The Blood Mirror: New Adult Paranormal Suspense (Burntown Carnival Book 1)

by Lucky Simms

  You could see it from Mame’s upper windows and from the science labs and library annex at the Burntown High School. You could see it from the field behind the Unitarian church where assorted family reunions were held all summer. You could see it from the steps of the pergola in the tiny town square.

  On warm nights, the soundtrack drifted across fields and yards and into your open bedroom window and reminded you that even if it had been a long time, the carnival knew who you were, and would wait just a little while longer until you decided to come back.

  As Billie sped around that last curve across the county line and saw the Ferris wheel peaking over the apple orchard’s hill, she rolled down the windows of the Escort and heard the screams from the Gravitron. Maybe she smelled cotton candy or caramel corn.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Billie decided this summer, finally, she might take the job Noughton had been teasing her with since she was 14. But first she was going to have to convince Mame, and that was not going to be easy.

  Getting her butt into the Escort had seemed like emotional torture, though she couldn’t pin down the exact reason why. She stuffed her belongings into sacks and dumped them unceremoniously in the trunk, feeling for all the world like a dog being dragged out in the rain for a walk. Everyone else packed up their dorm rooms with bright smiles and the sunny expectation of home. Billie could barely even fake it.

  She was looking forward to her grandmother and to the familiar tastes of homemade jam and biscuits, but something dampened her enthusiasm. As she crested the hill and saw the wheel, the reasons became more clear: college was expensive, and jobs in Burntown were both grueling and terminally boring. Now that she’d been to school, she was a little less accepting of the life she’d always been told was a given, as undeniable as karma.

  But she didn’t have to settle for simple. She didn’t even have to settle for scraping by. Her professors were always giving them inspirational pep talks about reaching for the stars, or whatever. So why not reach for the best now? Why not… live a little?

  Surely Mame would understand. She would. Surely.

  THE FIRST GARDEN

  June, 2004

  On the first morning home, Billie opened her eyes to see her grandmother’s curly head leaning inquisitively, just inside her doorframe. She had the feeling Mame had been speaking to her for a few minutes, but couldn’t remember a word. It seemed she had forgotten several crucial aspects of home life. She did not remember how to get up at six in the morning to weed the vegetable garden, and she did not remember how to be thoughtful to old people. Nodding vigorously, she plastered what she hoped was an expression of eager helpfulness on her features and promised to be up immediately.

  With her duffel bags still slumped in the corner, Billie squinted against the hard, bright morning and stumbled to the dresser. She found a cotton tank in the second drawer and an old pair of cutoffs in the third. She barely had to open her eyes to slip them on, then pulled on a pair of garden boots over her cotton socks and trudged down the stairs to the front room. She could see the steady rocking of the back of Mame’s curly hair as she sat on the porch and looked out over the yard, nodding.

  At 6:00, it was still chilly enough to give Billie goosebumps down her bare thighs as she gratefully grabbed the mug of black coffee Mame had laid out for her and sat in the folding chair. She blew across the surface of the brew and shivered. It would be pleasant by 6:30, but damp. By 7:00, it would be hot.

  They sat on the front porch in folding chairs with striped nylon webbing, sipping coffee and not talking until Billie could get all her thoughts out of the cotton wool left over from sleep.

  First garden was neat rows of corn and beans that stretched out to the fence with beets and carrots near the house. By midsummer, the corn would be an effective privacy fence. At this point, it was ankle high.

  First garden had to be weeded first, as the name implied. Then second garden, around the side with its rhubarb and asparagus patches and a pretty winding stone path among them. Third garden stretched out back a good ways and had… oh, everything else. Turnips, parsnips, carrots, eggplant, three kinds of cucumber, seven kinds of squash, more and more besides, plus a giant watermelon and pumpkin patch way out back.

  The orchard was beyond that - apples, apricots, cherries - but Pearl from next door took care of all of that with her nephew Ben now, since Billie’s grandfather and mother had left town apparently for good.

