There’s an old saying about looking for a needle in a haystack. That’s pretty much all that comes to mind when it comes to searching for my grandniece. I tried to do things the right way. I know that some people will have trouble believing me, but I did. I wrote letters to her last known address, I wrote more letters to Meaghan care of the Carnivale, and I wrote letters to their corporate offices. I wrote more letters for the span of three months than I had in my entire life. And all I got for my troubles was a whole lot of nothing.
I am not always a patient soul, but for my last family member, I was willing to try.
The Carnivale never responded. I tried every name I could think of, every possible position within the company, and I got nothing at all by way of response. I would have probably been satisfied with a simple letter telling me that Meaghan was no longer with the troupe, but getting no response at all? Well, that was an insult, to be honest. Seems to me that people could at least pretend a connection to polite society better when I was young. These days they don’t even try.
Meaghan never responded.
I waited in Florida for half a year—don’t worry, I found plenty to keep me busy—but I got nothing. And then I decided it was time to move on to the next stage of the game.
I would be lying if I said I’d kept up with Albert Miles, but I had ways to get in contact with him and he in turn had ways of getting answers, so I hopped a train and made my way up to New England. The weather was cold and Salem, Massachusetts was beautiful. The man lived in an ancient house that was perfectly kept. He didn’t even wait for me to knock. He opened the door as I was climbing the stairs to his home.
“Cecil! What a delight!” He always called me Cecil when he wanted to be on my good side and I always let him. I don’t answer to the name all that often anymore, because there is a lot of baggage that goes with that name, including a very short career in Hollywood. That’s a different story for a different time. The good news is, no one would look at me and make any association with the comedian who showed up and then disappeared less than three years later. They were good years. I enjoyed my second life. That’s all I’ll say about that.
“I need your help, Albert. I’m at a loss.” I spoke after we’d settled into his living room with hearty mugs of hot cocoa. He made good hot chocolate.
“You’re looking for your niece, aren’t you?”
“Grandniece.”
He nodded his head. “What can I do for you, Cecil?”
“Let’s not play games. I know you can find her.”
“Of course I can. But why should I bother?”
The rage came then. It was a white-hot blast of anger that would have had most people terrified if they had seen me. Albert Miles didn’t so much as flinch.
“You lied to me, Albert! We had a deal and you lied to me!”
“I did no such thing. The Hunter got in the way and you didn’t stop him. If you’d followed the plan there would have been no difficulties.” At that moment I think I could have killed him. I had been afraid of Albert Miles since the first time we met, but I think I could have killed him and never so much as blinked. He held up a hand and stopped me from saying something foolish. “Calm down, Cecil. We have things to discuss. I certainly don’t hold you accountable for the Hunter getting in the way. But a bargain is a bargain and I fulfilled my end to the best of my ability as you fulfilled your end.”
I knew where we were going. “What do you want from me?”
“What have I ever wanted from you, Cecil? I want your help with certain matters.”
“And in exchange?”
“In exchange, I find out all that I can about your grandniece’s whereabouts. I’ll even find out about where your niece is, if you’d like.”
It was a small thing, really. A simple matter of a young man in Washington State who had discovered certain secrets Albert preferred remain secret. I agreed to handle the matter, and he in turn agreed to find out all he could. He arranged transportation for me and I had the boy dead in a matter of hours.
When I came back I brought him fresh apples and the boy’s eyes. He wasn’t expecting the apples, but he was delighted to get them.
We settled in for another cup of cocoa and a long talk.
Albert sounded genuinely sorry when he told me that Cecilia had died of a drug overdose and that Meaghan had been murdered. He couldn’t tell me who, exactly, had murdered her, but he gave me a short list of names.
“Meaghan is dead, Cecil.” Albert was direct, but not unkind. “She isn’t at peace, but she’s closer to it that you’ll likely ever get.”
