My name is Stormy Monday, and I’m a ghost.
As far as anyone in the outside world knows, I was never born. I don’t have a birth certificate. Don’t have a social security card. I don’t exist. I can’t walk through walls, but sometimes I wish I was invisible.
I have this ugly mark splitting me literally in half. I’m two different people. One is black, dark skinned, coarse hair, a lovely hazel eye. The other half of me is white as snow. You wouldn’t believe it to see me. Most people just gawk. A large green eye staring from my socket, and straight, platinum-blonde hair that belongs on a white woman.
I am a freak. Hell, I’m a freak, among freaks. My home is a carnival. And we kill people. That’s our job.
This is our story:
The Mysterious Macabre. We focused on the horrific, the ugly. The only modern-day Freak Show still in existence. The Macabre was like a great big traveling sideshow. Our people are odd and wild; free. Walking through our doors was like stepping back in time. The isolation—that’s what hits you first. You’d leave knowing, if nothing else, your life was secure, meaningful. Because you knew that you were nothing like “those” people.
You are nothing like us.
We die every day…to satisfy your need to feel worthy.
Large tents full of larger than life people afflicted with larger than life problems would stare at you as you pass. You would see June, the crystal ball reader. Her eyes are her loveliest feature, but they’re always sad. Her son died several years ago—it shows in her eyes the most, I think. Then there’s Katrina, the legless woman who was pulled around the park on a red wagon by her twenty-year-old, deaf and mute son, Pat. There were many people with gifts in the Macabre. Everyone was welcome.
We’d planted ground in Sun, Kentucky. It was like every other town we had been to over the years. The buildings sat a little too close together in town, and a little too far apart outside. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t too small either. The population poster that I read coming in said 4,000. Once we’d set up, the doors always open promptly at 6pm.
At sixteen years old, my only job at the carnival was working the kiddy worm. It had a big huge sign over it proclaiming Wiggly Worm, in squiggly, neon lights. It was boring and a pain in the ass most of the time, but hey, it beat the hell out of cleaning out the trucks, or taking down the rides.
The best part about the ride was that I got to work with children. I love children. Kids are such wonderful beings until adults get their hands on them.
As I was opening the ride for the day, a little boy walked up to me, and pulled my shirt. I jumped back before he could touch me. I must have scared him because he jumped too, and looked up at me, hurt. Black curls framed his round face, his skin was about the color of my dark side, and his eyes were wide with wonder.
I started to reach out to him before I stopped myself, “I’m sorry,” I said and I held up my left hand, which had a glove on it, “I just don’t like to be touched. It’s not you. It’s me.” I smiled trying to reassure him.
“What’s wrong with you?” He asked. Kids are filled with wonder. And I don’t mind them asking, as long as they do ask, instead of just pretending that my white half is not there, or even worse, my black half.
“I have a skin disorder.”
“Dis—dis—what?”
“Disorder.” He smiled along with me, trying to say it. He couldn’t have been older than five or so.
“And it makes some of you white?”
“Yes.” I knelt down beside him, careful I wasn’t close enough for him to touch me, looked around. “Where’s your mommy?”
He looked in the same direction as I did and shrugged his shoulders. “I lost ‘em.” He seemed not to even care that he didn’t know where his mother was. “That’s funny. Can I be black and white, too? No, I wanna be green like the Hulk. That’s what I want.”
I smiled at him again and pulled down my shirt sleeve so that it covered my entire arm, and then I reached out to him. “Come on, let’s find her before she loses her mind.”
Before he could even grab my hand, a woman rushed up, and touched me. Her hand found the only uncovered spot on my body; my neck. She pushed me out of her way; discarding me like a piece of trash. I fell back, on my butt as a flash of pain gripped me. My whole body spasmed and the left side of my head pounded with pain, as the world around me swam beyond my control.
I hadn’t realized her other arm was in a cast until I felt the pain of my wrist bone crack within my skin. I scream from the sudden rush of agony flooding me. The fracture seemed to resonate from deep inside my mind, as if it had told my body itself to break. Layers of bone shattered under tender pale skin until my hand simply hung from my arm like a limp sausage.
