Nightmare Carnival

“We got missing-person reports galore over the past three weeks. Hikers, ranch hands, some folks snatched out of parking lots. Lots of wild animal calls, too. Ripped-to-hell pets, the usual sort of crap.” The sheriff glanced at me slyly, propped his boot on the head like a kid resting on a soccer ball, and slipped off his wedding band and made it disappear.

“Oh, man, are you kidding?” I stepped back and gripped the Ka-Bar under my coat. Come to it, I’d stab a hillbilly psycho, badge or not. My shiny new policy.

“You snuffed the Eagle Talon Ripper,” he said.

“No surprise you’re the lead detective in Timbuktu,” I said. A mistake because his smirk suggested he mistook contempt for flirtation.

“See my girl Friday with the dog?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Know why she wears them mirror shades? My mama was a gorgon. Deputy Cooper thinks some of the evil runs in my blood. She’s afraid to look me in the eye.” He grinned when I didn’t answer. Ogled my scars. “Wow. It’s true, you Alaska broads are tough as leather. Bastard really did slice your throat from ear to ear. Then you rose from the dead and sent him to hell. Amazing. Marcy at Dispatch ran your name. It’s flagged, big time. I suppose we’re gonna have to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting our fair state. Mm-mm-mm.

“How you survive something like that, eh? Don’t seem possible. Don’t seem possible, ’t all. That freak cut you anywhere else?” He actually reached for my collar and I tensed, ready to shorten his fingers by a knuckle or two.

“Von,” Beasley said, saving the day. “We’ve got a situation. Best to focus.”

“Plainly.” Sheriff Holcomb grudgingly lowered his hand. “The Gallowses think Injun ground gonna do the trick when nothing else ever has?”

“This ground represents a full circle. Fifty years, Von.”

“Ain’t sacred. Ain’t holy. It’s elk shit and dirt.”

“Red moon last night.”

“I ain’t blind.”

“We proceed with the plan. Gallowses’ orders.”

“Ha! Oh, as if I jump when they yell froggy.”

“Today you do.”

Sheriff Holcomb watched the shepherd twist himself into a pretzel and snap at his deputy K-9 partner. The cop in mirror shades swore and danced to avoid losing a hunk of her flesh.

“Things fallin’ to pieces around here,” the sheriff said.

“And you gotta keep a lid on this mess,” Beasley said. “Unless you want the feds on it like flies.”

“Be serious, amigo. The feds won’t figure into this.”

“Fifty years is a high-water mark. I assume nothing. Hell could be waiting in the wings.”

“And her?” The sheriff jerked his thumb at me. “Where she fit into your plan?”

“She’s our secret weapon.”

“You mean bait.”

“Same thing.”

“Bait?” I said.

“Secret weapon,” Beasley said.

* * *

“The sight of blood doesn’t faze you,” Beasley said after he got me back to the camp. We sat at a bench while two bearded guys in coveralls loaded boxes onto a trailer.

“Are you kidding? It fazes the shit outta me. Just that I see more than my fair share. I’m building a tolerance, one snakebite at a time.” I took a slug from Beasley’s flask. Too early in the day, even by my bohemian standards, but I’d earned it. “Let us recap. There’s a pile of human bodies in yonder animal den. You knew they’d be there. Or, like me, you’re super-duper unflappable.”

“Ain’t a den. It’s a trophy room. We’re not dealing with an animal. Not in the strictest sense of the term. I’m not very cool, either. Scared spitless, honestly.”

“Uh-huh. These murders are revenge oriented, sex fantasies, rituals, what? You said something to your sheriff pal about fifty years. ”

“Revenge ritual. The Gallows curse. Goes back to the fall of 1965. There was an. incident, I suppose you’d say. I’ll have Conway fill you in. He’s our knife thrower. Been with the carnival since the sixties.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“A curse?”

“What they call it,” he said.

“Going to stop you right there, big fella. I don’t live in a hut in the Dark Ages.”

“Well, my uncles swallow the whole bit. Power of suggestion cannot be denied.”

“Fine. Go on.”

“They say it clouds the minds of outsiders. The carnival settles into an area, some gruesome murders occur, the carnival pulls stakes and moves on. The cycle repeats. Reports get filed, news stories are written. Locals squawk. Nothing comes of it, though. The outside world forgets, as if the incident is erased from memory. It becomes an urban legend, a woolly tall tale to scare the kids, and everybody accepts it as myth.

“Only family remembers the details. Blood kin and those who are so tangled up with the carnival they may as well be kin. Company members who flee? They disappear or wind up in pieces. Doesn’t matter where they run. Our last sword swallower made it to Malaysia. Authorities found his arm in a hedge.