Chapter Fifteen

I’m happy to go on the record saying carnivals aren’t nearly as much fun as people give them credit for. When one thinks of carnivals, they picture this romanticized vision of rides and snack foods and spectacle, but they always seem to forget the bad smells and aggressive salesmen and all the long lines.

Oh man, the lines. I thought I was done with them after graduating from high school, but no. We stood in line for tickets to get inside. Then we stood in line for tickets for rides. Then we stood in line to get into the park. All the while, the temperature plummeted. Rosa started to shiver, but she pretended she was okay, insisting, “It’s really not that cold.” 

As soon as we were inside, I found the closest place with hot coffee and got into line so I could buy us all a round. It cost ten tickets for four cups. Each ticket was two dollars. The coffee was lukewarm and weak. I hate carnivals.

Jerry passed around a flask. Rosa offered a smile and a “No, thanks.” I also turned it down (my liver was already overworked as it was). O’Brien politely pretended not to even notice it. She was in full bodyguard mode, scanning the crowds for threats, never daring to crack a smile or let down her guard lest any of the dangers slip past and murder us all. Jerry took a gulp big enough for the four of us and pocketed the flask.

As we drank our coffee, I noticed a tall figure nearby in a black cape and hood, gesturing at me with one finger to come hither. Normally, such a thing might set off an alarm or two, but he was standing beneath a wooden sign that read “Haunted Hell House.” I appreciated the silent and non-aggressive advertising. If only every salesman were so considerate.

After we’d caffeinated up, Rosa asked what we wanted to do first. I asked Jerry which rides were fun.

“Gravitron. Ferris Wheel. Tea Cups if you slip Edmond a twenty and ask him to pop it into overdrive.”

Next, I asked which rides were safe. He hesitated, then asked, “How safe?”

One thing was for sure, I didn’t want to stand in any more lines. That left us with only one option. For some reason, the “Haunted Hell House” was available immediately. Rosa didn’t look particularly thrilled by my suggestion, but she perked up when I pointed out how it would probably be a lot warmer indoors.

The man was married to the role, keeping his face in shadows and speaking in whispers. After making us sign waivers (“In case you DIE of fright!”) and taking our admission (two tickets a pop), he pushed open the front door and allowed us entry. Before it closed, he whispered loudly, “Enjoy.”

It was exactly the kind of silly spook-fest one might expect for the price of a cup of coffee. All of the “scares” were designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The first room was full of snap-animatronic machines made to look like tattered zombies. They were on timers and motion sensors, jumping out and screaming whenever one of us got too close.

The next room was designed to resemble a prison cell. Behind metal bars, a dummy in a blue jumpsuit sat in an electric chair being “electrocuted.” I couldn’t understand how exactly that was supposed to be scary, but my scare-o-meter was probably broken beyond repair. I was just trying to follow the story and hoping the others were getting more out of this than I was.

The next room was lit in all red, with white webbing covering the walls and a giant robot spider attached to the ceiling. Suddenly, I realized something was wrong. I looked towards Jerry to see if he noticed it too, but he just had a big, dumb smile on his face, blissfully unaware of that smell.

It was bad. Bad enough that even the carnival funk couldn’t drown it out. The all-too-familiar stench of death hung heavy in the stale air. I searched for the source, but there was nothing here. Was I imagining it? Was I having a stroke?

“Uh, guys?”

They couldn’t hear me over the sound of spider screams, and when they pushed through to the next room, I had no choice but to follow.

I was not imagining it. It was much worse in here. This room was pitch black, save for a tiny trail of glowing mushroom figurines illuminating the path from the spider room to a door on the other side. Rosa grabbed me by the arm and squeezed it tight as we started through the darkness. A few steps in, the lights snapped on, blinked sporadically to the sound of a loud booming. A strobe effect to simulate lightning. I froze. For a split second, I could see that we were surrounded by dead bodies. It was too fast to take in all the gruesome gore and fake dismembered victims. And then the lightning disappeared, leaving us blinded again.

Rosa laughed nervously. “That was pretty freaky,” she whispered.

I stood my ground and said a little louder, “Guys.”

Rosa pulled at my arm, “Hey, let’s keep going. This room smells awful!”

I looked in the general direction of O’Brien and asked, “Amy?”

After a second of silence, she answered, “Yeah, I know.”

Rosa’s voice cracked as she asked, “What’s happening? Why are we stopped?”

Jerry was the one to answer. “That smells like a real dead body.”