  Mame was getting antsy to get to work and she crossed one leg over the other and set her cup down. She had calves like a bodybuilder, ropy and strong. She wore a cotton knit skirt because she was of the opinion that shorts are vulgar. Her arms were tanned and freckled from years spent in the garden, making things work by her own two hands.

  Mame pursed her wrinkled pink lips. Billie pretended to be seriously interested in squinting toward the fence like she was really figuring something out.

  “Ready?” Mame said and without further waiting she walked out into the yard. Billie had no choice but to follow her.

  Mame had ideas. One was: do not cross oceans for somebody who wouldn’t jump a puddle for you. A garden full of grass that needed mowing, weeding, de-grubbing, aerating, and overseeding, and couldn’t produce so much as a salad? No way.

  There was not a square inch of turf anywhere. Everything had a purpose, and it was all neat as a pin. Weeding the first garden meant plucking stray plants easily from the mulch, dropping them in buckets, and eventually depositing them in some new bed somewhere to be mulched over for next year. This year’s growth would be next year’s flowers. Nothing was wasted, not even the weeds.

  To pass the time, Mame would tell Billie stories if Billie would ask the questions. She rewarded the best questions with the best stories, and lame questions got barely a sentence in response. But Mame would absolutely, positively not talk about Grampa or Mavis.

  Billie tossed a hoe and rake on the spongy ground next to the bean cage she was supposed to be trellising and cast about her imagination for questions. If she could, she wanted to formulate questions that would lead to more information about her mother without antagonizing Mame into an angry silence. Sometimes she could get Mame to spin a story that described her mother obliquely, as though coloring outside the lines on a page until the figure in the center became apparent anyway.

  Pulling up spiralled tendrils of bean shoots and tying them gently to the bamboo cage, Billie finally hit upon an old favorite that seemed to get better every time she heard about it. She asked where the diadem had come from. Mame worked her jaw like story was in her mouth already, fighting to come out.

  Billie had coveted the diadem since she was a child, and even dared try it on a time or two. At present the small gold wire crown was balanced diagonally across the wide mouth of a Lalique vase decorated in opalescent poppies, sitting on a high shelf on the dining room sideboard. Five blue pearls formed the star of its crest, and small pink oblongs dangled from gold loops regularly spaced around the ring. It was as delicate as pigeon bones. Within the star, the prongs of an empty setting grasped nothing but air, and on the left side, a cruel bend kept the small crown from being a perfect circle.

  Mame said that in the 70s, three rickety campers drove to Burntown, resupplied at the Piggly Wiggly and parked in the lot for two days. Naturally everyone in town did a slow drive-by to see the people who stumbled out of the backs and drivers’ sides, who pitched fires in the parking lot like that was a normal thing to do. Suddenly, everybody in town needed eggs in cartons from the Piggly Wiggly.

  It was two families. The woman wore skirts. The men wore breeches and hats but no shirts. They had beards.

  The local children assumed their mothers had finally made good on collective promises to sell them to the gypsies, and now the time had come. They were terrified. The Burntown mothers felt briefly, triumphantly powerful.

  Among the new people was a girl about Billie’s age, maybe a few years younger. She was tiny, with wrists like bird bones. She was blind
in one black eye and had hair as thick as a hedgerow. She wore the crown in her matted hair, but you couldn’t find it unless you were close. Probably, she had worn it nearly forever.

  After the two days, a man named Kimble came to the lot to talk with the people. They offered him their princess. He accepted at once, and traded what, we do not know.

  She left her people with a showing of copious tears and a small canvas bag of belongings and one pair of shoes, and travelled with Kimble to the carnival. Not to the motor lodge like today, mind you; but to the house proper. The Right House.

  The family appeared to be packing up. They dried meat on racks next to the fire. They hung their shabby laundry on cords strung between the campers.

  But the next day, Kimble returned with the princess in tears. There was an argument. There was a fight that got the better of Kimble and he departed, bloody and empty-handed, back to the carnival with the princess shuffling and whimpering after his path.

