CHAPTER 10 - LIFE AFTER WILLARD’S DEATH

Willard Conroe was not liked. Other carnival workers were afraid of him. Consequently, no one was sad about his death. No one attended his funeral. The Fischer family carnival paid for a burial space outside of Cincinnati. He was buried in a simple wood casket in a plot in the lowest-cost section of the cemetery. There was no monument, only a simple marker to indicate where he was buried. Dwayne did not attend the burial, nor did he visit the grave.

The carnival moved on to Dayton two days later.

For a while after his father’s death, Dwayne lived in the trailer where his father had stayed. He thought he would be more comfortable there, with a bed and a home of his own. But he had nothing but bad memories of that trailer. It was not a place he was comfortable staying very long. Soon he began to miss his friend, and he moved back to his space in the haunted house.

He was anxious to talk to his friend again. It had been several weeks since he had spoken to him. Justin was in his same spot, underneath the floor. But his friend was not doing well. He could tell it in his voice. He was beginning to lose touch with reality.

“Justin, are you down there?” Dwayne asked.

There was no response.

“Justin, are you down there?” he asked again.

“Help me. Get me out of here.”

“I can’t. I don’t have the key.”

“Who’s up there?” Justin asked.

“You’re friend, Dwayne.”

“I don’t know you,” he said. “Let me out of here. I don’t feel good. I can’t stay in here any longer.”

“Justin, is there a tunnel down there?” Dwayne asked.

“No, I’m trapped in a cage. Let me out. I can’t see anything. It’s dark and cold down here. I need a blanket. I need water and food. Help me.”

“When was the last time someone brought you food and water?”

“I don’t remember. It’s been a long time. I’m hungry, thirsty, cold, and I don’t feel good. I think that I’m dying.”

Dwayne had to help his friend.

“I’ve got an idea, Justin. I need to leave for a little bit, but I’ll be back soon, and I’ll bring you food and water.”

“No, don’t go,” Justin pleaded.

It was too late. Dwayne had already left. He hurried back to his trailer. His father had a drill that might be able to open the lock attached to the door in the floor. Inside, he located the toolbox. He grabbed it, a blanket, a bottle of water, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and hurried back to the haunted house.

He used the drill to drive a small needle-sized hole into the lock mechanism. Then, he inserted a small metal wire into the hole and maneuvered it back and forth until it released the lock. With time and a little luck, he was able to open the lock and then the door above his friend’s cage. A small wooden ladder led down to the cage. The room it was in was small, dug into the earth, with dirt walls on all four sides. There was no light. The entire space was barely larger than a grave. It was a frightening place, a claustrophobic’s nightmare. The cage that was Justin’s home was no larger than a large breed dog-size kennel.

Justin was curled up in a fetal position in the cage, with no cover or pillow. A water bowl was empty. There was no food inside the cage.

At first sight, it appeared his friend was dead. He did not move. He didn’t talk. “Justin, are you OK?” Dwayne asked. There was no response. “Justin, I’m here to help you. Are you able to talk? I’ve got water, food and a blanket for you.”

Justin’s body moved. “Thank you.” He said in a weak voice. “Unlock my cage and set it inside.”

Dwayne felt around the perimeter of the cage. It was too dark to find the door. He had forgotten to bring a flashlight. When he located the lock on the cage door, he discovered that the lock was in place but not engaged. He took it off and opened the cage door. The sight of Justin’s face startled him.

It was thin, white and boney. He had the dark eyes of someone that had given up on life and was waiting for death.

Dwayne grabbed his friend under his arms to move him out of his fetal position. His clothes were worn and tattered. He was dirty and smelled. After sitting his friend up, he handed him the bottle of water. He drank it down quickly. Then, he handed him the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had brought from the trailer. Justin gobbled it down. Dwayne covered him with the blanket he had brought.

“Thank you,” Justin said. “Now, can you get me out of here?”

“I will, Justin. But not yet. It’s not safe now. But, when it is safe, I’ll take you away from this place. Until then, I’ll try to come down and see you every night and bring you food.”

Several weeks after his father passed away, Dudley Brown moved a new resident of the carnival into his trailer. His name was Lincoln.

He was a very intimidating person, six-foot tall and weighing over three hundred pounds. He had a thick face with no neckline. He had a scar that ran down his right cheek, and he had the look of a man that you wanted to stay away from. His eyes were dark and cold.