“You want to explain that to me?” I didn’t take offense. It was simple math, really. I was a ghost for a long time, and I was good enough at being a pissed off dead man that I managed what should have been impossible and escaped from a prison designed solely to hold the dead. Peace had nothing to do with my afterlife.
“I couldn’t get all the details you’d like without involving serious necromancy. Not the sort where I merely talk to the dead, but where I have to bring them back to this realm to get the answers. If I did that to Meaghan, she would suffer the consequences.” He looked at me hard to make sure I understood exactly what he meant. I did. In order to get answers, he’d have been forced to pull Meaghan away from whatever course her spirit was on in the afterlife. There would have been a chance that doing so would cause her to lose her way in the world that exists after this one. That meant wandering the earth as a ghost. Not really a pleasant experience and I say that as a man in the know.
“I got names for you. Those names should have answers to your questions. If the answers suit your fancy, all the better. If not, I’ll bring Meaghan back and you can ask her yourself.”
“Could you bring her all the way back?”
“Of course, but you wouldn’t want to pay the price.”
“Would it cost less if I brought her back and you provided…shelter?”
“Like what was supposed to happen in Serenity Falls?”
I stared hard. The rage was still there, the hatred. No matter how he explained it, Albert had betrayed a trust. I should have had my second family back and instead, there was some very interesting wild life in Serenity Falls.
After the silence had stretched to the point of being uncomfortable, Albert smiled and nodded. “It can be arranged if you decide to do it. But only this once, Cecil. I’m not in the business of resurrection. If I were, I’d have had a far less complicated life so far.”
He told me the names and he even told me where they could be found. There were several. Not all of them had been involved in her death, but all of them knew something about it. That was enough for me.
I’ve never thought of myself as a detective, but I have been known to get information when I needed it.
I can be very, very persuasive when the situation rises.
The first name on the list was Elizabeth Montenegro. She was one of the other demon girls. I’d seen her perform when I went to see Meaghan. I couldn’t have pointed out which one she was, but that hardly mattered. In the time I’d spent waiting, the show had closed down and opened again, only this time around, Elizabeth wasn’t just a background dancer she was the star of the show.
According to Albert, the girl had connections in the show, people who wanted to help her with her career in exchange for her silence.
I intended to see exactly how good she was at keeping her tongue.
The footage was blurry. Too blurry to let anyone see exactly who the hell had shot John Booker dead. Only one living officer knew that Michael Carver was at the scene of the murder and that man was already being interrogated regarding his possible connection to the death of the clown-faced killer.
Tom Keegan had looked Carver up and down and then handed the detective the firearm he’d used to blow several large holes in the dead man they’d both helped execute. “Get out of here, Carver. I never saw you. You were stuck in traffic.”
Carver took the extra weapon and shoved it in his pocket. He left the scene very quietly and drove exactly seven and one half miles before he stopped, wiped down both weapons, and then dropped them off a bridge that led toward D.C.
By the time he got back to the scene, the news crews were swarming and the bodies had been photographed from every possible direction. He had been standing in the rain for a full five minutes and watching everything before dispatch told him to get his ass down to the Medical Examiner’s office in order to possibly ID Booker.
He left the scene and drove carefully, his heart pounding hard enough to make him wonder if his ribs could survive the sustained beating.
There was a very real chance that he’d just gotten away with murder. Only time would tell. There was news camera footage for the police to go over with a fine-toothed comb, and there would likely be a lot of eyewitness reports as well. In the meantime, his bags were still packed and he had a body to identify.
Michael had to wait for Booker’s body to be delivered before he could attempt to identify it. While he waited, he listened to the stories that were already growing in fits and whispers. Jenkins had killed the clown, according to several eyewitnesses. It had been a shootout between the two of them, old west style, and in the end, it had been a draw. For all the world, that seemed to be the most prevalent rumor, and while the coroner’s office would certainly make a lie of the situation in due time it was as good a tale as anyone was likely to hear and a lot more pleasant than the truth of the matter.
