“Wait, now!” a Southern accent floated from behind the campsite, and I looked over to see Della Jane struggling to hurry toward us with a manila folder in her hand. “Dang it, Bob, I told you to wait for me.”
“You and the mayor do not give me my orders,” Deputy Bob snapped at her.
“Oh, don’t get yourself in a tizzy,” she told him.
Della Jane stopped, leaning a hand up against the Phoenixes’ trailer, and pulled off her baby-blue pumps that were giving her so much trouble. Without the added heel, I realized that she was actually about an inch shorter than me.
As she walked through the campsite toward him, she stopped and smiled and said hello to everyone she passed. When she saw me, she gave me a small wave and beamed at me like we were old friends.
“What are you even doing out here, Della Jane?” Deputy Bob folded his arms over his chest. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“You know damn well it does, Bob,” Della Jane barked, then she offered an apologetic smile to Jackie and Alyssa. “Pardon my French.”
She stood beside Gideon, who appeared to be some kind of giant next to her, and glared up at the deputy. “I have a contract with these people. I agreed to pay them a sum of money for ten days’ worth of work, and you wanna go kicking them out after less than a week.”
“Della Jane—” the deputy began, but she cut him off.
“We’ve got New Orleans right to the southwest of us, and we’ve that big equinox festival going on one parish over,” Della Jane went on. “The mayor wants us to have a place on the map, with attractions and tourists to make us a real destination spot. Shutting down the events we do have isn’t going to make the mayor too happy.”
“It’s unsafe,” Deputy Bob said, but his words lacked the conviction they had when he began.
“If it’s unsafe, then make it safe,” Della Jane retorted. “That’s your job.”
The deputy exhaled through his nose. “I didn’t make the call, and I’m not talking about this with you here anymore. If you got a problem with this, take it up with the sheriff.” Then, speaking louder as he looked at the rest of us, he added, “I suggest the rest of you get out of here before sunset if you don’t want to end up under arrest.”
Deputy Bob went around and got back in his car, and Della Jane cursed at him. She exhaled deeply, blowing her blond curls out of her eyes.
“I am so sorry about this mess,” Della Jane said, and turned back around to face us. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I swear.”
“Well, it is,” Gideon replied simply.
“I know, I know, and I’ll take care of it all,” Della Jane persisted. “I’ll get animal control to do their jobs and take care of whatever’s been harassing you out here, and I’ll get the cops to lay off you.”
Gideon scratched the side of his head and seemed to consider it for a moment. “Perhaps we should just cut our losses. We can accept half the agreed-upon payment, and we’ll head out.”
“The contract’s very specific, and I don’t think the mayor would just let you out of it.” She frowned. “Unfortunately, it’s all or nothing.
“But we can fix this,” Della Jane went on excitedly. “If you come down to the sheriff’s office around”—she paused, checking her gold Rolex—“eleven, we can talk to them and get this all cleared up. How does that sound?”
“Doesn’t seem that I have much of a choice,” Gideon muttered. “I’ll be there.”
Della Jane shook his hand, promising that this would all be taken care of soon, and it’d all be worth it. She waved as she left, like a beauty contestant in a parade float.
“You heard all of that, so there’s no reason to recap,” Gideon said, speaking to anyone who might be listening. “Open up today, like normal, and I’ll try to have this all taken care of by tonight.”
“I’m not opening up,” Jackie said, shaking her head. “It’s not safe for a child here. I’m not staying.”
Gideon nodded once. “If you still want to be a part of this carnival, we’ll see you in Houston.” He paused. “Anyone else that wants to join her, go ahead. I won’t have your blood on my hands. But I’m staying, so I can keep a roof over our heads.”
38. rotten
“It’s like a ghost town,” Roxie said, staring out at the half-empty campsite. Luka stood a few feet in front of us, waving wildly at his boyfriend, who was inside the retreating trailer along with the rest of the Phoenixes.
