When she paused for a breath, he said, “Alicia, you have a snake on your shoulder.”
“That's nice. I think I'll make a marvelous Lady Macbeth, don't you, Martin?”
“Just wonderful, Alicia. Dear, there is a great big spider in your hair.”
“That's nice. Did you know that Pat Gilmer is going to be in the play, too? The first production will be this evening, Martin. Now do try your best to attend. You won't be disappointed.”
“I'll do my best, Alicia.” Martin turned into the fairgrounds and found a parking place close to the front gate, backing the truck in for a faster getawayâjust in case. “Here we are, Alicia.”
“Yes. That's right. Here we are.” She began clapping her hands. “Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man.” She got out of the truck and smiled at him through the open window. “Straighten your tie, Martin. Remember, you are the mayor.”
“Yes. I'll remember.”
“I'll be listening to your speech, Martin. Ta-ta!”
He watched her walk off. Knew that person was not the Alicia he had known for most of his life.
He had detected something . . . evil about her during the short ride. And that had frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
Martin felt sick to his stomach and his palms were sweaty. The shoulder holster rig was chafing his skin and he was perspiring under the leather.
And he was scared. Just plain scared. Should he go back to the house and get the others and get out of this crazy place?
He knew that wouldn't do any good. Gary was firm that he was staying. So was Eddie.
He got out of the truck and walked toward the midway, his eyes moving. The fairgrounds was filling up rapidly. He spotted Pete and Frank Tressalt. Lyle Steele and Jim Watson. Tom Clark and Dennis Cameron. All their hands were in attendance, and they all appeared to have been drinking.
He saw Missy Hudson with Karl Steele and his gang of thugs. Martin paused when he saw Dick Mason walking toward him.
“Morning, Dick.”
The men shook hands. “I got so wrapped up here I forgot to come by your place, Martin.” He looked around him and shook his head. “It's all out of whack, Martin. It's a beautiful day, and the people are all behaving normally. But something is wrong. I feel it.”
He told the man about the one-sided conversation with his wife.
“Weird! I'm glad I sent my family out of the state. You seen Lyle?”
“From a distance.”
“He's got something up his sleeve. I don't know what it is, but you can bet it's not pleasant.”
“I'm sure. Dick, you didn't by any chance bring a change of clothing with you, did you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Why?”
He explained about them all staying at his house and invited the foreman to join them.
“That's a good idea. I guess. I appreciate the offer. Thanks.”
Martin caught sight of his kids. “There's my group, Dick. Come on.”
Introductions made, Gary said, “It's about time for you to kick this thing off, Martin. I just wish I was sure we're doing the right thing.”
“I had a burst of second thoughts a few minutes ago,” Martin admitted. “I guess, Gary, I'm doing the only thing I know to do.”
“How do you feel after killing those two men last night, Martin?” Ned asked.
That shook the foreman. “Say . . .
what?”
Frenchy explained. And it was obvious to all that her feelings toward Martin had turned from friendly to something a lot deeper.
The foreman looked at Martin, realizing there was a lot of tempered steel in the man.
“I did what I had to do,” Martin assured the minister. Martin glanced at his watch and with a sigh, said, “Let's get this show on the road.” He walked toward the speaker's stand.
The high school band was tuning up.
The town council was already seated on the platform. And Martin was very dubious about turning his back to them.
With a sigh, Martin climbed the short flight of steps and took his place behind the rostrum.
Then he looked out over the crowd and came very close to losing his breakfast.
Carnival people were all mixed in with the townies, and their faces had changed, along with many of the townspeople.
Martin's personal, unspoken and unshared suspicions had become reality.
He was staring out at a mixed crowd of innocents and demons; at men and women he had grown up with, whose features had changed into grotesque hideousness. Perhaps one out of every ten townspeople had changed into something from the pits of Hell. They stood grinning up at him, their faces piggy-snouts and snake heads, twisted ape features and half-human grotesqueness. They were the faces of monsters and creatures that defied description.
Martin struggled to keep a scream from passing his lips. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the faces of townspeople and carnies looked up at him. No monsters or demons or hideousness among them. No hellish creatures.
But he knew he had not imagined it, not after meeting the dark lenses of Nabo, standing with his arms folded, in the front row, smiling at Martin.
Then he met the eyes of Alicia, and wanted to run screaming from the platform as her face changed into a huge horrible reptilian object. Her tongue danced out of forever-smiling lips, forked and red. Mike Hanson stood beside her, his head replaced with that of a goat. There was Lyle Steele standing behind Mike, the rancher's skin all rotted.
Chief Kelson stood in the center of the crowd, his head now as pointed as a pin, his ears elfin, his eyes large round black circles set in a face that was barely recognizable as his own.
Again, Martin blinked. The hideousness vanished and the crowd was filled with familiar faces, all staring up at him, waiting for him to begin.