Warren Anderson was the Medical Examiner on duty when Michael was called back to make his identification. The step was merely a formality, as the fingers had likely already been printed and the set of prints was probably already working its way through AFIS to find a match.
Still, Michael felt a certain morbid sense of curiosity about the situation. He wanted to look at the man he’d murdered. He wanted to mark the face that had just bought the right to haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. It seemed only proper to get the details right from the beginning.
Warren looked uncomfortable as he nodded his head and rolled out the body.
“Not a pretty one, Warren?”
“Mike, you have no idea.”
He swallowed the guilt that tried to rear up and strike at that comment. “So enlighten me.”
The white cover over the body was pulled back, and Carver got his first close look at the body of his murder victim.
John Booker, Marco Demillio, or whatever his name really was, was very obviously dead. His throat was mostly blown out, and Michael could see the stainless steel table under the man through the holes in his overcoat and the body beneath.
His face was untouched, unmarked despite the numerous shots. Death had taken the look of surprise from the man’s face, but the features were still obscured beneath the thick white makeup. Carver slipped a glove onto his hand and reached out, touching one closed eyelid. He opened the eye and stared at the cold, blue eye that looked back.
For a second he thought the pupil dilated and suppressed a shiver.
Then he ran his hand over the face and shivered again. “Jesus.” The marks on the clown’s face were indentations, deep cuts that had healed a long time ago by the feel of it. He could slide his fingertips a quarter of an inch into the grooves hacked into the otherwise smooth skin around the eyes and the mouth, forming the shapes that distinguished the clown from all the rest of his ilk.
“Jesus Christ.”
Warren coughed into his hand. “Is that your man, Booker?”
“I think so, but these scars…”
“The sort of thing that would stick out, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yeah, and I don’t remember seeing them before.”
Warren moved closer and ran his own fingers over the deep marks around the cadaver’s mouth. “Don’t be too surprised. These days you can hide almost anything with make up.”
“No shit?”
“Well, look at the man. Who would have known the skin you’re looking at was his regular flesh tone.”
“Excuse me?” Carver’s skin tried to crawl away.
“These colors are permanent. Either John Booker was a very inventive albino or he deliberately had his skin bleached of all pigmentation.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I guess it must be, we’re looking at it.”
Michael had seen enough. “Near as I can tell when you consider the disfigurements, that is, in fact, John Booker, also known as Marco DeMillio according to his fingerprints.”
Warren looked at him for a long moment and nodded. “Thank you, detective. I’ll have a full report done in a few hours, I expect.”
Carver stared long and hard at the corpse and shook his head. “No rush. I don’t think I’m in a hurry to know anything else about his guy.”
If the medical examiner thought that answer was unusual, he didn’t say anything.
Carver had only been gone a few moments when Warren’s assistant, Taylor, came in. Taylor was young, good looking and for reasons no one really understood, morbidly curious about everything. Warren considered that a plus. The odds were good a few of the women who dated the kid probably thought otherwise.
Taylor looked the cadaver over for a few moments, his eyes fixed on the odd disfigurements and then, while Warren prepared for the autopsy itself, his assistant started removing clothing from the body.
“The color goes all the way down.” Taylor’s voice held an unsettling amount of excitement at the notion.
“We’ll get to that. In the meantime, please make sure you check the contents of the clothes for any possible contraband or evidence.”
Taylor looked like he wanted to make a comment about knowing how to do his job, but he wised up before he could get himself in any trouble. Curiosity was indeed a plus in the field of forensics but that didn’t mean talking about your discoveries would win any bonus points.
When the man was done removing and cataloguing the personal affects, Warren looked down at the body. True enough, the white color ran the entire length of the body and all of the body hairs seemed to be the same dark blue. The wounds were made all the more startling by the difference in color between the flesh and the bloody insides.
Warren reached to turn on the recorder to document all of the pertinent information for later transcription. Neither he nor Taylor would have the time to finish the report until later in the day and both of them had atrocious handwriting.