Almost half the carnival had pulled up stakes and gotten out of town, including Betty Bates and her husband, Damon. That didn’t count Carrie, Seth, Zeke, and the tigers, who had already gone to Houston.
Most of the midway workers stayed, since Doug Bennett refused to pay anyone anything if they left, but Gideon offered partial compensation to all who felt too threatened to stay.
Gideon had left for the meeting at the sheriff’s office a half hour before, around the same time Roxie returned with Hutch. The doctors had stitched him up and assured him that he’d be no worse for wear, and Hutch was now doped up on pain meds and sleeping soundly in his motorhome.
“I must be crazy for staying,” Roxie said with an exasperated sigh.
“What else are we gonna do?” Luka asked, walking back over to us since the Phoenixes’ trailer was out of sight. “Your trailer is trashed, and I’m the only one working now to support three people.”
“We need to find this thing and stop it.” I’d been sitting on the steps in front of Roxie’s Airstream, but I stood up now. “We need to get it before it gets us.”
“That is a great idea, but how exactly are we gonna do that?” Roxie asked. “We don’t even know what it is.”
“When we visited Leonid Murphy, he seemed to have a few ideas about what was happening in Caudry,” I said.
“Yeah, but he also seemed kinda crazy and a little strung out,” Luka reminded me with a grimace. “Not to mention that his apartment reeked really bad.”
“The creature is getting bolder. It broke through the window right above Roxie’s bed.” I pointed to the shattered glass, and Roxie shivered involuntarily. “We have to stop it before somebody gets killed.”
Roxie chewed her lip for a moment, then nodded. “We can take my truck.”
“I’ll stay back with Hutch,” Luka said. “There’s no way I want to deal with that stench again.”
I hurried to tell my mom where I was going so she wouldn’t panic, but she didn’t really have much to say. She was otherwise preoccupied with trying to get the carnival going when half the acts had skipped out.
As we drove through town in Roxie’s beat-up Chevy, she sang along to Madonna. I leaned my elbow out the window, relishing the way the wind helped cool the sweat that clung to my skin. Despite the heat, I felt a permanent chill inside me, like my heart had frozen solid.
“What are we gonna do if Leonid doesn’t know anything?” Roxie asked once the song ended.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head.
We’d reached the Blue Moon Bar & Grill, and, at my request, Roxie parked her truck on the far side of the parking lot, where Gabe’s dad would be less likely to notice me. She turned off the ignition, but we both sat inside for a minute.
“What if we’re blowing this all out of proportion?” Roxie asked, staring straight ahead at the dashboard. “When I was in the ER with Hutch, he kept asking about bears, and the doctors fixing him said there were some bad animal attacks about a dozen years ago or so. He said that Caudry attracts some crazy wildlife.”
“If this is all just a bear or a coyote or a big, furry alligator,” I said, causing Roxie to wrinkle her nose at the mention of the gator, “then we just let animal control and the police take care of it. Della Jane sounds like she’s gonna light a fire under them, and they should have captured or shot it real soon.”
“But why does this Della Jane person even care so much?” Roxie turned to face me. “We’re just a dinky rundown little carnival. It’s not like we’re the Beatles or something.”
>
“The carnival has been packed every night.” I shrugged. “It’s sorely lacking in entertainment around here. She’s trying to build this town back up, and she’s gotta start somewhere, and apparently that’s with us.”
“I guess,” Roxie said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Not that I blamed her. I didn’t completely understand Della Jane’s passion to protect us either. I’d neglected to tell anyone that she was Gabe’s mom, mostly because I didn’t want to talk about Gabe.
I had finally decided that it wouldn’t make any sense for me to see Gabe again. That was painful enough to think about, and I knew it would only hurt worse to say it aloud. Between the animal stalking us and the seriousness of Gabe’s feelings for me, it all felt like a disaster waiting to happen.
But disaster or no, it didn’t change the fact that I actually felt something for Gabe, and my chest ached at the realization that I’d never see him again.