Dwayne had overheard two of the temporary workers talking about Lincoln one night in the haunted house. They called him the enforcer. The rumors were that he had been in prison for murder and was recently paroled. His official job was to manage the newbies, to keep them in line. But speculation was that his real purpose in the carnival was much more sinister. He was rumored to do whatever dirty work Dudley required of him.

Justin met him, and like the others, he was afraid of him. When a new tunnel needed to be built, Lincoln was in charge of the crew that built it. The crew that built the tunnels underneath the haunted house consisted of newbies. Some stayed on after the construction of the tunnels. Others disappeared. There was speculation that Lincoln had something to do with their disappearance, but no one, with the possible exception of Justin, knew for sure.

Dwayne asked Justin about the rumors on several occasions. But his friend would never respond. He refused to talk about Lincoln. It was obvious to Dwayne that he was afraid of him, so afraid he didn’t even dare mention his name. He had learned what he could say and what he couldn’t say to survive underneath the floorboards of the haunted house.

The tunnels were built only on a few occasions that year, always when the carnival was booked for an extended stay in a specific location. The tunnels took days to build and would take days to destroy when the carnival needed to move to a new town.

The secrets of the carnival were buried each time the carnival left town, and the tunnels were destroyed.

After Willard’s death, Justin only came out from underground when the carnival moved to another town. He was kept alive for one purpose, to move people through the tunnels.

Justin didn’t know it, but Dudley Brown had managed to have Justin declared dead by a judge in one of the small towns the carnival traveled through. It was a relatively easy task accomplished by using the deceased remains of a transient that happened to have Justin’s identification on him. He persuaded Bryan Fischer to identify his brother as the deceased. By doing so, Bryan Fischer and Dudley Brown became the sole owners of the Fischer Brothers carnival, and Justin was doomed to a life underground.

Bryan still cared about his brother. That never stopped. But he was convinced that Justin had lost his mind, that he was insane. Dudley had supported those thoughts, and on the few occasions Bryan went to see his brother underneath the floorboards, he looked like a person who had gone completely mad. He rambled, talked to himself, and talked about the monsters that lived in the room on the left. He didn’t even recognize his own brother anymore.

Dudley had suggested that Justin was dangerous, that he may be responsible for the disappearances, the fire at the newbie’s trailer, and possibly the disappearance of Abby Wilkinson.

Bryan was convinced that there was nothing he could do to help his brother. He was convinced that the tunnel was the best place for him. So, when Dudley suggested that a newbie working in the haunted house had been murdered by Justin, Bryan believed it.

Dudley took Justin’s identification and placed it on the newbie’s body. He arranged for the coroner in a small town to sign a death certificate declaring Justin dead. Bryan agreed that it was in the best interest of the carnival for everyone to believe his brother was dead. From that point on, Justin lived completely underground in the room underneath the haunted house and the tunnel that connected with it. Only a handful of people knew he lived down there. When the carnival moved to a new town, Justin was heavily sedated, put into a box and shipped in the back of a van driven by Lincoln.

Lincoln became Justin’s boss and caretaker. He fed him, provided him clothes and occasionally unlocked his cage so he could move people. Mostly, he threatened him. Sometimes, he beat him. Lincoln was a cruel man. Justin lived in fear of him.

With the long periods of time isolated underground, living in complete darkness, Justin’s mind was slipping rapidly. He would have certainly gone insane if it wasn’t for his friend, Dwayne.

Nearly every night after everyone was locked in their trailers, Dwayne opened the lock to the door in the floor and went underground to visit his friend. He brought him food, water, and anything he could save from his meals the day before. There were times Justin didn’t recognize him. There were times he was too weak to move. There were times he talked to himself or rambled about something that made no sense. He was like a caged animal with his only hope of survival dependent on others.

Then there were the better times when the tunnels were built. It was during those periods that Justin’s cage was opened so he could do his job. Those times he had the freedom to move through the tunnels to the other side. The movement and the limited freedom he got when the tunnels were built seemed to give him a purpose. His mind became a little less dulled. Those were the times when the conversation between the two friends became two-sided again. Those were the times Justin remembered things. He remembered his friend, and he remembered Dwayne’s promise to help him escape someday.