His hand struck the “record” button at the same time that the white hand covered his fingers and pressed the “stop” button.
Warren turned toward Taylor, annoyed that the man would even consider pulling pranks.
Instead he looked into the face of the dead clown, who was smiling at him.
“No, Doc. No record of this, please. Things have already gotten messy enough.” He spoke as he held Taylor off the ground. The clown was sitting up on the examination table, his wounds abundant and obvious, his hand clenched tightly around Taylor’s throat. Warren’s assistant had turned a deep shade of red that spoke of how little blood was flowing to his head. He stared desperately at the medical examiner, perhaps hoping that he could somehow make the nightmare go away.
Warren Anderson let out a very loud scream as the clown reached for him. The sound was cut short by the fingers that caught his throat and squeezed until something in his trachea collapsed.
“Shhhhh, Doc,” Rufo whispered softly. “We don’t want to have to kill everyone in the building, do we?”
The eyes that regarded him were a light, cold blue, but nowhere near as frigid as the smile that parted blood red lips and bared perfect teeth.
Warren got to see the teeth closely around the same time he realized he could no longer breathe. He was just starting to panic when the clown opened his mouth and lunged, biting through his cheek and lips and pulling back a thick wedge of flesh.
The meat and muscle he consumed worked quickly, repairing the deep trauma his body had sustained as he was shot again and again. He ate quickly, but not quickly enough for Warren Anderson, who had the misfortune of being alive for most of what was done to him.
When he was done with the man in charge, he moved on to the young assistant. By the time he started feasting he was mostly healed and feeling more himself.
He dropped the young man on the ground and stood up, reaching for his neatly folded clothes.
At his feet, Taylor whimpered, far too gone to even scream any longer.
“Do you know that bastard shot me?” The clown looked down at him. “And not just once; I mean, you saw the bullet holes. He shot me a lot. You’d think there were rules against cops just shooting a man. I’d dropped my weapons and everything.”
The pants and shirt were too bloody to be saved, so he took Taylor’s clothes from his twitching, ruined body. The shirt was once again too ruined, but the pants seemed to fit him well enough.
“I think his name is Carver. Gonna have to remember that. No way am I letting him just kill me like that without suffering the consequences….” He was mostly talking to himself, but he looked at Taylor as he spoke, just for the companionship. “Used to be there were certain rules for policemen, you know? I mean, I’m a monster, that’s a given, but him? He’s supposed to protect and serve.”
The coat had several layers of cloth and they’d soaked up some of the worst blood trails, still, in the long run it was too far gone to keep. He sighed and headed for the door marked OFFICE and there he found another coat as well as a nice hat. Neither of the men he’d left behind would need them.
She was alive. Not just living, but alive in a way she had never imagined possible. The auditorium was filled to capacity and Tia danced, moving with ease through steps that had already become part of her being. She told a story with her body, lived the motions rather than merely making them, and in the process she finally understood the simple beauty of the story.
There was heroism and tragedy alike for the characters, but in the end there was a sad sort of redemption and a funeral beauty to the tale.
When she was done, Tia stood with the other players and looked out into the audience, surprised by the explosive applause that fairly shook the building around them.
Leslie’s applause was the loudest. She stood in full costume, ready to step out on stage if she was needed, but never made a move toward the performance area. Instead she jumped up and down and clapped her hands together furiously, smiling as bright a smile as Tia had ever seen in her life. Seeing her did wonders for Tia’s heart, but her nerves never became a problem. In the long run it was the dance that mattered, the performance. She never lost her place despite her fears, and it was a wonderful, magical feeling.
Front and center in the audience sat a gathering of people who almost gave off an aura of power. They were the people who came up with the concepts, who did the hiring and firing and, in the long run, who signed the checks that paid all of the bills. They were the Board, and they were all powerful in the world of the Carnivale de Fantastique.
And they were applauding as loudly as anyone else in the audience. Tia could have wept tears of joy for that simple fact.