  The caravan left shortly after, pulling up their cords of laundry, leaving piles of ashes and potholes in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. They left their princess behind. The people of Burntown fanned themselves in relief, and the mothers collectively lost a measure of credibility with the children when none of them were sold for washing money.

  Later that night a few carnies left and returned by dawn with the diadem, and now it was on the Lalique.

  “Wait,” said Billie, setting down a trowel and bucket and wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “How did you get it, though? Why is it here? Why didn’t Kimble sell it with… everything else?”

  Mame shrugged and turned away. “It just is. Sometimes people give me things, and I do my best to keep them safe. Finish your work.”

  Billie plucked slug-damaged leaves and dropped them in the bucket. She arranged the tangled mass of shoots against the trellis, then tied the vines loosely but securely, just under the leaf stems so they could move but not slip through, just like Mame had taught her. When she was done she stood back and inspected it, nodding with approval. It looked like a lush green sweater of woven fibers.

  “So I guess you’ll be working with Madear then?” Mame asked suddenly.

  Billie nodded but didn’t look up. “Seems that way,” she said, hoping the issue would die. It was common knowledge that the jobs in town were all meager service positions, and Madear’s hostess gig at the donut shop had food benefits, at least.

  “Well you better get a move on. You don’t want to be left without options,” Mame warned.

  Billie tried not to bristle at the lecture. “Yeah, I hope I get to see her today. It’s been a long time,” she answered, though she realized she wasn’t really answering at all. Yet, thoughts of Madear made her smile. She had always made the best of small town life, and having a partner to call upon at all moments, day or night, had made being a teenager in Burntown just bearable.

  “Oh, the two of you. Together again,” Mame sighed dramatically as though she read Billie’s mind. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with this time.”

  “Who, us?” Billie chuckled. “Psssshh. A couple of angels. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “Ha!” Mame exclaimed and swung a rake over her shoulder. Her gaze swept over the first garden, surveying the work they’d done so far and finding it at least adequate. Billie heard her muttering as she headed toward second garden, but gratefully, she couldn’t make out a word she said.

  ABSOLUTELY NOT A PSYCHIC

  June, 1999

  The summer before high school, Billie and Madear spent every night in the carnival, near the carnival, or talking about the carnival. They learned all the words to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” and shrieked it like maniacs every time it came over the loudspeakers, which actually was quite a lot.

  They had almost no money, but sometimes a ride operator would let them on for free. They would hold hands and strap themselves in, pinning their tiny purses between the vinyl seats and their thighs. They practiced their adolescent allure on the operators. They wore lipgloss and religiously reapplied it after each ride. They had mirrors in their handbags. They squeezed into tight tank tops and jean shorts with spandex.

  Madear liked to steal a few of her uncle’s cigarettes sometimes. After a thrilling Cliff Drop that took forever because they got to the top, dropped six feet, then sat there for twenty minutes while the operator made the same repair yet again, Madear and Billie posed nonchalantly against the back of the Beverage Shed and lit up. The Shed’s cashier had just poked her head out to offer them some pot but Billie declined because she thought being high made her face all rubbery and ugly. Madear wanted some but followed Billie’s lead instead.

  “What do you want to do?” Billie asked.

  Madear took a shallow drag through pursed lips and squinted through the burning smoke. “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They stood in silence for a few more minutes, warily watching the crowds walk by in case there was a parent who knew their parents and could bust them for the smoking. Some AC/DC song came over the PA, mingling with nearby screams and the persistent rat-kat-rat-rat of popcorn popping in the shed. The oil and salt in the air combined with stale cigarette smoke made Billie want to retch.

  She flung the cigarette away and made a face. “Please tell me you have a mint in your purse.”

  Madear flicked her cigarette too, landing inches away from Billie’s.

  “I don’t have any mints. I might have gum?” She pulled her tiny, cheap red vinyl purse to the front and started rummaging in it, opening zipper after zipper.

