a door.
She moved onto the adjacent wall and began to feel her way down this wall. She was now moving towards the Beast Man, but there wasn’t anything for it. Hadn’t she thought earlier that she’d have to go through the Beast Man to get to the door? Irony. Right. Or maybe just an unfortunate event. Whatever the case, it didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered at the moment.
Grimly, Calla considered how miserable she’d been the past couple of months, barely able to drag herself out of bed, to eat anything except bacon cheese fries, to do anything except watch Netflix. If she’d only known that she was going to be locked up in a dark room with a crazy man, maybe she’d have been a bit more grateful for everything she had during that time.
For instance, cheese fries? That sounded pretty damned good right now.
Her stomach growled as if to illustrate her point.
From the darkness, there was an answering growl from the Beast Man.
Calla gulped.
He wouldn’t eat her. She’d already decided that was a good thing about him being a man. But she wasn’t entirely sure now. She was frightened that perhaps he thought himself so much a beast that he might try.
If it came down to a physical struggle between the Beast Man and herself, there would be no contest. Calla wasn’t exactly a tiny woman, but she wasn’t especially huge either. And the Beast Man was so muscled and tall that he was actually bigger than her. Maybe his hips were slimmer, but he had thick, strong arms and thighs. She thought of the way it had felt to have his body pressed up against hers and felt involuntarily hot all over. Certainly, it was the closest she’d ever been to a man as attractive as the Beast Man.
It was too bad that he wasn’t actually all there in the head.
It was such a waste for a man that pretty to be so crazy.
She sighed a little, wishing that he was normal.
She snorted. But even that wouldn’t be enough, would it? No, Calla’s list of things she was looking for in an eligible bachelor was rather specific. First of all, she wanted a man who had a steady job.
Well, she supposed that the Beast Man qualified. He seemed to work at the carnival, didn’t he? Carnival work was seasonal, so she supposed that he’d be home during the winter, which was when she worked for school. They’d work opposite schedules, then, and they’d have to be apart for most of the time. He’d be traveling all over the place to do his Beast Man performance, and she’d be back home trying to convince teenagers to stop acting like teenagers, because that was what teaching essentially boiled down to. It was an impossible, thankless job, and for a long time, she’d felt like she was just going through the motions.
Maybe she could come be in the carnival with the Beast Man. She could be part of his act. She’d be his tamer. She’d wear a tiny skirt and crack a long whip to force him to behave.
She chuckled quietly to herself, thinking about working in front of crowds of wandering children and their parents. It didn’t sound so bad, actually. She’d never had much trouble being in front of people. Being a teacher meant she had to be comfortable with public speaking. And she had to admit there was something adventurous and exciting about the thought of working for a traveling carnival, going to different places each week. It was seedy and edgy and just a little sexy.
But crazy, of course, because the Beast Man would never fulfill her other obligations.
She wanted a man who shared her interests. She wanted to find a man who enjoyed reading—especially someone who enjoyed reading the classics like she did. She wanted a man who was intelligent and inquisitive about human nature and philosophy. She wanted a man who had a healthy sexual appetite, but who wasn’t perverse about it. She wanted a man who wanted children—
Well, no, she guessed she didn’t want that anymore. That was off the table, unless she and this mystery man wanted to adopt.
She tried to think of taking the Beast Man into an adoption agency with her. She’d be sitting primly on a chair in front of the worker’s desk, talking calmly about why she wanted children and what she could do for a baby if she was selected. The Beast Man would be stalking the room, growling and howling. Maybe he’d even jump on the desk and send the worker’s papers everywhere.
No, that would never work, but it was funny to think about.
And it was clear that he didn’t fulfill her other requirements. He wasn’t a reader, that was for sure. And he was neither intelligent nor inquisitive.
As for the sexual appetite… well, she couldn’t be sure, but there had been a hint of a savage promise in the way he’d pressed his body into hers, something that made her heart pound in delicious anticipation.
The Beast Man might be mentally damaged, but his body certainly wasn’t damaged, and she had to admit that she found his body perfectly acceptable. In fact, her final requirement on the list was that she wanted a man who was taller than she was.
She couldn’t handle dating a man who was shorter than her. Maybe it wasn’t very enlightened of her. After all, she’d met men who were quite nice sh
ort men. But for some reason, it always seemed… wrong.
Anyway, she’d made that list when she was twenty-five, and she’d been young and thin back then. Quite a catch. There was no reason that she should have had to compromise on any of it. But of course she had. Perhaps there was no man that fit all of her requirements. Perhaps thinking a man could be that perfect was only giving in to a fantasy that could never exist. Or perhaps she’d given in because she’d been frightened.
Calla had known it even then, at twenty-five.
Her biological clock was ticking.
She didn’t want to be a terribly old mom. She knew that she had ten years left of optimum childbearing years, since it was more difficult to get pregnant after thirty-five and since the risks of not having a healthy child increased. That seemed like quite a long time, but she knew that it really wasn’t. She figured that she’d have to meet someone, and they’d have to date for at least two years before they decided to get married, and then they’d need about a year to get settled in to marriage. By this time, Calla would be twenty-eight, and that’s when she and her husband would attempt to start getting pregnant.
But she also knew that it wasn’t always as easy to get pregnant as people made it out to be, so she thought it was likely it might take six or eight months to get pregnant. Maybe even as long as a year.
So, realistically, Calla was looking at delivering her first baby at twenty-nine or thirty. Then she could have a year or two with that kid, but she’d probably need to start trying to get pregnant again when she was thirty-two in order to be sure to miss the thirty-five deadline, which loomed over Calla’s head like a guillotine.
And all that worked out perfectly, but only if she met the right guy very, very soon.
If it took two years to meet this guy, and she didn’t find him until she was twenty-seven, well then the whole timetable was screwed, and she might not be able to have two babies before she turned thirty-five.
Everything had to go perfectly, or she might lose her chance entirely.
Midnight Moonlight Page 3
