by Lee Goldberg
“That’s all. I’d tell you if there were more.” She finished her own drink. “You don’t have to worry about me telling anybody who you are. There are plenty of people here who don’t want anybody talking about their pasts.”
“Do you know their stories or just mine?”
“I’ve heard a few of their stories, but I don’t know how true they are. Their stories don’t matter, anyhow. They’re not part of what’s happening. I’m sure about yours, though.” She frowned. “Do you want another drink?”
Matt looked into his empty glass. “No, I think I’ve had enough. You don’t know anything about a…darkness that’s associated with me?”
Something showed in her eyes. Fear? Matt couldn’t tell.
“This knowing, this sensitivity of mine, started when you came,” she said. “I don’t know why or how, but you have something to do with it.”
“But you don’t know what it is?”
“I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you,” she said, turning the whiskey glass in her hands.
“You might be able to find out,” Matt said. “That’s why you asked me to come here, isn’t it?”
“I…I don’t know. I have a…feeling that I’m supposed to do something, but I’m not sure I want to do it.”
Matt didn’t blame her. The strangeness of the night would have been enough to make anybody uncertain.
“You showed up at Serena’s tent just in time,” Matt said. “I don’t think it was because you heard the shouting.”
“I did hear something, but there was more to it than that.”
“Another feeling?”
“You’re making fun of me now.”
“I’m the last person in the world who’d make fun of something like that,” Matt told her. “Believe me.”
She looked into his eyes. “I believe you.”
“You handled yourself very well in that tent. Better than Ken did.”
“Some people have a problem with snakes. I don’t.”
“Maybe it was the blood he had a problem with.”
“That doesn’t bother me, either.”
“You’re awfully tough, aren’t you,” Matt said.
“Not really. It’s just that I’ve learned to face things when I have to. And that’s what I should be doing now.” She put her glass on the floor by her chair. “There’s no use putting it off any longer. Give me your hand.”
Matt hesitated. “If you don’t want to do this…”
“It’s not what I want that matters. This is something I have to do. You understand?”
He did. It was why he left his home, ax in hand, and went out searching for Mr. Dark, hoping to stop the evil that he spread.
And if there was something she could tell him, answers to the questions that had plagued him since his resurrection, he wanted to know it. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. He wanted to know it.
Matt knew this might be a trick, that she could be some willing, or unwilling, puppet of Mr. Dark’s, but he had to take the chance.
He leaned forward in his chair, set his glass down on the floor as she had done, and put out his hand.
Madame Zora—Gloria—closed her eyes and sighed. Matt waited, his hand extended. Gloria opened her eyes after what seemed like quite a long time and said, “I can’t promise you anything.”
“I don’t want promises,” Matt said. “I just want to know.”
“Knowing can be dangerous.”
“Yeah. I’ve found that out.”
“I can’t promise you the truth, either.”
Matt pushed his hand forward. “Just have a look. After you tell me, we can worry about what’s truth and what’s lies.”
“All right.” Gloria closed her eyes again and took his hand.
When Gloria touched his fingers, it was as if a mild electric shock went through him, all the way down to his toes. If Gloria felt anything, however, she gave no indication. She held his hand in hers and stared down at it for several seconds.
Then she dropped it, slumped forward, and fell onto her side on the floor.
Damn, Matt thought. That can’t be good.
He raised Gloria up and got her back into her chair. She was breathing heavily and her face was flushed, but otherwise, she seemed OK. He would have liked to think that she’d just had too much to drink, but he knew that wasn’t the problem. He rubbed her wrists, then put a hand on her shoulder and shook her.
She stiffened, opened her eyes, and took a deep breath.
“You want to tell me about it?” Matt asked.
“Not really.” Her voice shook. “I need another drink.”
Matt took her glass and stepped into the kitchen, where the bottle of Ezra Brooks still stood by the sink.
“A little or a lot?” he said.
“A little. I’ll be fine. I was just caught by surprise.”
Matt poured the drink and handed it to her. She was a bit shaky, but she took the glass with both hands and took a sip.
“What was the surprise?” Matt asked.
Gloria took another sip and looked at him with something like pity. “You’re wrapped in darkness. It’s like another person that you carry with you.”
“I know all about the darkness,” Matt said. “I even know his name. What I’d like to do is get rid of him.”
“I’m not sure you can. He…it is too much a part of you.” She trembled. Matt knew she must be frightened by what was happening, though she was trying not to show it. She had guts—he’d give her that. “Have you ever heard of Loki?”
Matt shook his head.
“Loki was one of the Norse gods,” she said. “He was a trickster, a shape-shifter, a father of monsters. He loved disorder and chaos. It was like a game to him.”
“That sounds a lot like someone I know,” Matt said. “I call him Mr. Dark.”
“I’m not saying that it’s Loki you’re dealing with. Just someone similar, someone who’s powerful and who likes to play games. I guess Mr. Dark is as good a name as any.”
Whoever he is, he told me we’d have fun. He said that at the very beginning, but I don’t want to play his games. What’s fun for him isn’t good for anybody else.
Games. Matt remembered the way the stake had appeared when he needed it and then disappeared afterward. The carnival was all just part of a game Mr. Dark was playing with him.
