Nightmare Carnival

It’s the way she says it, not what she says, that finally reveals the source of one of the rip currents Jalena has always sensed running through the EMU — GP English department, and never understood. Frazee and Bemis — alcoholics, student-centered teachers first instead of researchers, amazed modernists who still love the language like the high school book nerds they must have been — have always seemed such natural allies. And aren’t.

Because they’d been married, once. Bemis was the husband Frazee had left for Rogan. Of course he was.

I am a baby, Jalena thinks, with the same stab of self-doubt that always accompanies that thought. At thirty-six. I have a doctorate, a tenured position I spent twenty years earning, and no functioning relationships of consequence. I know and understand nothing.

Somehow, Bemis has slipped from the truck. He eases Frazee back into the leaves, which close over her feet like the dark surface of a winter lake. “It just seems like we should ask, at least,” he slurs. Gently. Almost lovingly. “Don’t you think? Since we’re really going out there.”

“Why are we going out there, Bill?”

For a moment, they stay frozen, reminding Jalena of automated figures on some mechanical tower clock. His hands on her wrists, her feet in the leaves, dark hair sneaking out the side of her scarf to fly loose in the late-fall wind. Their bodies are limned in orange from the candlelit jack-o’-lanterns lining the driveway of the little wooden A-frame across the street. They stand that way long enough that Jalena thinks he isn’t going to answer, and then he does.

“I guess I still think we owe him. Don’t you?”

He lets go and starts across the yard. Frazee lets him.

A few houses down the block, where the trees lean closer over the asphalt and the houses seem to stir on their dark lawns like tumbleweeds about to tear loose, Jalena sees a group of trick-or-treaters. There are a few parents, maybe half a dozen kids. They hurry up a driveway, through tree shadows onto a lit porch. Jalena can hear the doorbell, can see the kids’ mouths moving. But their voices stay so hushed, Jalena can barely hear their trick or treats. It’s as though they are part of that mechanical clock, too. Automated, and out on their timed, yearly rounds. Leaving the house, they pause in the middle of the street and huddle, watching the truck, waiting for them to leave. As though Jalena’s little group might pose a threat. The thought is almost funny. The Lit and Comp Crew, escaped from their university tower, out to terrorize the townsfolk on this one, terrible night.

It would be funny, Jalena thinks, if even one of her colleagues were laughing. But Parrott and Rogan are staring across each other into opposite corners of the yard they’ve parked beside. Green is a motionless, bullfrog-shaped hump in the front seat. And Frazee is still ankle deep in leaves, watching Bemis clamber up the dark steps, rap on the door, ring the bell of this particular house, which has no jack-o’-lanterns on its porch, and no lights inside or out. He picks a piece of stuck something off the screen and stares at it, then returns, slowly, across the grass, looking down at what he’s taken. As he passes Frazee, he hands it to her, and Jalena gets a glimpse. A little torn, pink piece of stiff paper.

“What’s it say?” Jalena asks when Frazee just stands there, looking down.

“Mit ne,” Frazee murmurs. She crumples the paper in her hand and stuffs it in her pocket.

“Is that some kind of—”

“Admit One.” Frazee ignores Rogan’s offered hand, clambers up, and resumes her seat next to Jalena. “Before it got ripped—used, presumably — it said Admit One.”

“To the Carnival?” Parrott gasps. Her gloved hand dives into Frazee’s pocket, pulls out the ticket. But Frazee laughs, grimly, even before Parrott smoothes the ticket in her palm.

“To the Eastlake Plaza Cineplex 6, I think. Taken 2. 9:45 showing.”

Parrott stares at the ticket, then up at Frazee. “Why was it stuck to the door?”

Frazee shrugs. “Because Maddy Roemer is starting a collection? Because she sensed we might show up, and thought she’d have a little fun?”

“Because she’s a clever, nasty little biker bitch?” Rogan says. Angrily.

Or. no. protectively?

“How about because she pulled it out of her pocket accidentally when she was getting her keys to get back in her house? What do you think about that?”

“Maddy Roemer?” Jalena asks. “He had a wife, your history professor? Was this while he had his grad student lover?”

“Sister. Maddy is his sister.”

“And she owes you,” Rogan says, in that same, adamant tone, as the engine starts up.

Frazee just looks at her hands, or the bed of the truck. “Yeah,” she says.