The lightning effect went off again, and for another split second we saw the macabre room of death in all its horrible glory and gore. Dummies propped up to look like burn victims, stab victims, a bloodied soul torn in half at the torso lay in wide-eyed terror on the ground next to us. And against the wall, a naked man stood nailed up with arms spread wide like a perverted image of Jesus. His eyes were milky white, his bottom jaw missing, his skin bloated. But that wasn’t enough to obscure his identity. Even in this condition, I knew exactly who I was looking at.

The lights went out again.

“Amy?” I said again. “You got your game face on?”

I heard the sound of a click-click. She had just chambered a round into her service pistol. Of course. Of COURSE O’Brien brought a gun with her to the carnival. Rosa grabbed my hand and squeezed even tighter. Shit was about to get real.

Every light in the room clicked on at full blast, bright enough to momentarily blind us. The door to the spider room slammed open, and a horrific clown baring his unnatural razor-sharp teeth rushed inside with us, chuckling maniacally, a running chainsaw raised over his head and poised to strike.

O’Brien moved lightning fast, shielded the rest of us and landed a solid punch to the center of the clown’s face. He dropped the fake chainsaw and hit the ground on his back with a bounce. Rosa let out a long scream, and before any of us knew what had happened, O’Brien had the man flipped over and handcuffed.

“Jesus fuck!” the clown squealed. “It’s not a real chainsaw, you dumb bitch!”

“What the hell is going on?” begged Rosa.

With the lights all on, I could finally see well enough to maneuver my crutch through the pile of fake dead bodies. To the man nailed against the wall.

The clown must have seen where I was headed and put things together. “Oh shit,” he said from his spot on the floor. “That wasn’t there yesterday! I swear I don’t know how that got there!”

“What… who is it?” Rosa asked.

From this close, there was no mistaking. 

“This is Farmer Junior.”

 

***

 

Our night out had reached its conclusion, and I still had a pocket full of nonrefundable carnival tickets. Like it or not, O’Brien couldn’t just hand this job off to another cop and walk away. Not after her own party stumbled into an active crime scene and the viciously deconstructed body of an old frenemy nailed to a wall. Unfortunately, this meant the rest of us were stuck until she was done.

In a matter of minutes, the scene was swarming with first responders. There were the familiar faces from around town: The deputies. Fire department. EMTs. Even the sheriff made an appearance, although he showed up drunk and out of uniform, holding a fried Twinkie on a stick (when he saw me, he did everything possible to avoid eye contact). There were also plenty of out-of-towners. State troopers. Rent-a-cops. Policemen I had no intention of getting to know.

O’Brien found an empty pop-up tent nearby and told us to lay low until she got back. “Stay here. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t talk to anyone.”

Luckily, going places and talking to people were two of my least favorite things to do, but I couldn’t help but feel like we were being forced to sit at the kids' table while the grown-ups had their serious time. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to get involved in any police work, I just wish we could have had a slightly more entertaining holding pen than this. There weren’t even any chairs in here. I knew I should have brought a book or something.

We stood around in the sad, empty tent, trying hard to find something to say or do to pass the time. Jerry took out a pack of smokes and offered them to us. When we declined, he took out his flask. Gumble was excited to take him up on that offer.

Gumble, by the way, was the name of the clown actor O’Brien socked in the Hell House. She took the cuffs off after Jerry vouched for him (the exact endorsement was “He’s too dumb to kill anybody on purpose”). Gumble removed as much of the costume as he could, although now he looked even scarier than before. His face was painted chalk-white up to his wig line, and his nose was bright red and swollen from where O’Brien punched him.

“Damn, J-Bone,” he said after a swig. “This drink is fire.”

He passed it off to Rosa. She looked at me, took a sip, and handed it over.

May as well, I thought. It tasted the way I imagine rainbows tasting.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing you or nothin,” Gumble started, “but what exactly were y’all doin’ in the Hell House anyway?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That one’s been closed ‘cause of all the rats. There was supposed to be a sign blockin’ it off. Once I saw Jerry sneakin in there, I thought I’d have a little fun with you guys.”

“You’re saying the haunted house was closed?”

“Closed and powered down. Shouldn’t have even been any electricity running to it.” 

Now it made sense why there was no line. What didn’t make sense was how we got inside. Someone was there. He took our tickets and everything.

Rosa asked in a timid voice, “What… what do you think happened to him? You think he had some kind of accident?”

Jerry answered, “Oh yeah, probably. That FJ guy was a huge klutz. Always playing with nail guns and stuff.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being a sarcastic dick or if he was telling a bad lie to help Rosa not freak out even worse. Either way, I was about to ruin it.