“Is Mr. Dark responsible for what happened tonight?” Matt asked.
“I think so,” she said. “But he’s hiding himself from me. There was more to see, but I could see only as much as he wanted me to.”
“I don’t get it,” Matt said.
“Neither do I, but I know I’m a part of it now, whether I want to be or not,” she said. “And it terrifies me.”
“I know how you feel,” Matt said.
But it was much more than that. He felt a sense of kinship and relief that almost overwhelmed him.
Finally there was someone who understood, who saw—or at least sensed—what he did.
He wasn’t alone anymore.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Sue Jean woke up the next morning, she didn’t feel well. She couldn’t quite decide what was wrong. It wasn’t quite a headache, and it wasn’t quite a stomachache, but it was something sort of in between.
She thought about what had happened the night before. That didn’t make her feel any better. She and the carnie guy had given those turds something to remember her by, but somehow that didn’t seem satisfactory now. She wished she’d been able to do more to them, hurt them worse, maybe do some permanent damage. Jail wasn’t the answer, though. She was sure of that.
It was Saturday, so she didn’t have to go out if she didn’t want to. Her parents didn’t care. They were probably working in the yard, pulling weeds or planting flowers or poisoning ants or something. She couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to do any of those things, but it was fine with her if they wanted to, just so they left her alone and didn’t try to make her help them. Maybe if
they got really lucky they’d win the “Yard of the Month” award and get their picture in the paper. What a thrill that would be.
Sue Jean lay in bed until around noon, listening to tunes on her iPod and wishing she felt better. After she finally got out of bed, she cleaned herself up and put on makeup, noticing, as she often did, how much prettier she was than her former BFF, Madison, that horse-faced bitch. She supposed that Madison and Freddie had survived their night together at the carnival, since her mother hadn’t come in and told her about anybody meeting with a horrible accident.
Too bad. The more she thought about the two of them falling off the Ferris wheel or getting crushed between a couple of the bumper cars, the better she felt. That was strange, but it was true. She imagined them being impaled on spikes, and that made her feel better still. She didn’t know why. Evil thoughts had never affected her that way before, but then, she’d never felt bad in quite the same way that she had earlier. Now she seemed to be feeling just fine.
She went down to the kitchen, where she heard the lawn mower and the gasoline edger roaring in the backyard. She looked out the big bay window and saw her mother, wearing goggles and green gardening gloves. She guided the edger along the bottom edge of the wooden fence that separated their backyard from the Kingstons’.
Her parents felt nothing but contempt for the Kingstons, who hired a crew to come by once a week and do their lawn and weed the flower beds. On her parents’ scale of values, people who didn’t do their own lawn care ranked somewhere below the homeless.
Sue Jean had thought she was hungry, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to eat. She went into the den, turned on the TV, and flopped down on the couch. There wasn’t anything she wanted to watch. NASCAR, for God’s sake. She scratched her forehead. She had all kinds of little itches under her skin, but she still felt great. Hating on Madison and Freddie had done wonders for her.
She was a little sleepy, though. Her parents would be in the yard for hours, and then they’d probably power-wash the driveway, so Sue Jean pulled a couch pillow under her head and drifted off.
Her parents woke her up arguing in the kitchen. It was well past noon, and they were all worked up over whether it was time to plant the petunias or whether they should wait until next week. Sue Jean wished they’d shut up, but they could go on for hours about things like that.
She got off the couch and looked around. What the hell, she didn’t have to stay there and listen to them. She had a better idea. A much better idea. She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans and called Madison.
“Want to go back to the carnival?” she asked when Madison answered.
“Well,” Madison said after a second’s hesitation, “Freddie’s supposed to meet me there.”
“I won’t be in the way,” Sue Jean said. “I promise. I just want to see you for a while. Then you and Freddie can have all the fun you want to.”
“Well, OK. I’ll meet you out front.”
Sue Jean was smiling when she ended the call.
Earl had felt funny all day—not sick, exactly, but not right, either. It wasn’t his wrist. For some reason, his wrist didn’t hurt at all. He’d thought it was broken, but today it felt just fine. He’d taken a couple of aspirin, but that was all. He didn’t know aspirin had healing qualities, but maybe it did. It wasn’t like he was a doctor or anything.
In spite of the fact that his wrist was OK, he’d been pissed off all day. Pissed off at that whore Sue Jean, who probably put out for every guy at school but didn’t want him and his homies even to have a sniff of it. And pissed off at that asshole from the carnival who’d interrupted them.
Earl didn’t like being pissed off, and it was time he did something about it. His old man worked on Saturdays, and neither he nor his father had seen Earl’s mother in years. She went off one night with some guy at a bar and never came back. It didn’t bother Earl, and it didn’t seem to have bothered his old man, either.
Earl went into his father’s bedroom and looked in the sock drawer of the wardrobe. He pushed the socks aside and found the pistol. He’d first found it a couple of years ago when he was snooping around for condoms, not that he’d have any use for one, considering his record with the opposite sex. That was another thing that pissed him off.