Visions of memory flashed before my eyes. They weren’t my memories. They were the boy’s mothers. I saw her standing in a doorway to a large home. Behind her, her son was staring, wide eyed. She began moving, as if in slow motion, looking behind her. A tall man, with hairy hands reached out to her, but he wasn’t trying to help her. He smacked her hard, and I felt a twinge of shock across my face. The woman tried to protect herself, but the blows were coming too fast, and one knocked her down on her butt. She fell hard, bouncing down the stairs leading into the house.
But that wasn’t what had broken her arm. No, I saw what was coming before it even happened. The woman had fallen with her arm propped halfway on the step and the ground. The big man stomped down, stood on the last stair, staring at her, with a crooked grin on his face. I watched in terror as he placed his boot on the woman’s wrist forcefully. Screamed in pain as my bone shattered into a thousand pieces. My mind reeled; I had never seen such pure hatred in my life. But then I noticed something strange about him. It was hard to see it through the filter of her memories, but there was something off about his face. It was monstrous, literally.
When my brain finally calmed down a bit, I was sprawled out on the pavement, barely conscious. They tell me that my eyes roll into the back of my head, when I have these fits, and once I bit my tongue so hard, I had to have several stitches.
I guess that must have been the case here, because all of a sudden the woman broke out in this horrendous scream that stilled everyone around her. I guess she really thought I was dead because when I moved she jumped, and ran away, pulling her son behind her.
Breathing heavily, I looked around me and the first thing I saw was an old woman. A small bit of pepper was sprinkled throughout her ever growing main of salt white hair. Her eyes were intense, but they seemed to show that nothing was there—as if she were seeing through glasses that were not her own. A younger woman pulled her along, and she followed, without a word.
But it wasn’t the old woman that had caught my eye. It was the thing within the woman. Like it was riding her soul, as if hitching a ride on the back of this poor, defenseless, old lady. It was just there. Watching everything that the woman watched, hearing everything she heard. I could see sorrow on her real face, as if she knew something was wrong, like she could feel this thing, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. I stared into the face of the creature, and I grew cold. Because it was cold, unfeeling, uncaring. It was ugly. Disfigured. The face of nothing I have ever seen before.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, as the creature gradually moved the old lady past me, her white gown flowing behind her. I pointed to the old woman, my finger shaking. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Its staleness lingered over me and a wave of nausea choked its way into my throat.
Suddenly it turned to look at me. It saw me. And the worse part was, that it knew that I knew it was there. It looked right into my eyes, measuring my fear, as if feeding from it. A wicked grin spread across its face, and it winked. Winked at me.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. The woman leading the old woman stopped and asked if I needed help, while the creature never took its eyes off me.
The Human Pin Cushion ran over, scooped me up in his arms.
“Look at her! Do you see it?”
He looked around and whispered in my ear. “Can you see something? What is it, Stormy?”
The old woman came closer to me and reached out her hand to touch me. But I knew it was really the creature that wanted to feel me. I recoiled away.
Pin Cushion stopped her, and told the woman leading her that I would be fine. He looked at me again, and then back at the old woman, “Is that your mother?”
“Yeah, I thought I’d get her out today. She hasn’t been to a carnival in ages.”
He nodded his head as if he understood completely. “She’s sick?”
“Yeah. They say it’s Alzheimer. Sometimes she’s completely out of it, but sometimes she’s like this, clear, and sees everything that’s going on around her. She even noticed your friend was in distress. I just don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Pin said.
I did.
The Human Pin Cushion stared down at me as I awoke. Pin always had that smile plastered to his face. It’s so funny to look at, I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Hey. She’s awake. How ya feel, Stormy?” His voice was as smooth as woven silk, as was his bald head that shined in the evening sun.
Pin’s a nice guy, despite his hardcore rep that he put on for his show. He was double jointed and swallowed swords—which at that time would give me all kinds of interesting dreams at night. It was an act; it usually was. He put his hand on my forehead and brushed the hair from my face, without dropping that beautiful, bright smile. Sure, he was a “made” freak, but I didn’t care. I could have fallen in love with him right there; I was sixteen and romance novels were my life.
“…Okay, I guess.” My voice sounded strange in my ears. I tried to sit up, but my head swam so fast it knocked me back down.
“Oh, there. Hold on. Don’t try to move, Sweetie.” He wrapped his arms around me, and I breathed in his smell—cool water cologne—and he helped me sit up.