  “I have gum,” came a voice. A skinny boy in a white tanktop and jeans came up. He was wearing dusty, threadbare sneakers and a worn belt that cinched his jeans to his narrow hips. His dark hair was short and spiky with sweat.

  He held out two pieces crumpled, foil-wrapped gum. Madear looked terrified but Billie shifted her weight to one hip and held out her hand. The gum was warm and humid, like it had been in his pocket for a long time.

  He grinned. Two teeth on the left side of his mouth went at a bit of an angle. “You know guys can’t smoke here. Do you see anybody else smoking?” He held his arm out behind him, flexing his scrawny shoulder and showing a small patch of fluffy hair under his arm.

  Madear shook her head fretfully.

  “Well, we’re not smoking now, are we,” Billie said with some sass. “So there’s no trouble here, officer.” She rolled her eyes and turned her head to grin at Madear.

  “Oh is that how you want to talk to me, miss? After all I’ve done for you? After the sweets?”

  Billie snorted, “Yes, thank you, kind sir. We are ever in your debt.” She went to uncross her legs and execute a curtsy but hit a rock with her heel and stumbled slightly. Instantly she felt the creep of a blush making her neck and cheeks hot and cursed her klutzy inclinations for yet another sabotage.

  He chuckled and wrinkled his nose, seeming sympathetic. Maybe he had some genetic klutz in his veins too. Billie glanced at him and then away immediately, but not before she saw how inviting his stare was.

  Madear was blinking too much, apparently thinking frantically for something to chat about to keep him close to them. “Are you here? I mean do you work here? I think we have seen you. Before today, I mean. Sometimes we come here. To hang out.”

  The boy looked her up and down in a friendly way. It was not totally a leer, but not totally innocent either. “Yeah, I work here.” He nodded and wiggled his eyebrows up and down, then crossed his arms in front of his chest in a comically adult pose. “Guess.”

  “Guess?” Madear echoed stupidly.

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Guess where I work.”

  “You work the switch that turns the lights off and on for the little kiddie boats,” Billie drawled.

  “Yeah, ha ha, very funny.” He rolled his eyes and pushed his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “Those are automatic.”

  Madear volunteered, “Y
ou give change by the skee ball?” He shook his head no. “You walk around with cotton candy? Work the games… wait! Shooting ducks? Milk bottles?” He shook his head no after each one, while her voice rose with every question. She would not give up.

  “You’re too young to be an operator… You fix things? You move things? You guess the weight? Or age or whatever? We’re 14…” Billie shot her a look and Madear immediately crumpled and went timid. “You take care of the baby chickens?” she said meekly.

  The boy stared at Billie with his head lowered slightly and a close-mouthed grin. “You know, don’t you.”

  Billie shrugged innocently. “Know what?”

  “You know where I work. You’ve seen me.”

  She shook her head. This summer she’d cut her thick black curls into a shorter style, and she was grateful it wasn’t in her eyes or sticking to her forehead anymore. “I swear to the Pope and Moses I have never seen you before in my whole life.” She looked nonchalantly over his shoulder, pretending to maybe see someone she knew over there… maybe… nope, just someone who looked similar. So what was he saying? She smiled innocently, trying to appear slightly bored.

  “You know,” he asserted. “I can tell. I can always tell.”

  Billie chewed her gum.

  “Where?” Madear asked him breathlessly. “Where do you work then? Billie, do you seriously know?”

  Billie grinned. She locked eyes with the boy: deep brown eyes with black, wet-looking lashes. He still had a few freckles across the bridge of his nose. Small patches of shadow darkened the corners of his mouth. She stared at his lips until they twitched, just ever so slightly. They were full and pristine like some artist’s idea of lips.

  “You’re a kisser,” she said finally.

  He smiled and wouldn’t break her gaze but said nothing.

  “A kisser?” said Madear with both disgust and awe. “Really? You do that? Ew. I don’t know. And aren’t you too young? Isn’t that illegal or something?” She pulled fretfully at the strap of her pink tanktop.