“Come on,” I said, opening the truck door.
As we ascended the rickety stairs along the restaurant, I breathed in deeply, preparing to get my last good breath before the stench of Leonid’s apartment overwhelmed me. But as we kept climbing, I realized that I didn’t really smell anything. No sulfur or acetone.
Roxie was ahead of me and reached the landing before I did. She wrinkled her nose. “Luka was right. It does stink here.”
I inhaled through my nose, and I smelled what she was talking about—tangy, pungent, sickly sweet, and utterly wretched—and while it did make me want to gag, it didn’t smell anything like it had before, and it was much fainter.
I shook my head. “No, this isn’t it.”
“Well, whatever. Let’s get this over with.” She knocked on Leonid’s door while I tried to place the scent. I was certain I’d smelled it before.
When Leonid didn’t answer, Roxie knocked loudly again, pounding on the thin wooden door so hard the frame began to splinter.
“Roxie, take it easy.” I put my hand on her arm before she broke the door down. “He’s probably not home.”
“Or maybe he is home, and he’s hiding because he knows he’s the reason we came to this godforsaken hellhole!” Roxie shouted at the closed door.
“Maybe,” I said as calmly as I could. “Or maybe we should just come back later.”
“No!” Her blue eyes were wild, and her jaw was set. “I can’t take this damn town anymore! I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”
I was about to ask what she planned to do, but she slammed into the door with her shoulder. It didn’t give yet, but the frame splintered and cracked. It wouldn’t take much more for her to break it down.
It was then that the smell finally hit me. Last summer, when we were packing up to leave, I’d discovered a cooler sitting behind the campsite. I opened it up to discover ten pounds of rotting meat that had been for the tigers. Zeke had forgotten about it, and it had been sitting in the sun for a week.
That was the smell coming from Leonid’s apartment—rotting flesh.
“Roxie, I don’t think you should—” I started, but it was too late. The door gave way, and the noxious air billowed out.
“What the heck, Leonid?” Roxie asked, and began gagging.
Since she was struggling to suppress her gag reflex, I went into the apartment first. I’d pulled my T-shirt up over my nose and tried to breathe in only through my mouth, but I didn’t have to go in very far to see the problem.
As I walked in, I noticed that all the stacks of newspapers and magazines that clogged the pathways had been written on. A single word in bright red marker, over and over again in Leonid’s chicken scratch.
Beyond the stacks of papers in his living room, I discovered him.
Hanging from his ceiling like a forgotten fly strip, was Leonid. The noose had been made from braided electrical cord, and his head hung only a few inches from the ceiling to keep his long legs from touching the floor. His head lolled to the side with his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth, and his skin had turned an angry purplish-red.
Then, as if she were standing beside me whispering in my ear, I heard Blossom’s voice saying, “They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed.”
39. the hanged man
My skin was damp from my shower, but I still felt unclean.
Roxie and I had fled Leonid’s house, with her speeding like a maniac all the way back. We hadn’t even considered calling the police, because neither of us wanted to get mixed up with the Caudry authorities any more than we absolutely needed to.
The second Roxie got out of the truck, she threw up, and I went to my motorhome to shower. I didn’t want the scent of Leonid’s decaying flesh stuck to me for a moment longer.
“Mara, qamari.” My mom brushed my wet hair back from my face. “What’s happened?”
I was sitting at the dinette, nursing the cup of hot tea Mom had put in front of me, and she hovered beside me. Her eyebrows were pinched with worry, and darkness clouded her smoky gray eyes. Her long black hair was pulled up in a loose bun, and since she’d been doing manual labor today, she’d exchanged her jewelry for old denim overalls.
The air conditioner rumbled in the window behind me, barely held in place by duct tape and a bungee cord. Mom turned it on to keep out the oppressive heat that enveloped Caudry, but it only made the persistent chill inside me take hold even deeper.
“Leonid Murphy is dead,” I told her finally.