My arm was in a cast with a sling wrapped around my neck. I looked down at it and frowned. Everything came rushing back to me. My head pounded again remembering the pain that had seized my body. God, I hate this shit.
“How ya feelin’, Bit?” Momma Mae appeared in the doorway with Doc Mayer at her side. She wasn’t my birth momma, but she was as good as any I could hope for.
“You gave us all a scare.” He felt my wrist, pushing on the cast. I winced in pain. “Totally fractured.” Doc always used gloves when he worked on me. I hadn’t known then, but he had taken me to the local hospital, to have me fitted for a cast. He knew of my white side’s aversion to touching people, everyone in the carnival did. There was no doubt that Doc would have insured that the hospital doctors not work on me unless they were also wearing gloves. He sighed, “Can I ask what happened?”
“I…I don’t know. I think I might’ve fell.” I tried to lie, but he saw right through it. They all did.
I couldn’t work, and after what happened, I was scared to be around people at that time, so I spent the next couple of days with my best friends, Annabel and Margie. They were conjoined twins and they were glorious.
I couldn’t wait to see my friends’ show and there was nothing in the world that I loved more than seeing them perform. It was so elegant and beautiful. There weren’t any tricks, no fire breathers came out to precede them. They simply performed for the world to see, and what a sight it was.
The show followed like this: Annabel and Margie would walk onto stage, one foot at a time. This in itself was a marvel to see. If ever there was a question that their minds worked as one, it was when they took the stage, one step at a time, and strolled to the center of it.
If they regretted for a single moment what fate had done to them, there was no hint of it. Life, chance, time; none of it seemed to matter to them when they took the stage. It was as if they had lived only for this purpose.
I hurried to my seat in the back, to watch, for like the thousandth time in my life. Once, when I was little, I had told the twins that I wished I had talent like them, that all the world were a stage for me to play for them, but they simply laughed.
“You don’t want to be us, Sweet Stormy, we die every night on stage. Fate is against us.”
I think I had cried then. Nothing is sadder in the world than to see two such beautiful creatures as tormented at these twins. I cried again watching them that night. They took the stage in classic form, their gorgeous, turquoise gown flowing behind them. Their eyes were wide, all seeing, staring at no one and everyone in the crowd at the same time.
They stepped to the edge of the stage in front of Andre and began the most touching song that my ears have ever heard. They were marvelous and hit the high notes like seasoned pros. Opera, with the unique flair of the mysterious.
They were synchronizing perfectly with each other, both taking all the notes at the exact same time. They held their hands up high and bobbed their heads with soulful movements of the youth. Time stood still, everyone held their breaths just as the last notes came to an end.
But the two were not finished. Just as the last sounds came flowing from their tongues, they flapped the dress behind them, headed to the back to the stage and took to the piano, with gusto. Playing like two possessed souls, they stood, feet pounding on the hard-wood stage, fingers dancing on the keys, heads bouncing to the rhythm.
They’d stand there, playing, until the last bit of life left their bodies and melted into that piano. Until nothing but the twins and it existed, nothing else mattered in the world. Nothing could get them to stop. No one ever tried. No one wanted to.
The crowd was spellbound. It was the most amazing thing they had ever seen, or ever would.
Finally, after an eternity, they stopped. Standing, waiting. Their heads hung low, their feet barely able to carry them, their arms like lead pipes. They stood there, crying. Every night was the same. Every show, every time. Crying.
You don’t want to be us, Sweet Stormy, we die every night on stage.
As the crowd filtered out, I sat there, waiting. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I just could not get up. Every time I saw Annabel and Margie, there was the same effect. Always the same feeling: helplessness. I think most of the crowd felt the same way, because about half of them still sat there, their backs to me, just staring at the empty stage.
Finally, after a few moments, they stood up and began to march out. Still I couldn’t move so I just sat there. That’s when I noticed something about all of them. Something that should have caught me before, but I was too wrapped up in my own misery to see. Something that was so obvious to me now that could have been smacked over the head with it.
I sat there holding my breath as the people marched out. None of them really paying any attention to me, and not really caring one way or another who I was. They were too full from their lunch of heart-broken, pain-driven twins.
They were all monsters.
I’d realized something else. They were feeding from the pain of the twins, as if their song had been a meal to them. They savored every moment of it.