Martin got through his short speech, not remembering a word he'd said, and rejoined his friends.
“Let's get out of here,” Eddie suggested.
They moved several hundred yards away from the speaker's platform.
“I wanna ride the rides!” Gary Jr. hollered.
They were standing next to the merry-go-round. “The merry-go-round,” Gary said. “Go with him, Susan. And stay with him. Don't let him out of your sight.”
“Gary!” Janet protested.
“Don't worry. He'll be all right.”
Frenchy met Martin's eyes and he lifted one eyebrow, then nodded at his own kids. The young people trooped off, Gary, Jr. in tow.
Nabo suddenly appeared at their side. “Not a very inspiring speech, Mayor. Are you ill?”
Martin turned, meeting the mocking smile with a grim expression. “I feel fine, Nabo. Or should I call you the Devil?”
Nabo laughed. “Oh, no, my dear man. Nothing so dramatic as that.” He turned his head to look at Ned. “You have more willpower than I gave you credit for possessing, Preacher.”
The pastor stood his ground and met the dark lenses and the evil behind them. “Thanks to a lot of help from Martin.”
“Ummm,” Nabo said. Martin could feel the eyes return to him. Nabo lifted his arm and looked at his watch. “Seven and one half hours, Mr. Mayor.”
“Until what, Nabo?”
“Hell, its fury and our revenge.”
“You planted some seeds thirty-four years ago, didn't you, Nabo? Among the townspeople?”
“Actually, no,” the man surprised him by saying. “I did not. I was a Christian then, as were many of the people in the carnival. It took a fire to convince us that being a Christian among so-called Christians was not the way. Shall I say that, ah, after our untimely demise, most of us struck a deal.”
“With the Devil.”
“You don't seem surprised to hear that.”
“I guess I'm not. I put it together a couple of days ago. But it did startle me to see so many townspeople take the form of . . . creatures.”
“Their kind is in every community, Mr. Mayor. But a catalyst is needed to bring them to the fore, so to speak.”
“I see. So I suppose that I am looking at that catalyst?”
Nabo bowed slightly. “At your service, Mr. Mayor.” He turned to leave.
“Wait a minute!” Martin's sharp words stopped him and turned the man around.
Nabo stepped close to Martin. The eyes behind the dark lenses seemed to radiate evil. The smile on the lips was mocking. “Yes, Mr. Mayor?”
“You just walk away?”
“What would you have me do?”
“Tell us what we're up against. What do we do?”
Nabo chuckled. “Why . . . enjoy the shows, Mr. Mayor. It's carnival time.”
FOUR
To a stranger, the mood would have seemed festive. Music from the rides was joyous and the mixture of food smells, from cotton candy to hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn and candied apples scented the air. The laughter of the young and the young at heartâevil as both groups might beâwas everywhere.
Martin and his little group stood in a tight knot and stared grimly at the midway.
“Nabo said seven and a half hours,” Frenchy said. “By my watch that reads eight o'clock this evening and the lid blows off.”
“I guess that's what time it blew off back in '54,” Eddie replied. “Do we just stand here and go down with the ship, so to speak?”
“I for one still do not understand, like Janet, why we all just don't leave?” Joyce's voice was surprisingly calm. “Will somebody please explain that to me?” Martin could detect no fear in her voice and wondered about that.
“Where would we go?” her husband told her. “And what would we do or say once we got there? Like Martin said: no one would believe us. We'd have to come back. This is our home. Every dime we own in the world is tied up right here. Nearly every investment we have is right here in Holland. And Joyce, do you want to go off and leave Missy? Or try to force her to leave with us?”
“We could try to do that, I suppose,” Joyce said, without one ounce of conviction in her voice.
“I demand to know why I cannot leave these grounds!” a woman's scared and shrill voice reached the group. They turned as one, watching a woman from out of town argue with Chief Kelson, who was blocking the main gate. They also noticed that the gate was closed and locked.
“Now we know why that expensive eight foot high chainlink fence was put up,” Janet said.
“We can't get out of this crazy place!” Janet said, a definite edge to her voice.
Two carnival workers moved swiftly toward the woman as the artificial laughter from the crazy house was turned up, pumping through the outside loudspeakers. Martin and his group watched as the carnival workers, roughnecks from the look of them, led the woman away. She screamed and struggled to free herself. Nobody else seemed to notice.
Audie started to move toward the woman. Martin's hand stopped him. “No. It may be a set-up to separate us.”
“And if it isn't?” Nicole asked.
“Then I made a mistake.”
“It's wild! It's crazy! It's fun!” the loudspeakers blared from the crazy house. “Come one, come all. Bring the entire family.”
“I've got nineteen .38 rounds that says no one is going to keep me in here against my will,” Martin said grimly.
“I have six in my gun and twelve in my pocket,” Eddie said.