She gasped. “What? How?”
“He hung himself in his apartment,” I said, and unbidden, the image of his body dangling in his living room filled my mind. His pale skin covered in flies that crawled over his protruding bones.
“You and Roxanne found him?” Mom asked, slowly lowering herself onto the bench across from me.
“He’d written ‘sorry’ everywhere.” I shook my head, trying to chase away the memories. “Something really bad is going on here. I think we need to get out of here.”
“I know, I know.” She lowered her eyes. “I’ve been thinking that no matter what Gideon accomplishes today, you should leave. You could convince Luka and Hutch to go, and ride with them.”
I scoffed. “Mom, I’m not leaving without you.”
“Gideon can’t leave, Mara,” she told me wearily. “With Roxanne’s motorhome messed up, and Seth out of work, and the tigers injured, we’re in even worse shape than when we got here, and we were in very bad shape then.”
“But it’s not just Leonid or even the attacks.” I moved my cup of tea to the side and leaned forward on the table. “I’ve been having these dreams.”
Mom instantly went on high alert—her shoulders rigid, her lips pursed together, and her eyes narrowed. “What kind of dreams?”
“It’s all dark, and this old woman comes at me. I don’t recognize her, but she looks like she’s decaying,” I explained. “She screams at me, and I can’t understand what she’s saying. Then I get this icy cold feeling in my chest.”
“That’s the dream?” Mom asked, still sitting severely, and I nodded. “What does it sound like she’s saying?”
“Um…” I concentrated, trying to remember the exact string of syllables she screamed at me. “It’s like … id-hab-bee-in-who-nah, I think.”
“Id-hab-bee-in-who-nah?” Mom repeated, then her entire face fell. She let out a pained gasp and closed her eyes. “Oh hell.”
“What? What is it?” I asked.
“I tried so hard to keep this from you.” She shook her head, her eyes still closed tightly. “I didn’t want this life for you. I never wanted you to have this gift.” She laughed darkly, the way she did anytime people referred to her extra senses as a gift.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, and my voice was gaining a nervous tremor. “What’s going on?”
The large skull key she wore around her neck had come free from her shirt, and it lay on her chest, rising and falling with each of her breaths. The rubies of its eyes seemed to fix on me, and they sparkled as it mov
ed.
Mom opened her eyes and smiled sadly at me. “Your great-grandma Elissar was born in Egypt and spent her entire childhood there, so even after she moved to America and had your grandma Basima, she spoke her native tongue around the house.
“It was the first language your grandma Basima ever learned, and she still spoke it from time to time when I was growing up,” Mom went on. “I never became fluent, but I carried her terms of endearment with me, like when I call you qamari, my moon.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she wiped them away. “In the end, when your grandma Basima no longer had her mind intact, she devolved into her childhood, and began speaking almost entirely in Arabic.”
Mom got up and went back into the bedroom. I heard drawers opening and closing, and a few moments later my mom returned with an old picture in her hand. She sat back down in front of me, staring at the picture.
“I know you don’t really remember your grandmother,” Mom said. “She died when you were only a toddler, and because her mind had gone, she wasn’t much fun to be around before that. But she did love you. She would’ve loved to have known you.”
She set the picture down on the table and pushed it toward me. I recognized my mom right away, much younger but unmistakably her, and she was holding me on her lap. I was only about a year or two old with wild black hair. And the little old woman sitting beside my mom, her gray hair pulled back in a smooth bun.
“I don’t remember much of what your grandma Basima used to say to me when I was a child, but one phrase does stand out, because of how often she yelled it at me when I got in her way or when she was having a particularly rough day with the spirits,” Mom explained as I looked at the picture.
“Idhhabee min honaa,” Mom spoke clearly and slowly, letting her words sink in. “It means ‘get out of here.’”
I tapped the picture in front of me, of the smiling old woman with my mother’s eyes and wrinkled skin. “This is her? You think this is the woman from my dreams?”
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