She stepped off the stage after the curtain closed for the third time, and the people around her exchanged hugs and back clappings and she was included. Every one of them knew it was her first time on a live stage and every one of them seemed to congratulate her. It was a wonderful feeling, made even better because it seemed the first time some of them had been willing to make her welcome.
Leslie hugged her furiously and kissed her cheek and then fairly ran her to the dressing room. Before Tia could ask what was happening, Leslie started explaining.
“They loved the show, and they want to meet you. The Board. Not just you, of course, all of us, but you have to be ready, because this is the big time stuff. If they like us enough, we get invited back for next year, so we want to make our good impressions now.”
“What?”
“I’m babbling. Just get all prettied up. Come on, hurry, because if the Board likes your stuff enough, you don’t even have to go through all the auditions again. That’s what happened with Elizabeth Montenegro. She never had to audition again, she just got the lead, so let’s go impress us some big wigs.”
Tia hugged her friend tightly, feeling the girl’s heart beat next to her own and feeling, for just the briefest moment, like kissing her friend as deeply as she would a lover. It was more than physical, though that attraction was part of it. Leslie had gone so far beyond merely being a friend to her. The girl had guided her through every step of the entire process and been there again and again. Tia could hardly believe she’d have managed to get even as far as she had if the girl had set out to make her look like anything but a star. Leslie was her hero, pure and simple.
And when Leslie kissed her on the lips, she did not pull back. It was only the two of them in the dressing room, both of them still in their costumes, covered in Spandex and sequins and shiny foil capes that rustled and tinkled with every move they made and oh, how the sounds mingled as the kiss exploded into something more.
Tia’s hands moved on their own, exploring the wonderful sleek curves and planes of Leslie’s body and she felt her heart thud even faster in her chest as Leslie’s hands slid over her stomach, up to her chest and then around her back. They kissed a second time with much more deliberate heat.
And the best night of Tia’s life got more wonderful than she would have ever expected and a great deal more complicated as well.
The cast was a delight, just as the board members had expected. Of particular interest were the two new leads, both the initial replacement for Montenegro and the girl who was now working as the stand in. They were both late for the cast party, both looked a little shell-shocked and both also looked guilty as sin.
In their times each member of the board had been a performer. They could guess what was going on and most of them were right on the money. None of which mattered as long as the show continued on schedule without any added drama or negative news stories.
They’d come into town ostensibly to show their support for the recently dead, and that was as good a story as any. In truth, they had come to discuss certain matters with Todd Westingham, and that matter had now gotten out of hand in the extreme.
Todd Westingham was dead and most of the board couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing. Adam Salinger had a firm opinion on the matter, but it was best to keep that opinion to himself until the rest of the board voiced their beliefs.
Adam stared at the carpet in front of him, trying to read his future in the patterns that had been woven into the fibers. There was no pattern to discern as far as he could tell and if things kept going poorly, there might not be a future worth noticing.
His phone rang as he was looking at the two girls who played Ramona.
“Hello?” the number was local, but not one he recognized.
“Helluva show you guys put on tonight.” The voice was cheerful.
“Thanks, we do our best.” He had no clue who he was talking to, but it didn’t do to alienate strangers, especially if they were with the press.
“Fatima, though, the belly dancer? Not right for the part. Belly dancers should have a little meat on their bones.” Adam couldn’t have agreed less. He liked dancers: their bodies were pure muscle and every movement seemed enhanced when a dancer was moving over him. And he always preferred that the girls do the work.
“We’ll take that into consideration. How can I help you Mister…?” He kept the edge out of his voice though it wasn’t easy. The last thing he wanted or needed in his life was another backseat producer. They already had plenty of those in the form of investors.
“My name is Cecil Phelps. You can call me Rufo.”
“Well, what can I do for you, ‘Rufo’?”
“Here’s the thing. My grandniece used to work for you. Last year I think it was. Her name was Meaghan Phelps. Does that name ring a bell?”