“FJ was missing his jaw bone. No. Somebody put him there. They wanted him to be found like that.”

Rosa began silently crying. Now I felt like the asshole, but she needed to know the truth. Our lives are weird and dangerous and there’s no room for innocent people in this town.

Somebody coughed.

We all looked at one another.

Jerry asked, “Who was that?”

We all heard it. The sound had definitely come from inside the tent. I was really starting to regret that the only one in our group with any weapon and combat experience had left us all alone in here like sitting duck-fish in a silver platter-barrel. Why did I ever agree to come out here and do this in the first place?

“Is that a wall back there?” Gumble asked, pointing in the direction the noise had come from. “Or is it just a curtain?”

“Let’s find out!” Without even taking a second to consider, Jerry started walking towards it. 

“Jerry!” I called.

He looked back at me and responded, “Don’t worry, bro. I’m just gonna go investigate that mysterious noise coming from behind the strange curtain in the back of this dark tent next to the horror house where we found the dead body. I’ll be right back.”

“Be careful!” Rosa managed.

He reached the back of the tent and pulled down the thin curtain hanging there. In a small space on the other side, someone had tucked away a box covered in red fabric. It stood about three feet high and three feet wide. Jerry looked back to us.

I started towards him with Rosa right behind me. Gumble bravely stood next to the exit just in case he needed to run away.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be messing around in here,” I said. 

Before Jerry had a chance to respond, we heard a strange whimpering noise emanating from beneath the blanket.

We all froze and stared at the box. That noise sounded almost human.

“Yo!” Jerry said, “Is there somebody in there?”

We waited, but there was no response.

I was just about to suggest we turn around and pretend we didn’t hear anything when Jerry grabbed the fabric by the corner and yelled, “Well I hope you’re wearing pants!”

I yelled out, “Jerry, wait!” But it was too late. He yanked the fabric off in one quick, smooth motion.

Rosa gasped.

Gumble crept up behind us, saying, “Aww, shit.”

It was a cage. Something akin to a dog kennel. Sitting inside, tucked into a corner, was a small child wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. The bottom of the cage was littered with blood and hay, with a half-empty bowl of water on one side.

Jerry took a step back and muttered, “Holy Jesus Fried Chicken, Batman.”

The child calmly looked at each of us one at a time, focusing for a few seconds before switching to the next. There was something off about the child. And I’m not just saying that because his malformed eyes were the size of golf balls with solid black irises, or because his skin was entirely purple. No, there was something else. Something harder to explain. Something that was simply wrong about him (assuming it was a him - given the complete lack of hair and the strange shape of his face, it was just an uneducated guess).

Eventually, Rosa broke free from the shock and rushed up to the bars, trying to find a way to open the cage and saying to the misshapen child, “Oh my god are you okay you must be freezing what’s your name are you okay? How did you get in here guys help me open this thing where are your parents oh my god what are doing in there are you alright?!”

She grabbed the bars and started shaking them forcefully, but they were solid steel and her tiny hands weren’t going to do much to get through.

Jerry calmly walked around her and crouched by the latch to inspect the locks. The kid didn’t seem to mind either of them anymore. While they worked on his freedom, he stared straight at me.

“Hi,” I said.

Hello.

Wait… did he just answer me? No. Not possible. His mouth didn’t move, and that noise certainly didn’t come from inside the cage. 

Jerry stood up. “Yeah, it doesn’t look like I’m getting through these locks without my kit.”

Rosa pulled off her blue jean jacket and squeezed it through the bars, screaming, “Who would leave a child out here like this?!”

“I don’t know,” answered Gumble. “Nobody’s supposed to be in here. This tent is for storage. We load it up every night with whatever can’t get rained on. I ain’t never seen that kid before. Maybe he’s one of the freaks? I don’t talk to them. They give me the heebie jeebs.”

Rosa tried throwing her jacket over the child, but it landed near his feet. He simply looked at it, then back at me. Rosa yelled, “He’s obviously been kidnapped!”

“Now, now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Gumble said. “We don’t even know if this is really a kid. For all we know, this could be one of them painted Chinamen. Maybe he’s the one who killed the guy, then locked himself in this here cage and swallowed the key. Perfect alibi.”

“We have to do something!” Rosa exclaimed, tears flowing down her face.

“Okay, Jack,” Jerry started. “What do we do?”

I waited for Jack’s answer. It took a few seconds for me to register that I was the ‘Jack’ he was talking to. I looked away from the purple kid. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’ve got seniority.”