There had to be at least twelve of them—all of the faces inside the faces distorted and ugly; all of them marching to a somber beat.
One of the things looked over at me, but I didn’t move. I was frozen, I couldn’t look away. I wished I could have just turned and pretended that I hadn’t seen them, but I couldn’t.
This one seemed to realize that I could see it, just as the other had. He stopped, looked at me, and then smiled. It was a horrific sight, seeing that thing smile at me. The face of the man that he inhabited, didn’t change at all. In fact, it didn’t act as if it even registered where the hell he was.
Soon another walked up and joined him, they exchanged words, and the first one pointed at me. They both just stood there staring, and smiling this wicked smile. My heart stopped. The new one came forward, slowly.
I stood to my feet and looked around. No one was there. Even the twins had exited the stage, and were somewhere behind the curtain. Usually they would have come out by now. But tonight had seemed to be especially hard on them, so they may have taken longer to get over it. It always took a while, but never this long. The first thing was walking toward me. I just stood there, watching.
One of the things walked toward me, staring, smiling. I was frozen. It walked up, within inches of my face, cocked its head, examining me.
As he reached out to touch me, I heard Pin call out to me. You can’t know what a relief that sound was to my ears. I turned to look and he was running up behind me, as if he knew something was wrong. Maybe he did. At that moment I didn’t care.
I looked back at the two monsters. They were gone. I sighed.
What the hell are they? I thought. Why were so many of them here, tonight? And most of all, why the hell was I just now seeing them?
I guessed I might know soon enough, because whatever they were, they knew I had seen them. I shivered.
“Are you sure you saw what you think you saw?” It wasn’t that Mr. Macabre, the owner, didn’t believe me, it was that he was scared.
I shook my head. “No…I don’t know.”
“She’s sure.” Pin had been there, both times. He knew something had been wrong and most of all he trusted me.
The entire carnival was there, from Pin to Momma Mae, to the twins. We were family and we made decisions together as a unit. Was it time to pick up stakes and leave or time for more drastic measures. Carnies do what they must.
“What are they, Stormy?”
How could I know the answer to that? I barely even knew if I was seeing what I thought I saw. “I…I don’t know for sure. But I think they need our pain. Like they feed from it or something. Nothing else makes sense.” I think hard trying to make sense of everything I had seen and experienced from those things. “Maybe they’re what’s wrong with people, ya know? I mean, you hear about all of the evil things that we do to each other. Maybe it’s not us…maybe it’s them.”
“We’re bad because there are monsters inside us?” Pin shook his head. “Naw, they feed from us because we’re bad. Not the other way around.”
Momma Mae stood up and looked around the room. She had presence and everyone respected her. “They know Stormy can see them. They tried to attack her once. Are we gonna let them do it again? Are we going to let them hurt the children? Are we those kinds of people?”
“So, what do we do?” One of the younger carnies asked from the back of the tent.
Mr. Macabre sighed, stood to his feet. “We’re going to do what we do best. We’re gonna have a show. A show to end all shows.”
It was decided. There would be one final hurrah for the Mysterious Macabre. It would be a grand finale of the great show, with all the acts performing to a spectacular climax of the Gods. Or something like that. We needed to pump it up to be huge, gigantic, and colossal. Like that damned car had been. And we wanted just as many people to show up.
Annabel, Margie, and I had printed up some flyers for the great show:
GRAND FINALE
OF THE
MYSTERIOUS MACABRE!
BE THE HUMAN; BE THE MONSTER
BE THE SMALL; BE THE TALL
COME ONE; COME ALL
SEE THE
DEATH OF THE
MYSTERIOUS MACABRE!
I thought it was a bit melodramatic, but it would get the job done. We wanted those things to be intrigued by the promise of death and danger. Hell, I didn’t even know what “The death of the Mysterious Macabre” meant. It was just designed to get as many of those things to fill the seats as possible.
It worked.
The headlights poured through the tree line, creating a striped outline of light through the forest wall. We watched as a caravan of cars came up the hidden road that lead to the park. At the last minute, Pin called out to everyone, “K, all, take your places. And good luck.” Everyone scattered, each running their separate ways. I stayed for a moment with Pin. He looked at me, smiled and kissed my forehead on the good side. Then he shooed me off.
I hid from sight as the cars pulled up to the gate. They stopped in front of Pin, the headlights casting him in a brilliant hue.
