Nightmare Carnival

(My hair went a little thin in patches, after the lions; I cut it short, eventually, just to give me enough ducks’ feathers to cover the empty places.)

Daisy made a face behind Matthew’s back as he left, but even she took to watching me carefully, then saying, “All right,” every so often, as if to herself.

The lion cage with its gate still open stayed in the zoo car, empty and waiting. No animal ever filled it.

I gave Daisy back the little mirror sometime that winter. She didn’t ask why; she’d looked right at me often enough.

My eyes reflected nothing, now; two dark pools where no light reached.

Sometimes I dreamed of the lion opening her mouth to swallow me.

She’d opened her mouth impossibly wide, until there was nothing else in my sight, until I knew I’d disappear wherever Carvessa had gone, and behind the awful white glint of her teeth I’d see something that would drive me mad if I didn’t strike out and crack her jaw hard enough to close it.

I didn’t disappear — the lions had shown me mercy — but even their mercy burned.

It was an impossible dream to wake up from; before I could scramble awake in bed and try not to breathe loud enough to wake the others, I always had to feel the grass under my hands and the horrible airless dark against my ears, and nothing around me but the blackness and the stars.

I stayed as far from that tent as I could get, once it was standing. It had nothing for me.

* * *

When you come to the Brandini Brothers Circus now, you’ll see contortionists and clowns and dancing dogs, and Allan throwing knives at Rachel, the girl Matthew picked up outside Chicago, who has eyes big enough to see from the back row. Sometimes she and Daisy and I play poker.

You’ll buy popcorn; it’s cheaper, and the peanut smell is free.

On your way out, if it’s moonless and cold, you might walk past the animal car and shudder, and not ever know why.

Nothing will be there but the train and the dark; there won’t be a thing to see.

THE DARKEST PART by Stephen Graham Jones

All we wanted to do was kill a clown.

And not just once, either.

I mean, one clown, sure, one would be enough, one would be plenty. But he was going to die all night.

Dick’s ex was a nurse over at Idalou, and during their two years together, Dick had learned enough doctoring that he figured he could bring a clown back from flatline a time or two at least. With electricity. With adrenaline stabbed into its heart.

It was going to be perfect.

What Garret had to provide wasn’t medical know-how, but his dad’s old barn out near the Lubbock county line. The one that should have caved in on itself two winters ago.

It would shelter us for one more night, though.

And, out by the county line, there was nothing but livestock to hear a clown scream.

We’d gone out there a few days before, killed the headlights of our trucks, and closed the doors to turn the dome lights off as well, and the darkness had been almost grainy, it was so thick. Like we could have stuck our tongues out, let it collect, swallowed it down.

“Perfect,” Dick had said.

Garret had nodded, leaned over to spit just past the toe of his boot, and said, “Hell yeah, son.”

My job was the bait.

Of the three of us, I was the only one with a son the right age.

Three weekends ago it had been my weekend with Josh. But, because we were watching the calendar, I’d faked a job for Misty Banta’s father. His spread was half of Crosby County; a good ten percent of my calls are to get his pumps going again, so his cotton will have something to drink.

From our six years together, Tina knew that a call from Deacon Banta wasn’t just a call for that particular pump job, but for all the pump jobs waiting for the rest of the year. When Deacon says jump, you don’t even hesitate.

She bought it, I’m saying.

And she was okay with me taking Josh to the carnival. Talking to her on the phone, there’d even been a pause, like she was thinking maybe she’d go with, that we could be that family again, walking down the midway or whatever it’s called, Josh between us, trying to figure out where to start on this wispy spin of cotton candy.

But she hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t either.

All the years the carnival’d been coming through Crosbyton, we’d never gone, not even once, not even when Josh came home from kindergarten with a clutch of free tickets. I always had a job, a call, a game to watch, something.

Tina’s only rule about finally taking Josh was that, if we rode anything fast, I’d be sure to be in the car with him.

It was because every once and again, the Hammer would throw its riders up into the sky and not catch them. Because at some point in the season, the Spinnaker was going to grind some kid’s arm off.

“He’s my son,” I’d said to Tina.

Instead of yes.

* * *

“No guns, right?” Garret said in the parking lot, when I pulled up.

Dick was already there, watching the Ferris wheel like it was his nightmare come to life.

It was. For all of us.

“No guns,” I said, both my hands cupped over my son’s shoulders.