“Same here.” Gary looked at the tent where the men had taken the woman. He looked over at the merry-go-round. The kids were safe, watching his son ride the wooden horses as the music played. No one noticed the strange smile on his lips. Or on the faces of two others in the group.
“I've got a shotgun and a rifle in my truck,” Dick spoke, his tanned face hard. “And a couple of boxes of rounds for each. Any time you folks opt for a bust-out, we'll bust out.”
“You have a short gun, Dick?” Martin asked.
“Under the seat.”
“Let's get it. The rest of you stay put and keep an eye on the kids.”
The men walked over to the foreman's truck and Dick unlocked the door, getting his pistol. He jacked a round into the government model .45 and refilled the clip up to six. He eased the hammer down and tucked the big autoloader behind his belt. “Now I feel some better.” His smile was tight.
Together, they walked over to Chief Kelson, standing by the closed and locked gate. The pinhead, Martin recalled. “What happened to the woman who wanted to leave here, Kelson?”
“What woman?” the chief replied, a very faint smile playing around his thick wet lips.
“Fun! Fun! Fun for everyone!” the loudspeakers called, the words overriding the too-loud music. “Bring the entire family to the house of mirrors.”
“The woman those carnival workers led away from this spot! Now give me an answer.”
Kelson grinned at him. His breath was very bad. “Now, settle down, Mayor. Why don't you just run along and enjoy yourself. I can promise you that it's gonna get real interesting around here 'fore long.”
“Maybe I don't want to run along, Kelson. Maybe I'd like to leave and go home. What then?”
“Why, sir, you and your friends can leave just any old time you like. Ain't nobody gonna stop you. You wanna leave now?”
Martin stared at him until the chief dropped his gaze. He muttered something under his breath about a long walk home.
“What did you say, Kelson?”
One of the city patrolmen laughed.
Martin's eyes followed the chief's turned head. All four tires on his pickup were flat. He looked up the line to Dick's pickup, the foreman's eyes following. A kid was running away from the truck, a knife in his hand. All the tires on Dick's truck had been cut.
“Bastard!” Dick muttered. He took Martin's arm and led him away from the gate, away from the now openly laughing city cops and the grinning Kelson. Just as he was about to speak, his eyes caught movement in the top chair of the ferris wheel. He pointed.
“Oh, no!” Martin breathed, lifting his eyes to the uppermost gondola.
A young man was standing up in the swaying gondola, waving his arms and shouting. “Look at me! Look at me! I can fly! Watch me fly!”
A crowd had gathered by the ferris wheel. “Jump, jump, jump!” they chanted.
“I can fly!” the young man shouted.
“Look at Nabo,” Martin said, cutting his eyes.
The man in black stood apart from the crowd, his arms folded across his chest. He was staring up at the young man in the swaying car, high in the air. Nabo was smiling.
The young man began flapping his arms like a large fatherless bird. He began cawing like a crow. Then he stepped out of the gondola and dropped like a brick. He turned twice, slowly spinning downward in the warm festive air.
He landed on the concrete lip of a permanent fair building. His head exploded, showering blood and brains all over the people standing closeby. The crowd all began laughing and joking at the sight.
Alicia ran up to Martin, her face flushed nearly out of breath. “Isn't that great, Martin? What a wonderful act. I've never seen anything like it. Have you?”
Martin stared at her for a moment. “Act? Alicia, that kid is dead!”
“Don't be such a silly-willy!” she tossed her head. “It's all staged by the carnival.”
“Oh, lord!” Dick said, horror and revulsion in the words.
Matt Horton was kneeling by the broken and bloody body of the young man. The butcher had a plastic spoon in one hand and was dipping out brains from the shattered skull, eating them.
Gary pushed through the laughing, shouting, joking crowd, all of them looking with evil glee in their eyes at the ruined body on the ground. He joined Martin and Dick.
“Isn't that hysterical, Gary?” Alicia asked. “I wonder how they do that?”
She laughed and walked off.
“Get the kids,” Martin said. “We're getting out of this place. I was wrong. We should never have come.”
Eddie had just walked up. “Guess again, buddy. Take a look over at the gate.”
Twenty-five or thirty men were blocking the gate, all of them armed with rifles or shotguns.
“We could take a few of them out,” Dick said. “But none of us would survive it.”
The kids had joined the group. “Now what, Dad?” Mark asked.
Several “I should have's” entered Martin's head. I should have taken Alicia and the kids and left town. I should have called in state police reinforcements. I should have paid closer attention to what was going on in this town.
He felt the weight of defeat try to settle on his shoulders. He shrugged it off. “We fill up on hamburgers and hot dogs and then get to the farthest part of the fairgrounds. As soon as it's dark, we go over the fence. Is that agreeable with everybody?”
It was.