Pin spoke, and he actually sounded excited, “Hello all. Welcome to the final show of the Mysterious Macabre.” Then he opened the gate to let the devil in.
I wasn’t privy to everything that happened that night. A lot of the time I have to use my imagination, but a lot of things I witnessed firsthand, myself. I saw things that night that I can’t seem to get out of my head. Other things I knew would happened, because we’d planned it that way. Of course even the best laid plans never work out the way you expect, and this night was no different.
It went down something like this:
They filled into the tent, anxious to see the show. All of them were monsters. Searching the crowd, from behind stage, I didn’t see a single human face. The tent was huge, but it wasn’t big enough to hold all of those things. At last count we had sat out two hundred and seventy-five chairs. They were standing, lining the walls and crowded toward the back in groups of ten or more. At least three hundred monsters were in our mist. At best count we were a hundred and forty. Three to one.
June took the stage first. Her act was mellow, and she was more soft-spoken than usual. I think it was because she was scared. But she didn’t really seem afraid, just sullen. That was part of her act. She spoke to the dead and read people’s auras. The crowd just stared, but for some reason they were entranced with June. They couldn’t take their eyes off her. I think it was because of the sadness inside her. I think depression and pain drove those things, they lived for it. And they felt it in June. Her son had died many years before from pneumonia.
Outside, Pin and I made our way around each of the cars, flattening the tires. We didn’t stop with one, we punctured all four of them. I had a large hunting knife that Pin had given me, and Pin used a carving knife from Momma Mae’s kitchen. It wasn’t easy trying to get that knife inside that thick rubber, and it took me several tries before I got it in the first one.
Inside the tent, June was just finishing up her story, as all eyes were on her. She had been crying. Though she had tried hard not to, it had happened anyway. She hadn’t wanted to give those things the satisfaction, but she said that it had all been for the group. Of course, that didn’t make her feel better. She ended, asking for anyone from the audience to come forward for a reading.
None of the monsters came up. We had expected this. If you fed from something, would you put yourself out there as food? Nope, them either. We had placed a few people in the crowd, just for this purpose. Tammy came forward. Her mother had died the year before, and it had destroyed Tammy.
The things ate it up.
After we were done with the tires, we headed back inside, I stood in the rear, watching the crowd as I always had. The tents had precut holes so that the carnies could see out into the audience, but they couldn’t see back to us. We use it to check out the marks, to make sure that certain shows were crowd pleasing. If there were no smiling faces, or if no one cried or laughed, then we would consider revising the show. That was the nature of the business. It was a great tool, and boy did it come in handy that night.
As I watched, I saw one of those things give a sign to several others, and they quickly got up from their seats and left the tent. I wondered what they were up to. I pointed it out to Pin who said that he’d seen it too. We ducked, and rolled under the tent, back out into the night.
It was a hell of a lot better inside the tent. Because in there as least you could tell yourself that everything would be okay, that we would get through things just fine. But out there, in the night, with the moon shining like a spotlight, it was harder to lie to yourself.
Outside, Pin and I peeked around the corner of the tent, trying to see where they were going and what they were up too. I counted a lot of them, maybe forty. I knew they were definitely up to something. Maybe they were trying to catch us off guard, get us before we tried to get to them.
The monsters moved off in different directions, each searching the wooded area around the park. One headed toward the back, toward me and Pin. In the distance, Annabel and Margie lit up the night with their melody and I thought for sure I would just lay in the grass and die, right there. The man moved closer, and Pin nudged me to move back. I walked backward, looking back to make sure that I wasn’t gonna walk into anything. Just as I looked up, another one rounded the corner, and was walking along the tree line. He hadn’t seen us yet, but as soon as he turned, he would. I touched Pin to make him aware, and then I pointed to the tent again. Maybe we could get back under there before either of them saw us. I leaned down, and lifted up the curtain, as I did, Pin grabbed me. The thing had spotted us.
He smiled, turned in our direction. I froze. Pin stepped forward, his knife hid behind him, getting ready to strike. Just as he did, another monster grabbed him from the back, and pinned his arms to his sides.
Pin struggled with the thing, and it lifted him off the ground and dropped him, hard. He fell, landing on his ankle, as it twisted beneath him. He crashed to the grass, holding it.