The first time the tunnels were built after Willard’s death, Dwayne asked his friend to show him the tunnels to let him see what was built underground. But Justin became angry at his friend’s request.

“You can never go through the tunnels, Dwayne. You can never see what is outside my cage. It’s not safe for you. Promise me that you won’t go any farther than my cage.”

“OK, Justin. But why isn’t it safe for me? Is it because of Lincoln? Is he afraid I’ll discover what goes on down here?”

“Yes, he is a bad man. He will hurt you, maybe kill you if he found out that you were down here, that you went through the tunnels. But there is something else that you should be more afraid of than Lincoln.”

“The sounds you hear at night when everyone is asleep, the sounds of the people that haunt the carnival in the middle of the night, come from the tunnels. The people that make those sounds live down here. They live in the room on the left. They don’t like anyone disturbing them.”

Dwayne didn’t take his friend seriously. He knew Justin’s mind was fragile. He knew that his friend had trouble distinguishing reality from his imagination. But he could tell from the tone in his voice that Justin believed something besides himself resided in those tunnels and that whatever was down there presented a danger to anyone that traveled through those tunnels.

“That’s why I’m the only one that is allowed to move people,” Justin said. “They don’t bother me. They say that I am just like them, a child of the carnival.”

That was the moment that Dwayne knew that the people and the voices living underground were not born of Justin’s imagination. They were real. They were as real as the people Dwayne had encountered during that foggy night outside his father’s trailer, the night Willard Conroe died.

One of those people, Ginger, his first new mother, had called him a child of the carnival, too. She said the people he encountered that night were there to help him find his way back home. They were the same people that roamed the carnival grounds from midnight to sunrise most nights. They were the same people that frightened the carnival workers into locking their trailer doors and staying inside until the sun came up the next day. They were the same people that made the frightening sounds at night, the cries, the screams. They were also children of the carnival.

“Justin,” Dwayne said. “I believe you. I saw them, too, outside after midnight, the night my father died. They told me that they were going to help me go home. Have they talked to you, Justin?”

“Yes.”

“What have they told you?”

“Once, when I was moving a body into the room on the left, a woman appeared in a kind of glowing fog. She told me not to be afraid. She said I can trust you that you will help me get home when it is time.”

“Was her name Ginger or maybe Molly?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me her name.”

“Dwayne, do you know what they mean by children of the carnival?”

“I think they are referring to the children that have grown up here, that have lived their entire lives as part of the carnival.”

Besides the ones that Justin had seen in the tunnels and the ones that Dwayne had seen in the fog, there were about a dozen other children of the carnival that resided on the carnival grounds. Their parents were the carnival workers, full-time employees of the carnival. Some were born at the carnival. Others were adopted. Their entire life was confined to the carnival grounds. Few were provided any sort of education from their parents. They did not attend school. That would be impossible anyway since the carnival relocated almost every week. Most were confined to their parent’s trailer when they were young and then worked odd jobs at the carnival when they got older. By the time they turned five, they worked most days, doing whatever they were capable of to benefit the carnival. Everyone that lived at the carnival was expected to earn their way, even the children.

All were warned about Dwayne. He was the one they needed to stay away from. He was the one that talked to the people that roamed the carnival grounds late at night. He was the one that lived in the haunted house where the creatures lived. He was said to be evil. He was said to be dangerous.

Everyone avoided him except the newbies whose job it was to work in the haunted house when the carnival was open. His life was lonely, with only one friend, Justin. That was until he met Beverly.

She was different. She wasn’t like any of the other children of the carnival. The others avoided him. They were afraid of him because he was different, because he talked to the creations of the haunted house and because he could wander the grounds after midnight without fear of being harmed by the creatures outside.

Beverly didn’t avoid him. She wasn’t afraid of him. Her new father had warned her to stay away from Dwayne.

“He is not one of us. Dwayne is dangerous,” her father said. “He talks to the creatures that haunt the carnival at night. He lives in the haunted house.”

But the first time she met Dwayne, she felt safe around him. He seemed to be just like her, lonely with no sense of belonging. They became good friends. They shared their secrets with each other.

“My real name is Abby,” she told him. “My new father changed it to Beverly. I had a good life before the carnival. I lived in a place called Connorville. I have another family, one that loves me, one that is looking for me, that I dream of returning to someday.”

