Nightmare Carnival

“Is it scary?” Josh said, his hand on my leg.

“No,” I lied.

Garret and Dick were right behind us. They fit into their car even tighter, were liking it even less. It would have been hilarious, any other night.

Dick said he’d burned the underwear he’d bled into, that he’d never told the nurse about.

Garret didn’t have any memory at all. He’d never dreamed white clown fingers wrapping around his naked hips from the side. It was like that one silver flash of light had wiped him clean.

Our plan was to ride until it worked, until it happened, until we saw that clown turn its face our way.

My plan was to tip my cap off this first time, so Josh would believe that we were going back for it. And that we were going back for it again, and then I’d just keep losing it over the side of the car.

Meaning this was just a dry run. This was just prep, just casing the place. Seeing if we had the nerve or not.

Still, I held my son close to my side, and he sensed that something was off. I could feel it in his breathing. In the way he was trying to watch everything at once, his head on a swivel.

When he flinched from the first stupid strobe going off like a camera flash, I pulled him closer yet, and, because it’s what you do, I kissed his forehead to keep him safe, and in that instant Garret screamed.

I didn’t know his throat could sound like that. I don’t think he did either. And it wasn’t stopping, either.

Everybody screamed with him.

Me and Josh turned and Garret was trying to fight his way from the car but the crossbar had him pinned at the lap. All he had to crawl out of was his skin, and he was about to.

Dick looked to me like for help, and my face went cold when I saw what had happened, when I saw why Garret was flipping out.

Dick had two black-eyeliner crosses drawn across his eyes, crosses with those diamond tips like a wrought-iron cemetery fence. Like a clown.

“What?” he said, touching where I was looking, his finger coming back dabbed black.

I touched my eyes to be sure, but my fingers came back normal.

Two or three clanks of the car’s chain later, Garret was able to grab onto a prop pitchfork, jam it under his steel wheel to. I don’t know. Tip them over, spill him out? Run the plastic tines up under Dick’s jaw, splash them out through his eye sockets?

I was able to turn around enough in my car to wrestle the pitchfork to a standstill.

They had to shut the ride down.

“I–I remember now,” Garret said, and it was like he was crying from his mouth.

His dream had finally moved past that clown’s face. Into the nights after.

He had to breathe into a popcorn bag back by the trash cans for ten minutes before he could talk. I kept Josh behind me, like trying to block him from having to see this, and could tell from my hand on his shoulder that he was scared, that he was glad for my hand on his shoulder.

When Garret finally pulled the bag away, he had those greasy popcorn husks all in the stubble around his mouth.

“This is off,” Dick said up to me, his eyes red from scrubbing.

“Like hell,” I told him.

Tina hugged me when I deposited Josh on the porch, and, because I’d once got down on a knee to ask her to spend her life with me, she held me a breath longer than necessary, like she was hugging what could have been, too.

“Remember the window,” I told Josh when I bent down to tell him good night.

Tina was already inside the house.

Through the door I could see my favorite chair. It had a crochet blanket draped across it now.

Josh nodded his serious nod.

I’d told him I was going to go back to the carnival for one of those chocolate bars, was going to slip it over the sill if I could.

We took shifts staying awake, me and Garret and Dick. Or, Garret and Dick took shifts. I couldn’t shut my eyes. They wanted the clown dead, sure. But it was my son in there.

Tina came in, kissed Josh good night, pulled the chain on his light, and eased his door shut like she always did. The house was old, had high doors so the air could circulate. It was good for staying cool, but the drapes in the living room would move when Josh opened his window, the air from his room pulling down the hall at them.

I held my breath when Josh appeared at the window, his head just cresting the sill, but the blue light of Tina’s television never faltered. Meaning she hadn’t walked in front of it, to check the source of the draft.

“What?” Dick said.

I shook my head no, nothing.

Garret still wasn’t talking.

He did have a gun now, though. The twenty gauge from behind the seat of his truck. We hadn’t been able to pry it away.

All night, not one shadow moved in Josh’s room.

Because it was Saturday, Tina wasn’t up early, either.

I was the only one awake at the curb anymore.

I started the truck, eased us away.

At the Egg Shack, we shoveled breakfast in.

“It was because we didn’t go through enough times,” Garret finally said, just coughing it out all at once.

Me and Dick stopped eating, waited for more, didn’t want to mess him up now that he could talk again.