by Lee Goldberg
Matt hit him in the temple with the flat of the ax, and he fell to the ground, blood still squirting from the end of his arm. Maggots seethed out of his nose, his mouth, and his ears and spread over his entire body.
Matt ignored the fallen man and was turning to look for Gloria when…
The world stopped.
No music.
No screaming.
The people became as lifeless as mannequins.
Except for Matthew Cahill, who could still move, though it was as if the air had become Jell-O.
And one person who moved with no trouble at all.
A man dressed in a tuxedo and eating an enormous wad of cotton candy.
“I love the carnival,” Mr. Dark said. “So many games to choose from. Are you having fun?”
“I’m sick of the killing,” Matt said.
Mr. Dark picked at his cotton candy, dropping bits in his mouth. “Well, if you aren’t enjoying yourself, then you should go.”
“And let you finish whatever you’ve started? I don’t think so.”
“It’d be no fun without you, Matt. Oh, look what’s happened. My fingers are all sticky.” He held up the fingers he’d been using to eat the cotton candy. They were sticky with sugar. “And so are yours.”
Matt looked at his hands. They were spattered with blood.
Suddenly, the world came alive, like the play button had been hit on a paused video.
Matt looked up and Mr. Dark was gone.
But not the blood on Matt’s hands. It must have been Buford’s. He wiped them on his shirt and turned to look for Gloria.
And that’s when he saw her, wide-eyed with fear.
Serena embraced Gloria from behind and held a butcher knife to her throat. Gloria stood helplessly, Buford’s rifle and severed hand at her feet. Serena’s face was now just a skull with some clumps of flesh sticking to the bone, her eyeballs like curdled milk.
It was not a pretty picture.
“You killed my babies,” Serena said to Matt. “Now I’ll kill one of yours.”
Matt took a step toward her. There was no way he could stop her if she decided to slit Gloria’s throat.
“Wouldn’t it be better to kill me instead?” Matt said.
“You’re next,” she said, glaring at him.
It was in that instant, when Serena’s attention was briefly focused on Matt, that Gloria acted. She jabbed Serena in the ribs with her elbow, and Serena jerked her arm away, slicing Gloria’s throat, but only skin deep.
Gloria brought her foot down on Serena’s instep, causing Serena to yell and drop her arms. When she did that, Gloria pushed away, turned, and threw a pretty fair right cross, catching Serena on the side of her jaw. What little flesh was left on Serena’s skull flew off the bone, and her eyeballs splashed out of their sockets.
Serena stumbled back. Gloria picked up the rifle and shook it so that the dismembered hand with the finger through the trigger guard fell to the ground. Gloria put her own finger on the trigger and pulled it four or five times. The bullets tore into Serena and made her dance like a puppet. The knife fell from her hand as she jerked crazily and then fell.
The noise of the shots increased the panic of the crowd. People fled to the exit. Nobody stopped to see what was going on. Everyone just wanted to get out.
Gloria threw the rifle away from her as if it were tainted. She turned to Matt. “Look out!” she cried. “Behind you!”
Matt whirled around to see Jerry jump over the counter of his booth and start toward him, his intestines spilling out of his blown-open midsection. Jerry was holding a tent stake in one hand. Matt wondered if it was the same one that had disappeared from his pocket. Probably. That was the kind of thing Mr. Dark would have considered amusing.
“Jerry,” Matt said, “you don’t have to do this.”
Jerry smiled and a couple of his teeth fell out. He took the stake by the tip and threw it at Matt like a knife.
Matt swatted it aside with the ax. It clanged against the blade and dropped to the ground. Matt got a fresh grip on the ax handle and moved in. Jerry didn’t even try to defend himself as Matt brought the ax down and split his head. Grayish goo spilled out, and Jerry tumbled forward.
Gloria gagged, and Matt took her arm. Blood trickled down her neck onto her robes. She took a handkerchief from a pocket and held it to her throat to stop the bleeding.
“I told you it would be bad,” he said.
“I knew it would be,” Gloria said. “I just didn’t know how bad.”
“It might just be getting started,” Matt said.
“It is,” she said. “When Serena had her arm around me, I saw something. I saw the Ferris wheel.”
“What about it?” Matt asked.
“People are going to die.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sue Jean and Earl met at the entrance to the carnival just as the first fleeing patrons were leaving.
“Hey, Earl,” Sue Jean said, ignoring the screams and panic around them. She found that she had nothing against Earl after all. “How’s it hangin’?”
“Better than last night,” Earl said, who wasn’t pissed off at her anymore. “You ready to have some fun?”
“That’s what I’m here for, but it better be the right kind of fun.”
“Oh, it is,” Earl said with a grin. “It is.” He showed her the pistol. “See what I mean?”
“A pistol? Is that all?”
“It’s enough,” Earl said. “Watch this.”
He fired the pistol at a man who was running along with a child in his arms. The bullet hit the man in the knee. He screamed, dropped the child, and fell to the ground, clutching his knee. Blood seeped between his fingers.
Sue Jean shrugged. “Is that all?”
“No way,” Earl said. “I think we can really fuck this place up. You gonna come along or not?”