Did the name ring a bell? Of course it did. That was one of the reasons they were down here in the first place.
“No, I can’t say that it does. But the Carnivale employs a great many people, Mr. Phelps, and I simply don’t know all the names.”
“Oh, I think you’d remember her. She was quite lovely, played one of the Infernal Dancers in the last show.”
“No, sorry. I got nothing.” Lies, lies, lies. He remembered her very well, both when she was alive and when they had to clean up the mess at the end of the show. She had been a beautiful girl, and an asset to the show. He still regretted what happened.
“Well, she disappeared after one of the shows last year and never turned up. Is she starting to ring any bells now?”
“Mister Phelps, any insurance claims you would like to make can be handled through the insurance companies that handle our benefits packages. Any attempts at a lawsuit should be handled by reaching our attorneys, who are on record and can be reached at their offices. Aside from that, what else can I do for you?” His annoyance was growing. There were people he wanted to get to know better, wanted to mingle with, and the imbecile on the phone was making that very, very challenging.
“Todd Westingham assured me that you were the man I wanted to speak to about where, exactly, my grandniece’s body could be found.”
He’d read the phrase “my blood ran cold” on several occasions, but it never seemed like a real possibility until that moment. His heart seemed to slow, his mouth tasted coppery, his vision faded for a moment and by God, his blood felt like it had suddenly frozen in his veins even as it pushed through his body.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His lips felt numb, but he made them form the words anyway.
“Well, Todd was swearing on his son Hunter’s life when he told me everything. I’m thinking he was probably telling me the truth.” The tone hadn’t changed at all: the man still sounded as cheerful as could be, happy to be alive and happier still to be talking on the phone.
Adam had seen the news. He’d watched the clown-faced man get blown to hell at least a dozen times before the carnage lost his interest. That man had been named John Booker according to police sources. Cecil Phelps was nobody. And he’d have remembered if he’d ever met somebody name “Rufo.”
“I’m going to hang up now, Mr. Phelps. I recommend that you forget this number. If you don’t, there might be legal consequences.”
“Really?”
“We have excellent lawyers on retainer. Have a nice night, Mr. Phelps.”
“Don’t you hang up on me, rube.” The words were hissed, filled with cold hatred.
Adam disconnected the call and powered down his phone. Let the man call. He could delete the messages later.
Around him the party progressed. The people were happy and having a good time, even the two girls who kept looking toward each other as if they might have made a horrible mistake.
Adam did his best to get back into the proper mood. It wouldn’t do to have investors and reporters looking at the board members and wondering what they were hiding.
The girl who played Fatima, the devil girl and seductress of the story, walked past and delivered the sort of smile that caused men to get stupid. Adam smiled back and after a moment’s hesitation, followed after her. It never hurt to get to know the cast a little better, after all.
Meaghan Phelps would have disagreed, but Adam had already put the dead girl out of his mind. The body was hidden very well, and no one would be finding her. Besides, the past was in the past and he preferred living for the now.
He stared at the cell phone and chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. The man who had owned the phone in question had been yelling at a four-year-old boy and had called the child several names that Rufo felt children should not learn until they were much, much older.
The man was dead now, his body folded over itself and rammed deep into a trashcan. Rufo could have seen one foot if he wanted to look, but the dead man was no longer of any concern.
He had different things on his mind. The parking lot for the theater was only half as full as it had been on any of a dozen recent nights. The show was done and the reception was taking place. He walked slowly until he spotted Salinger’s car. It took very little effort to sabotage the engine. True to Todd’s word, the man was easily spotted and he believed in renting expensive vehicles. Rufo knew damned near nothing about cars, but he could tell a luxury vehicle from an economy model. The damage was nothing major, just the sort of thing that would cause a delay. Loosen a wire here, pull a plug there and the next thing you know, the cars are leaking all sorts of important things that help them run.
