Nightmare Carnival

“I didn’t say that. When did I say that? In fact, no one, as far as I know, has ever said that. She was killed around two o’clock, apparently, while he was still in class.”

“And he loved her,” Parrott adds.

Jalena doesn’t know how to answer or what to say. She waits for Frazee to grin, for Rogan to burst out laughing and yell trick or treat or one of us.

But all Frazee says is, “Right. Now that that’s straightened out. Carry on, Darlene.” And she goes back to burying her face in her collar and looking at her hands as the truck plunges deeper into the prairie night.

“Find the Carnival. Prove to himself what he’d seen. Find his lover. That’s what David Roemer set out to do. He was gone a lot, after that. He did show up at school, sometimes, to teach his classes. Actually, he showed up for most of his classes, at least at first. But only because most of the people on his list — even the ones he managed to find — refused to talk to him. More than one threatened to get a restraining order if he didn’t stop phoning or appearing on their doorsteps. More than a few called the university to complain. The History department issued him a series of reprimands, then official warnings. Then they held a panel — Green was asked to moderate, in order to ensure the least possible departmental shenanigans, because it turns out the History people are even more petty to each other than we are.”

“Which you wouldn’t think possible, unless you’d seen them in action,” Rogan mutters. “Green. Jesus.”

“The panel met for three days, heard testimony, and conducted peer review of David’s pile of disorganized, largely incomprehensible notes, which he claimed was going to form the core of the most revelatory volume of eastern Montana history ever written. In the end, they declared Professor Roemer’s entire course of research invalid. They recommended that he seek psychological help. They directed him to propose new projects and show evidence of progress on them immediately. And they threatened to strip him of his tenure.”

“Can they do that?”

“We’ll never know. Because David quit, right there at the end of the panel meeting. He walked out of the room, out of the History hallway, straight off of campus. He never even went back to his office. He just disappeared. And three years passed.”

“Why are we slowing?” Rogan says abruptly. And then, “Shit.”

She points straight over Jalena’s shoulder. And right as she does, Jalena feels it, feels fingers pressing into the shoulders of her coat, only they’re too soft, straw fingers. The clown-faced wind whispers at her ear, and she whirls.

But she sees nothing. Just grass, endless, green-black in the moonlight, and rolling. The truck glides to a stop on the shoulder of the road, but Bemis doesn’t turn off the motor.

Several seconds pass before Jalena can shake off the feel of those fingers, the whispered words she hadn’t quite caught at her ear. She starts to shake her head, try a laugh, just to see if that feels right, and stops when she sees the lights.

A cluster of them, flashing all together maybe a foot above the grass, way off to her left. Another cluster flashes to her right, and winks out. Then more, even closer to the ground this time, almost in the grass, and also closer to the truck. They are all over the plain, she realizes. All around them. Flaring, blinking out.

“Ant firecrackers?” she finally says.

“Fireflies?” mutters Parrott.

“At the end of October?” snaps Rogan. “This long after dusk?”

“Too many,” says Frazee, which is silly, ridiculous, but also feels right.

There are too many. The lights shooting everywhere Jalena looks, in no discernible pattern, as though the whole prairie is sparking. The sparks too sudden and violent for firefly light, as though the wind itself is striking flint in the air.

And there’s a sound, too. At first, Jalena takes it for lightning sizzle, or downed power line, but there aren’t power lines she can see, and anyway, the sound is too soft, too gentle, could almost be grass waving, except this grass isn’t long enough to wave.

Frazee bangs her flat palm against the cabin’s back window. “You seeing this?”

“No,” Green barks. “We stopped to toke up.”

“You’re an ass, Green.”

But Green isn’t listening. He’s staring into the prairie and clutching Bemis’s wrist.

“There,” he says. “Bemis, you had to have—”

“Nope,” Bemis says, and shakes his arm free. “I see fireflies.”

“Fireflies my fat ass,” Green snarls.

“Well, you got that right, anyway,” mutters Rogan, and again, Jalena considers laughing, and then realizes that Green isn’t talking about the lights.

He has seen something else, or thinks he has. “She was right there.” He points straight out from the truck into the prairie.

She?

This time, Frazee only taps the window with her fingers. “Bill. How much farther, do you think?”