Dwayne told her about his growing up in the carnival and about the people that roam the carnival grounds in the middle of the night, about what they had told him.

“They said they are here to help me get home,” he said. “They said that I do not belong and have a family that misses me. But I don’t remember them. My only memories are of growing up at the carnival, of my father and of the mothers I had. He’s dead now. But I’m not sad about it. He was a bad man.”

“My mother told me that no one goes outside after midnight,” Beverly said. “She said that if you go outside when the creatures are out, you will never come back. She said the cries we hear at night are the cries of the children, and the screams are those of their mothers.”

“People that go outside their trailers late at night have disappeared,” Dwayne said. “But I don’t think it is because of the creatures. I think they are here to help us. I think they want us to find our way back home. I think the creatures are trapped here, that they can’t leave, that for whatever reason, they can only come out in the middle of the night.”

“Do you talk to them often, Dwayne?” Beverly asked.

“No, I’ve only talked to them one time. That was the night my father died. They came to me in the fog. There were about a dozen of them, all women and children. I recognized two of them. They were mothers I had. They had disappeared. I thought they were dead. But they said they have been here the entire time, that they have been watching me, protecting me. They said they would help me find my way back home when the time was right. I’ve been outside many times since then, after midnight. I’ve heard their screams and cries. I’ve felt their presence, but they haven’t shown themselves to me since that one night. Still, I know they are there, and I have never been afraid to walk the grounds at night when they are out since that night.

“Abby, how long have you been a child of the carnival?” Dwayne asked.

“About seven years, I think.”

“Do you remember how you came here?”

“Yes, I remember some. It was Halloween night. The carnival had come to town. It was opening that night. My parents were working. They owned an ice cream store. So, my brother and his friends took me trick or treating and then to the carnival. I remember it was late, and I was supposed to go home, but the boys wanted to go through the haunted house first. I remember being scared. I was really young, and it frightened me. I started to scream inside, and my brother tried to get me out. But then there was fog. I couldn’t see anything. Someone grabbed me. They put something over my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. They carried me to a dark place and opened a door. I think I was underground. It was completely dark. It was cold. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in a cage inside a closet. That was when I met my new father.

“He said that I was lucky, that his wife wanted a daughter, that they would take good care of me. But I didn’t believe him. It was the look on his face. I could tell that he was a bad man. I was locked in that cage, in the closet, for more days than I can remember. Then one day, he opened the cage. He told me to get out. He took me into the bathroom and told me to take a shower to get cleaned up. He handed me a new dress and told me to put it on after my shower. He told me to look my best because I was going to meet my mother. He told me my name was Beverly, that was the name they had chosen for me, that I was to forget about my other name, that I was to never mention it. When I was dressed and looked the way he wanted me to, he took me into the living room to meet my new mother. She had been crying. I could tell, but she forced a smile. I don’t know why, but I remember thinking that I had the feeling she didn’t belong, that she didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

“But my new mother was kind to me. She took care of me. Her name was Carol. After that day, I never went back into the cage. I had my own bedroom. I had a new family. Every morning just after the sun came up, my new father would leave to work. My new mother and I were free to move around inside that trailer. But we couldn’t leave. My new father had made that very clear.

“‘If you step foot outside this trailer, I will kill you,’” he warned. “‘I have cameras everywhere. There is no way to escape.’

“From the look on his face, I knew he meant it. I could tell by the look on Carol’s face that she believed him too. So, we never tried to leave the trailer. I would spend the entire day in that trailer with Carol. We talked about our lives, about how we came to the carnival.

“Carol was young, seventeen, she told me. She had run away from home. Her mother had died when she was just a baby. Her father was an alcoholic. He was abusive when he drank. Her life before the carnival was not good. She ran away when she was fifteen. She lived on the streets. She did whatever she needed to do to survive. Then one day, a man approached her. He offered her money and food. He told her that she could come back with him to the carnival where he worked, that he would take care of her, protect her. She believed him. That was a mistake.

“There were many men, carnival workers, that entered her life. Some were kind. Most were not. One, in particular, took a liking to her. He was kind and gentle at first. She thought he loved her. She thought he would take care of her, that she would be safe with him. She began a life with him. She moved into his trailer. The other carnival workers left her alone. She belonged to him now.”