Rufo wanted the delays, but not too soon. He wanted everything to look just right when Salinger came to the meeting the board had scheduled for the next morning. He wanted to make sure Salinger got the message loud and clear.
Life on the Road: Part Ten
Being dead was not fun. Being a ghost had certain perks, but when you get right down to it, I wanted to be alive again, truly alive. I made a deal with Albert Miles. I served him and he helped me with my dilemma. I wanted to live again. I wanted the rest of my second family to live again, too.
To that end, I served the man faithfully. I won’t lie and say we became close friends or anything of the sort, but we talked from time to time and we had certain similarities in what we sought from the world. We understood each other.
I got my second chance around the same time the curse Miles had put on Serenity Falls came due. He’d spent a very long time making sure that everything was just so, every possible contingency was covered, and then he told me to pick a few close friends and get back to the business of living.
Escaping death was an interesting challenge but rebirth? Whooo boy. That was a unique experience.
I needed a body, and he provided one. I’m trying to figure the best way to word this and I suppose I should just be direct. I had to claim the body as my own. It was already occupied by a no-account loser named Marco DeMillio. He made me look like a saint. Kid was already a murderer and a rapist when I took his form. I couldn’t just climb on in, you know. I had to remake him in my image so to speak. I guess by that point I already knew certain things about myself, because the body was different when I was done with it. The least of the changes was the whole clown face thing.
Everything that happened in Serenity Falls is a story for another day, but I need to go ahead and get something off of my chest here. There’s a thing out there that looks perfectly human, and it calls itself the Hunter. It’s not human, and it has probably done a lot more damage to the world than I ever will.
The Hunter ruined everything. I was supposed to bring my friends back with me. They would have had new bodies, new lives, but they would have lived again. They’d have had a second chance to live their lives out, and they would have been comfortable. Jonathan Crowley, the Hunter, made sure that didn’t happen.
I tried to kill him for that and I failed. He was in a big top tent that was under my control and I lit him on fire and the tent, too. And you want to know something? The fucker got away. I burned him, I know I did, and he managed to escape.
Albert warned me that he was hard to kill and I should have listened better. I made mistakes. I can admit to that. I screwed up.
But I made him suffer before it was done.
And then I ran like hell from Serenity Falls and I never once looked back. It might be a pretty town, but it’s still Hell as far as I’m concerned and I don’t much feel like chancing getting stuck in Miles’s little prison again.
I got a new body out of the deal and it can do a lot of things that my old body couldn’t do.
Want to hear a neat trick? I can heal from almost any wounds. I learned that after the Hunter and another man put big holes in my body. I should have been dead, but I lived through it. I also figured out—by instinct, I suppose—that I could fix the injuries as long as I had the right raw materials to work with. In plain English, I ate my way back to health. They’d blown away a part of my head and a part of my insides. I grabbed the closest available person and I ate the parts that got ruined. And just that fast, I was all better.
It was fatal for the man I chewed on, but I was better in no time. Yay me.
Seems like it works on almost any kind of wound, too.
That means I’m really, really hard to kill. Not that I like to test that theory too often.
Anyway, the thing is, everything that was supposed to happen to keep me alive and bring my friends back went wrong. The only one of us to get out of it alive was me. Serenity Falls fell down and it’s still trying to get back up. I killed over seven hundred people with the circus tent fire. I also killed all but three members of the Pageant family, the good people who let us use their farm and then murdered me and mine. The other three? I’m not done with them yet. I’m just biding my time. I have all the time in the world these days, if you know what I mean. I’ll get to them when the mood suits me.
In the meantime, I went off to see the sights and then to look for Millie. And, well, I’ll be writing about that soon.
My life on the road? I think that’s going to be a permanent thing. I think maybe I wasn’t meant to settle down in any one place. Doreen Miles might still be out there somewhere, or the serpent man could be wandering. Maybe I’ll find one of them in a traveling show and see if I can’t hitch a ride.
Time will tell. And me? I have all the time I could ever need.