Nabo met them as they walked toward a large refreshment booth. “It won't do you any good,” he informed Martin.
Martin knew exactly what the man was talking about. But he had to ask. “What won't?”
“Bunkering yourselves in some isolated part of the grounds. There is a lot of resentment toward you and your friendsâamong a certain segment of the community. They'll get you. It's only a matter of time. And bear in mind, Mr. Mayor: In all fairness, I did warn you to stay away.”
“Why did you? Did you know I would ingore the warning?”
“No. Oh ... perhaps it's because with you and your group, I sensed a bitter fight.”
“Tell me the point of this, Nabo. I cannot see it.”
The man smiled that strange curving of the lips. “It's only a game, Mr. Mayor. A fun game.”
Nicole stared at the man. “A boy jumping off a ferris wheel is a game to you? Killing is a game to you?”
“Of course. And you people think Satan doesn't have a sense of humor. Shame on you!”
No one knew how to reply to that. Dick Mason stood and stared at the carnival man, his mouth open. He had one thought: kill this bastard!
Then it finally sank in: But the guy is already dead!
“Why don't you people go have a good time?” Nabo suggested brightly. “There will be isolated incidents during the afternoon, but nothing for any of you to really concern yourselves with. Nothing . . .” he smiled, “... drastic is going to happen to any of you until tonight. Go. Enjoy your last day on this earth.”
“You're crazy!” Frenchy told him. “Go . . .
enjoy
ourselves?”
Nabo turned his head to stare a her. “I must take my leave now. I must prepare for what the night will bring. Yes, enjoy yourselves, people. That's what a carnival is for.” He walked away, losing himself in the large milling crowd.
A scream of pain turned their heads. “My God!” Susan cried, pointing toward a concession. “Look!”
It was a dart-throwing concession. Bust three balloons and win a prize. But there were no balloons to break. A woman had been lashed to a makeshift backboard, and she had already been impaled by half a dozen of the sharp-pointed feathered missiles. Blood was running down her face and neck.
“Help me!” she screamed, her eyes on a laughing, jeering man standing in the crowd. “Jim, for God's sake. Help me!”
Her husband laughed.
Her tortured eyes found a teenage boy and girl standing by the man called Jim. “Help me, son!”
The boy and the girl spat at their mother.
The crowd snickered. A ranchhand took aim and let his dart fly, striking the woman in the stomach. She screamed in pain.
Dick stepped up to the man just as he was picking up another dart. The foreman balled a big right hand into a fist and busted the cowboy in the mouth, dropping him to the ground like a rock. Martin and Eddie had moved behind the concession, working at the ropes that bound the woman. They could hear the crowd turning ugly, shouting hate at Dick and the others.
“It's all just in fun, you bastards!” a man yelled. “You get away here and let us have some fun or we'll kill you.”
The ropes came loose just as several men and women charged around the tent and attacked Martin and Eddie. Martin threw up his arm in time to block a wildly thrown punch. Crossing with his left, he hit the man on the jaw, knocking him back, then drew his arm back and drove his elbow into the mouth of another attacker.
Eddie gasped in shock as he pulled the woman out of the rear of the concession. Someone had thrown their final darts, one catching the woman in the eye, and the other directly in the temple. She was kicking in death spasms.
“Eddie!” Martin shouted, struggling with a large woman and finally doubling her over by driving his fist into her stomach. “Let her go. We've got to get back to the others.”
“Grab the girl!” a man yelled. “Let's have some fun with the kid.”
“You leave my sister alone!” Gary Jr. yelled, and kicked the first man he saw right in the kneecap. The man yelped in pain and grabbed for his knee. Gary Jr. balled his fist and hit the man on the nose, bloodying it.
“Kill him!” another man yelled. Audie stepped into the melee and smashed the man in the face with a tent stake he'd jerked from the ground.
Martin and Eddie jerked up stakes and tore the tent ropes from them, then waded into the crowd, the heavy stakes clogging off of heads and shoulders and backs.
Martin could see no sign of Linda or Joyce or Gary. And he thought that strange.
Suddenly, and with no warning, the crowd veered off and began moving in another direction, leaving Martin and his group standing alone by the tent, wondering what in the world happened.
Susan said as much, looking around her as one of the men who had been screaming and cursing at her a moment past, smiled and tipped his hat and spoke to her.
“Let's get out of here,” Dick suggested.
The group left the midway, moving into the maze of cars, trucks, campers and trailers. There they stopped and looked behind them. They had not been followed.
Martin quickly counted heads. They were all together. He cut his eyes. Nabo was standing a few yards away, smiling at them.
“Oh, you're in real trouble, now!” he called. “You should not have interfered.”
“What did you think we would do?” Frenchy asked. “Just stand by and watch the torture without acting?”
“You're very attractive, Miss. It's a real pity that you're so dumb.”