“For a while, everything was good,” Carol shared with Beverly. “He treated me well. He protected me. But I was a prisoner in his trailer. He wouldn’t allow me outside. He was controlling. If I argued back, if I was disobedient, he beat me, sometimes so severely that I would pass out. I tried to escape once, just after the sun went down when the carnival was crowded, and I thought I could disappear through the crowds of people. But he found me. I don’t know how. He said he had eyes everywhere, that he knew the second I left the trailer. I thought that he was going to kill me that night. He beat me so severely that he broke my ribs, fractured my jaw and broke one of my arms. I woke up the next day underneath the ground, in a cage and in a space not much larger than a grave. It was completely dark. At first, I thought that I was dead. The pain from the damage he did to me was so horrendous that I wished I was dead. I was left in that cage for weeks. Someone brought me food and water. They bandaged me. That person took care of me. He didn’t say a word to me for a long time, but I knew that he was not like the others. He cared. He was gentle. I felt safe with him down there.

“After I’d been underground for a few weeks, he talked to me for the first time,” Carol said. “I was crying. I missed my family. I didn’t think I would ever get out of that cage. He brought me food. I could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to help me.”

“Don’t cry,” he told her. “You are one of the lucky ones. The carnival will be moving soon, and they are going to take you with them. I will move you in a few days, and you’ll get to go back to your trailer.”

“When Carol returned to the trailer, she never tried to leave again,” Beverly told Dwayne. “She was a good person. We became friends. Life wasn’t so bad when Carol was around. But the nights when my new father came home were not good. He drank a lot. He was angry and violent sometimes, not to me but to Carol. I don’t think he ever forgave her for trying to escape. When he hurt her, I would hide in my room, put my head under the covers and try not to hear. One morning I woke up, and Carol was gone. My father told me she left, but I knew better.”

Beverly wiped a tear from her eye.

“I was alone with him from that day on. I learned to do exactly as he told me. I learned not to upset him. I spent all my time in that trailer until now. I guess I finally earned his trust enough for him to allow me to work at the carnival.”

Dwayne gave Abby a tender look, then he touched her shoulder gently and gave her a smile. “I will help you escape,” he said. “I will get you back to your family, Abby. The creatures that come out at night will help us. I know they will. All three of us will escape when the time is right?”

“Who else are you talking about, Dwayne?” Beverly asked.

“My other friend, the one that lives under the floor. I promised him that I would take him with me when I escaped. Soon, when he is feeling better, I will take you to see him. He is like us. He doesn’t belong here. His name is Justin.”

Abby smiled.

“That was the name of the man that helped Carol when she was underground.”

“I thought it was when you told me the story,” Dwayne said. “He has lived underground for a long time. He is like a prisoner, but he has a specific job that he does.”

“What’s that?”

“He says that he moves people. There is a door in the floorboards, in a corner of the haunted house. He lives in a cage in a small dirt room. Sometimes he is locked in that cage in the dark. Other times, like now, his cage is open, and he is free to travel underground to do his job, to move people.”

“What are you talking about, Dwayne?”

“I don’t know exactly. Sometimes when the carnival moves to a new town, tunnels are built underneath the haunted house. According to Justin, they are used to move people, and he is the one that does the moving. He’s never told me any more than that.”

“Do you know how Justin came to the carnival, Dwayne?”

“Well, this is going to be hard to believe, but he told me that he is one of the owners of the carnival.”

“What?”

“Yes, he said his last name is Fischer, you know, as in the Fischer Family carnival. He said his parents were the carnival owners until they died when he was young. That’s when he and his brother, Bryan, took control of the carnival. Justin has some emotional, maybe mental problems. He is gentle but slow. I gathered that his brother made all the decisions and that his brother has always been the one to run the carnival. But Justin said he was happy with that. He and his brother were very close. But things changed when the carnival got into financial trouble many years ago. They had to sell part of their business to someone else in order to keep it going. That’s when the relationship between the two brothers went downhill. The new owner took control of most of the business. He was the one that put Justin underground and gave him the job to move people.”

“Who is the other owner?” Beverly asked.

“His name is Dudley Brown.”

“Oh my God,” Abby said with a shocked look on her face. “That’s my new father. He’s the one that took me away from my family. He’s the one that killed Carol. He’s a cruel, terrible person.”