Nightmare Carnival

Across town I could see the very top of the Ferris wheel. It was turning like a saw blade on fire in slowed-down time.

The whole neighborhood was empty.

I walked through the living room, through the kitchen, and walked it again, and again, banging the heels of my hands together.

Twice already I’d been out to the burned barn at the county line, to see if anything had changed. To see if anything had climbed out.

“What what what,” I said, and then made the deal that if I turned on all the lights in the house and kept them on, wasting energy, then that would be enough of an offering, that would keep them safe, that would bring them back to me.

Next I moved the furniture in the living room, walked the shape of the Tunnel of Brotherly Love’s rails, as near as I could remember them. I even closed my eyes at the darkest part.

And then I remembered the basement light.

I raced for it, trying to get there before my deal could get rejected, and when I pulled the door open the light from the kitchen spilled down the stairs ahead of me.

At the bottom of all the steps were Tina and Josh, like they’d been dropped right from where I was standing. They’d tumbled down like scarecrows, like mannequins, fallen in a jumble of angled-wrong arms and legs, their heads too far sideways for the necks not to be broke.

Just as it had been for my dad, I was the only one who’d been here all week.

I shook my head no, please no.

They were dead, obviously dead, both of them. There were cobwebs dusting up from the bridges of their noses and the webs of their fingers, but their faces were still the same. No decay, no sunken cheeks. Eyes dry and staring. Ready to see me if I stepped in front of them.

I threw up my chocolate onto my chest, onto my hands. There were flecks of silver in it, from the foil I hadn’t been able to peel out, had eaten like punishment.

“No no no. ” I said, coming down the stairs for them, cradling Josh’s head in my lap, touching Tina’s face, flailing my hand around for the basement light’s chain, to see them better.

The light didn’t help.

They were cold, clammy.

Shaking my head no, I unfolded my yellow knife, slit the inner part of Tina’s arm open as tenderly as I could. Because I had to see. I had to know.

Her arm was red on the inside. And still warm. Seeping down to drip off her elbow, even.

I pushed her away, kicked her away, and kicked Josh away too, and then the basement door sucked itself shut. Because that’s how this old house works. Drafts.

The front door had opened.

There are moments you can’t take back. Moments that keep on going and going. Moments that swallow the world.

One is when you’re standing in line in front of a plastic and fiberglass carnival ride, your two best friends beside you, licking their lips for what they’re about to have to do.

Another is when you’re sitting in the back of a low-slung Bonneville Brougham at night, three doors down from your own, and you don’t say anything to save your father, even when your principal holds your father’s face down, smears lipstick over his mouth, all around his mouth.

The door opening upstairs was the third, for me.

“Dad?” Josh said, because I’d never have all the lights on if I wasn’t here, and my heart swelled with his voice, but his voice was wrong, too. Different, slightly. Doubled, echoed, undercut, something.

Dad? he said again, and this time, just from the way corner of my eye, I saw it.

The second Dad, it had come from the Josh on the floor, the Josh I’d kicked away. His mouth was moving like a puppet with the Josh above. Like tracing that sound. Like a ghost might pretend it still matters, that it’s still connected to the living world.

A lump swelled my throat up, threatened to spill.

When Tina’s footsteps crossed the kitchen to the basement door, I stood awkwardly, switched my knife to my other hand, to the hand closer to the door, and I nodded to myself that it was good I had my knife. That it was good I had it back.

But then I looked harder at that knife. Slower. And — and I flashed on two or three days after dropping that knife down the drain at work, how I’d needed to trim a hangnail, thought that it sure would be nice to have that yellow knife back.

So the world gave it to me.

So, the world gave it to me.

My chest went cold, my face numb, my breath shallow, my eyebrows crowding together on my forehead.

“No,” I said.

But yes. Sitting in the Egg Shack that morning after the carnival, I sure had wanted a clown to kill, hadn’t I? And so one walked right in front of me. And then Dick, who couldn’t wire speakers if the whole world depended on it, he’d been able to restart that clown’s heart, just like I’d been wishing. And when I didn’t want to be reminded of that night anymore, when I wanted it all just to go away, stay part of the past, Dick killed himself, Garret faded away. And, and — I shook my head no, please.

When I wanted Tina back, she said maybe.