“Why not?” Sue Jean said, and they strolled through the crowd as if it didn’t exist. Earl reached out and took Sue Jean’s hand. She smiled at him. “You really think we can do some damage?”
“You just wait,” Earl said. “You’ll see.”
The carnival was so noisy, full of music and bells and shrieks and pops, and the crowd so large and dense, that the bloodbath at the ringtoss and the shooting at the entry had gone largely unheard and unnoticed. The shots had been drowned out and the horrified screams blended into those from the rides. Word of the shootings and deaths had yet to sweep through attendees, but the panic was certainly spreading and soon it would be pandemonium.
Matt and Gloria were heading toward the back of the park, where the Ferris wheel and most of the other rides were, when he saw Sue Jean and Earl, thirty yards away, passing through the crowd like two salmon swimming upstream.
Even from a distance, Matt could see the swarm of blow-flies following them.
They were walking dead.
He pointed them out to Gloria. “See those two?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re death.”
And moving toward the rides.
He headed after them and Gloria followed. But it wasn’t easy. People eager to get to the rides themselves bumped them, shoved them, and cursed them for trying to get ahead.
Nobody seemed to notice Matt’s ax or the blood that was dripping from the blade onto the dirt.
Earl and Sue Jean reached the rides. The carousel music was “In the Good Old Summertime,” and people were smiling and having a good time, completely unaware of what was happening at the other end of the carnival.
The Ferris wheel creaked in its circle, the cars swaying, some more than others as the occupants tried to scare each other.
Small airplanes swung out from their center pole at the ends of strong chains, each plane holding a couple of happy kids.
Earl felt power surge through him, as if he were hooked up to the big generator that sent electricity to the rides. He felt taller than the Ferris wheel and wondered if he would just burst right out of his clothes. He looked at
Sue Jean to see if she’d noticed the change.
She hadn’t. “This isn’t fun. I’m bored.”
“You won’t be bored long,” Earl said. “I told you we were gonna fuck this place up. I won’t even need my pistol.”
To prove he wasn’t lying, he extended his arm and pointed at the airplanes. As the crowd watched, the planes began to gain speed. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster until they were spinning so rapidly that they were almost a blur. The cheerful sound of the carousel was drowned out by the screaming of children and their parents, along with the whine of the chains cutting the air and the squealing of the big generator.
Sue Jean hugged Earl and laughed. He felt better than when he’d shot Harry and George.
“I told you you wouldn’t be bored,” he said.
“Do more,” Sue Jean said. “Do more.”
Earl wasn’t sure at first that he could, but power welled up inside him and he pointed to the carousel, which, like the airplanes, began to pick up speed. More screams as children clung to the horses’ necks and to the poles that ran through them. A man ran to get his child off the horse, but the carousel was going too fast. He managed to jump on, but the whirling carousel flung him right back off. He skidded across the ground and lay still.
Sue Jean clapped her hands. Earl sure knew how to show a girl a good time.
“Do the bumper cars!”
Earl did the bumper cars, which began whizzing around the ring entirely out of the control of the young drivers. They banged into each other with such force that their front ends were flattened.
Sue Jean laughed, but her laughter died almost at once.
“Nobody’s killed,” she said. “Why isn’t anybody killed?”
“You want somebody killed?”
“All of them,” Sue Jean said. “All of them.”
“Pick a ride,” he said, being generous and eager to show off his newfound powers.
“The Ferris wheel,” Sue Jean said. “Do the Ferris wheel.”
“Not a good idea,” Matt said, yelling to be heard above the panicking crowd, the zinging chains, the howl of the straining generator, and the screams of the riders, as he advanced on the couple.
Sue Jean and Earl didn’t seem surprised by his appearance. Matt saw the decay in their faces as they turned to him. Earl brought up the pistol and leveled it at Gloria, who was coming up behind Matt.
“The asshole from last night,” Earl said.
Sue Jean giggled and poked Earl in the ribs with her finger.
Earl grinned and said to Matt, “Things are different now. You’d better stop where you are. I’ll shoot your girlfriend if you don’t.”
Matt didn’t doubt that Earl would do it. He stopped. He hoped that someone in the milling crowd would jump Earl and take the pistol. Nobody did.
“After I kill her,” Earl said, “I think I’ll tear loose that Ferris wheel and let it roll through the midway.”
“Do it,” Sue Jean said. “Do it.”
“Goddamn right,” Earl said, but he was distracted by the airplane ride, where the noise had increased even more as the planes began to whirl ever faster, the chains stretched out almost parallel to the ground.
One of the chains snapped with a metallic twang as the links separated. The plane flew. Not like a real plane. Its wings were too stubby for that, but it had plenty of speed. It buzzed over the heads of the terrified crowd and slammed into the carousel like a bomb. Pieces of horses and poles exploded outward.
“Look, look!” Sue Jean said, clapping her hands. “Now do the Ferris wheel!”
Earl smiled, and the Ferris wheel began to turn faster. The screams of the riders were drowned out by the creaking of the wheel, the roar of the airplanes, the whir of the carousel, the high-pitched whine of the generator, and the screams of everyone else.