The pistol was an old .38 revolver. Earl picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, and it was loaded. Earl didn’t know much about guns, but he’d seen plenty of movies. All you had to do was point the pistol and pull the trigger.
He stuck the .38 in his back pocket. It felt right back there. Like he should carry it with him always. He made sure his shirttail hung down far enough to cover it. It did. He was feeling really good now. He thought he should take aspirin more often.
It was time to call Harry and George and see if they wanted to have a little fun. Well, it was going to be a lot more fun for him than it was for them, the assholes. They’d blamed him for what had happened with Sue Jean, and they’d whined about it for blocks after they’d left the carnival. They’d be sorry about that. Earl grinned just thinking about how sorry they were going to be.
Buford Dorman was pissed off too. The bastards at the ringtoss booth had treated him like shit, and they’d made him look like a fool. If he hadn’t been outnumbered, he’d have shown that smartass who’d twisted his arm a thing or two.
And then there was Marcy. She should’ve supported him. Kicked one of those fuckers in the balls or something. That was the least she could do for him. She was his wife, after all. Instead, she’d let them bully him and make him look bad. And he didn’t even get the fucking bear. OK, he’d gotten it, but he’d been so angry that he’d ripped it apart. Same thing.
Buford opened the closet in the bedroom. His deer rifle was in the back, behind his shirts, and there was a box of ammo on the floor. He pushed aside some shirts and bent down to pick up the box of .30-30 cartridges. He tossed it on the bed and got out the rifle. He hadn’t been hunting for a few years, so the rifle was a little dusty, but he’d cleaned it before he’d put it away. It would be fine.
He filled his pockets with cartridges from the box on the bed and then loaded the rifle.
“Marcy,” he called, “come in here for a second.”
Serena of the Serpents still couldn’t believe that Clem and Clementine were dead. She was thirty-one years old, unmarried, and unlikely ever to marry, considering that she was of the sapphic persuasion and the kind of marriage that might have interested her was currently, if unjustly, illegal in most states. Clem and Clementine had been like the children she’d never have, and while she could replace them, what person in her right mind would want to replace her children? Clem and Clementine had had their own slithery personalities and were as distinct to Serena as any two human children could be, and no replacement could ever replicate their cute little ways.
The thought of the coldhearted way that the security guy had killed her darlings chapped Serena’s ass. Sure, he’d used the excuse that he’d had to kill them to save her, but that didn’t mean anything to Serena. She didn’t know why her babies had turned on her. The thunderstorm? The pounding of the rain on the tent? It didn’t matter. Not now. Now they were dead, and somebody had to pay for that.
Who had to pay? For some reason, that didn’t matter, either. It would be just fine if the security guy…what was his name, anyway? Matt? Serena thought that was right. Matt. She’d like to see him flattened. Flat Matt. It would be just fine if he paid the price, would make her feel good all over, but that Madame Zora, the fake gypsy, was in on it too. She should get hers. And even Cap’n Bob. He was there, ordering people around and yelling about her babies. He should pay if anybody did. But if she couldn’t get to any of them, she’d just find someone else.
Like Gloria, Serena had her own trailer, and it had a tidy little kitchen. In one of the drawers of the tidy little kitchen there was a foot-long butcher knife. Serena kept it sharp because she liked to have everything in good order. She h
ad a nice sharpening steel, and she went into her tidy little kitchen, took the steel and the knife out of the knife drawer, and began to draw the knife blade slowly up and down the steel, honing the edge to a fine sharpness. She liked the sound of steel on steel almost as much as she was going to like the sound of the screams she’d be hearing later on.
The carnival opened at noon on Saturday, and Matt was uneasy and watchful as he moved among the crowds. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, the humidity was low, and the air was cool. A perfect day. The people laughed, joked, played the games, took in the shows, and ate cotton candy and corn dogs. They didn’t mind the little bit of mud from last night’s rain. They didn’t have a care, or if they had one, they’d left it at home when they came to the carnival. The cheerful music from the rides at the end of the midway matched their mood.
Matt’s talk with Gloria had left him feeling worried and uneasy. The dreams he’d had later that night after he’d finally fallen asleep had only made things worse. He couldn’t remember them, but he’d awakened feeling sad, empty, and apprehensive. He was sure that Mr. Dark had been involved in all the strange things that had happened, but he didn’t know how or why.
Maybe everything would be all right after all. Maybe Mr. Dark had done all that he’d intended to do.
Matt almost laughed at his moment of hopeless optimism. He hadn’t seen the physical signs of decay on anyone yet, but he knew that Mr. Dark was around and that he wasn’t finished.
Because nobody had died yet.
But maybe now, between his sight and Gloria’s, he finally had an advantage over Mr. Dark…and could actually stop whatever it was from happening.
As Matt neared Gloria’s tent, he saw that she hadn’t opened for business. He didn’t know if that was bad or good. A dozen or so people stood outside the tent, milling around, talking among themselves. Matt heard enough to know that they were wondering when the fortune-teller would show up or if something had happened to her, but they weren’t worried. They just wanted to have their palms read because they’d heard that the gypsy was the real thing, someone who could really see into the future. They smiled and talked and waited, their moods light.