“I’m younger than you!”

“No, I mean gas station seniority. You outrank us. Ergo, you’re the boss.”

“Yeah!” agreed Gumble. “What do we do, boss?”

Yeah, Jack, what do we do?

I looked back at the child. Did he just…? For a split second, I swear I saw him raise an eyebrow. I shook it off. My friends were looking for leadership, not crazy.

“We need to go find help, before whatever lunatic left a child in a skinner box comes back.”

Gumble didn’t wait. He just called out, “Dibs!”, and broke for the exit.

Rosa squeezed her arm through the bars and rested a hand on the child’s shoulder. “It’s okay, sweetie. We’re going to get you out of there. Oh my God, you guys, he’s freezing cold! Jerry! Give me your lighter!”

The child continued to maintain eye contact with me, staring into my soul with those giant, black eyes. As Jerry and Rosa gathered ingredients for a fire, something put words into my mind.

He’s not really going to find help.

“What?”

He’s going to his truck now. He plans to leave the state tonight. There is a warrant for his arrest, and he’s afraid to stay here. The child crawled up to the bars and wrapped his fingers around them. There was no mistaking it. He was smiling now. Gumble will die in a bar fight in sixteen days. His last thought will be of this moment. He will feel guilty and alone.

“Hey guys,” Rosa and Jerry stopped foraging the tent floor for twigs and kindling long enough for me to say, “I think Gumble might not remember where he was going. I’m gonna go and get O’Brien. You two stay here with the purple kid.”

“Be careful,” Jerry warned, tossing his sticks onto a small burn pile.

I didn’t make it far before regretting my decision. What am I even doing? I knew I must have been crazy. Why else would I have left the safety of the tent to venture out into the crowd? The carnival was still in full swing, with visitors and carnies and performers in untold numbers and ample coverage for Spencer or any other psychopath to hide in plain sight.

The people carried on like nothing was wrong. And why wouldn’t they? Besides a makeshift “Closed for repairs” sign on the front of the Haunted Hell House and a swarm of uniformed officers rushing about like worker bees, the carnival was pretty much business as usual. 

All I needed to do was pluck one of those worker bees out of the mix. Preferably a local. They might all hate me, but at least they knew me.

Over here.

I turned and looked in the direction of the voice. On the other side of the park, I saw something that didn’t make sense. The purple child was out of his cage, standing in the middle of the path, staring at me from a distance. The crowds walked around the boy, but nobody looked at him. Nobody else seemed to think a painted child with giant eyes and a loincloth was anything worth a second glance. One couple passed, splitting either side of him, lifting their intertwined hands just enough to avoid the top of his head and continue on their merry way.

I started towards this hallucination (that’s what I decided it was). As I got closer, the child turned and began walking away. I tried to pick up my speed, but between the crowd and crutch, it was difficult to keep him in view. He moved. I followed. He turned and started down an unlit pathway. Somebody walked by and kicked my crutch out from under me. I flailed against gravity and crashed into the cold ground hip first.

I didn’t get a good look at whoever did it, but I heard their group laughing like that was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I even caught a glimpse of two of them high-fiving as they walked away.

I struggled to pull myself back up, then took a moment to wipe the dirt off my clothes. Great. Now I have to get these pants dry cleaned before I can die. When I looked around for the purple kid, he was nowhere to be seen.

I went to the last place I’d spotted him. A small, winding footpath lead away from the carnival, away from the crowd, up a wooded hill to a silver airstream camper trailer about fifty feet away. And there he was, walking up the steps to the trailer. He looked over his shoulder at me, then turned back and went through the door.

“Hey, wait!” I yelled. But of course, he didn’t oblige.

I cursed under my breath as I made my way up the dark path, aiming for flat areas while every rock, branch, and tree root tried to claim me as a hunting trophy. I was so focused on climbing the path safely that I didn’t have a chance to wonder why I was climbing the path at all. Not until I’d already reached the door, but by then it was too late to turn back.

I knocked first and asked. “Anyone in here?” When no response came, I pulled open the door and tried again. “Hello? Creepy purple kid? Are you… planning a jump scare? Because if you are, I need you to know that I’m trained in Kung Fu.”

No, you’re not.

“I might be. How would you know?”

Come inside.

“No, that’s okay. Why don’t you come outside?”

I’m not a complete idiot. I wasn’t about to follow the creepy voice into the creepy trailer. But then, somewhere close behind me, a twig snapped. I instantly changed my mind and rushed into the tin can building. As soon as I got inside, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. And that was before the door slammed shut on its own.