Matt didn’t want to kill Sue Jean and Earl. But they were as good as dead already, puppets of Mr. Dark now. They’d lost any humanity they’d once possessed.
Earl’s attention turned from the Ferris wheel back to Matt and Gloria. It was as if he knew that Matt was about to make a move. If he did, he wasn’t bothered. Instead of killing Gloria, he started to fire his pistol at random into the crowd.
Matt charged forward. He felt rather than saw Gloria move too. He didn’t know what she was up to, and he didn’t have time to worry about it.
Earl had saved one bullet for him, but as his finger tightened on the trigger, Matt swung the ax in a short arc and knocked the pistol from his hand.
Earl smiled and raised his arms. The Ferris wheel spun so fast that it was almost a blur. Still smiling, Earl lowered his arms and started to say something to Matt.
Whatever it might have been, he didn’t get it out. Matt swung the ax again and took Earl’s head right off his shoulders.
The head bounced across the ground and stopped near the carousel. Because of the confusion and destruction there, no one even noticed it.
Earl’s torso fell forward and lay still. Matt looked around for Sue Jean.
She was struggling across the muddy ground, reaching for the pistol. Her progress was slowed by the fact that Gloria was on her back, pulling her head up by the hair.
It was a convenient pose, and Matt didn’t waste it. Sue Jean looked up as Matt reached her. He swung the ax like a baseball bat, hitting her in the center of her forehead with the butt. Her forehead caved in like cardboard, shoving splinters of bone into her brain.
Gloria jumped aside and stood up, a horrified look on her face as she brushed brain matter off her robes.
Matt kept right on going. Earl’s death hadn’t changed anything as far as the rides were concerned. They still spun wildly out of control, and Matt had to stop them. All four were connected to one large generator, which was now howling with the strain. Matt’s plan was to cut the cables.
The cables were as thick as Matt’s arm, but he knew his ax would cut them, dull though it might be when the job was done.
He chopped through the first cable. Sparks flew and the carousel music died. The smell of burning insulation filled the air. The second stroke stopped the Ferris wheel, the third stopped the airplanes, and the fourth took care of the bumper cars. Most people rushed to rescue their children and to help with the injured. A few yelled into their cell phones.
Matt threw the switch on the generator, and the noise level decreased further.
It was over.
He looked at Gloria for confirmation of what he was feeling and she nodded. He trusted her senses.
Matt could now hear the sirens of police cars in the distance, drawing near. He wasn’t inclined to stick around and see what happened when the police arrived. There would be too much explaining to do, too many corpses.
He took her hand and headed for the trailers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When they got inside his trailer, he closed the door and grabbed his duffel bag.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Changing out of these bloody clothes, getting what little I’ve got, and leaving,” he said, and stripped off his shirt.
“You saved the carnival, Matt, and countless lives. You’re a hero. You don’t have to run.”
“You don’t get it,” he said, tossing the bloody shirt and putting on a new one from his duffel bag. “When I’m around, people die. And they don’t die easy. If I stay, this is only the beginning. There will be more death. It’s better if I leave and draw Mr. Dark away from here before that happens.”
“What if he wants you to leave?”
Matt looked at her and thought about what Mr. Dark had said to him in that short, frozen moment.
It’d be no fun without you, Matt.
He hadn’t had time to stop and think about it before.
But now…He got the message.
It was Matt being there that had brought the carnage upon the carnival.
And Mr. Dark was offering to go if Matt would too.
A truce, of sorts.
&n
bsp; But why?
“Because of what you being here has brought out in me,” Gloria said as if reading his thoughts. Then again, she probably was. “Maybe this gift of mine scares him.”
“It’s not a gift,” Matt said. “It’s a curse.”
It was now painfully clear to Matt that Mr. Dark had set out to destroy the carnival and kill as many people as he could…just to show Matt what it would cost him to stay with Gloria, to continue to imbue her with powers with his presence.
He’d given Matt a vision of the future.
And it was soaked with blood.
And it would be Matt’s fault.
Oh, look what’s happened. My fingers are all sticky…and so are yours.
“If you stay, between your sight and mine, you’d be twice as powerful against him,” Gloria said. “Together, we might be able to beat him.”
“Or I can go,” Matt said, “and perhaps your visions will go away too.”
He could save her from his fight, from his fate.
And Mr. Dark gets what he wants…
“Or I can go with you,” she said, but without much conviction.
But Matt had made his decision, not one based on winning or losing.
“What you saw today, what you experienced, I’ve gone through before. Again and again. I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost count. I carry that with me every day.” Matt wiped the blood off his blade with his dirty shirt and shoved the ax into his bag. “That’s the curse. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“It’s my choice,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” Matt said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry I brought this horror into your life. I hope now that it’s gone for good. Take care of yourself.”
He picked up the bag and walked out the door. She stood in the doorway of his trailer and looked after him.
And as he walked away, she felt the darkness lifting and she whispered her gratitude to him for leaving her behind.
Matt stuck to the side streets and, over the next few hours, made his way to the edge of town. There was a truck stop just inside the town limits, but he walked on past and down the moonlit two-lane highway. He wasn’t looking for company or even for a ride.