Suddenly, two soft, missile-like sounds sliced through the air, and the thing above Pin, bounced twice and then fell to the ground. Before the other could react, another shot hit him in the back of his head, and blood sprayed from a hole in the center of his forehead. Many more shots rang out, and I knew more monsters were falling under fire. I heard a body or two fall to the ground, but after that, it was silent. From inside, Annabel and Margie sang the last note, and everyone clapped. I mean everyone, even those things. Hatred at its fullest. We listened to the twins, and enjoyed them despite the pain; they listened enjoying because of the pain.
I guessed because of the applause that no one had heard. One of the young carnies, Sammy, ran out of the tree line, all but screaming, “We got ’em. We got ’em!”
His father shushed him, covering his mouth. But they were still clapping inside and I knew they hadn’t heard. Mac and Little John followed and began dragging the bodies back into the woods. Sammy grabbed one leg, the big gun hanging from his tiny shoulder, and his father grabbed the other, taking away the monster.
We went back inside, and left the others to their dead. I helped Pin walk, him leaning on me. He was limping pretty bad, the pain showing on his face. I took a look at it once we got inside, and it was beginning to swell and bruise. I was worried, but he said he’d be fine. I grabbed a cloth, ripped it into smaller pieces and wrapped it around and around his foot, pulling it as tight as possible. He winced a bit, but told me to try to make it even tighter. He said it would keep the swelling down.
The monsters seemed not to even notice their missing comrades as Annabel and Margie left the stage. Pin was up next, and he gave me a wink before he climbed on stage.
He pushed on a large spinning wheel with him, and his back was to me, but I knew what he was doing. Pin was a sword swallower and sometimes he sharpened his swords on stage for dramatic effect. He never used the swords he’d sharpened, he always switched them first. And this would be no different.
He sharpened them, showing the gleaming blade to the crowd. Pin said it was always uncomfortable when he put those 50-inch swords in his throat. Pin did his sleight-of-hand thing, switching the dull blade for the sharp one, and proceeded to stuff it down his neck and into his stomach, teasing his rib cage.
Just as Pin finished his show, several Fire Eaters and Fire Breathers ran on the stage. They twirled the doubled edge baton, and flipped across the stage, landing on the other’s back. There were six twirlers. Many of them had been with the carnival for several years. There was Morgan, Sondra, Patina, Donald, Swan, and Snap. Mr. M always called him that because he said he was “quick as a snap.” It was true, he’d run across the stage, and you’d barely even see him move. Each of the team stopped, spaced the length of the stage, and stared into the audience, lit the batons, and pitched them into the air. They flipped upside down standing on their hands; as they did so, and the lit torches fell, each person caught them with their foot, and twirled the wand around. The fire lit up the room, creating a blurry haze as eyes focused on the blaze.
Seconds later, they pitched them into the waiting crowd.
Before the show started, Mac and Little John had saturated the covered floor, and the bottoms of the chairs with Benzene. We hadn’t used gasoline because it would smell, but we had plenty of Benzene on hand for the rides.
The tent lit up like an inferno. Fire and smoke filled the small hut so quickly, I gagged on the fumes. Monsters were running around screaming like wild men. Except they weren’t men, they weren’t even a known species. The cries weren’t even human. I can’t explain it, but it was the cry of a great thing. Kinda like a wild boar and a giant man all mixed up in one.
Mr. Macabre ran back stage and handed me a small gun. “Can you use it?” I nodded. “Good.”
I ran to the tent, and peeked through the hole outside. It had cleared at bit, and I saw a complete mess on the other side. And now for the first time, as gunfire rang in the darkness, I allowed myself to believe that we would die here, alone, in Sun, without anyone to morn us. In fact, I figured that no one would probably ever find our bodies. Here, in this modest little park, in the middle of nowhere, we would remain forever.
I thought we would die, but not because things were going bad, but because they weren’t going as bad as I thought they would. Everyone knew as soon as you thought you had something licked, that’s when the bad things happened.
I saw Pin through the peek hole. He was fighting a man who looked as if he could have gone a round with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The thing glared at him as if he could sense his fear and was excited by it. But Pin had the best of him. He had sharpened his swords on that stage that night for a reason, and this was it. The man’s blade sliced into the monster’s flesh with precision, and the huge thing fell to the ground, holding the wound in his throat.
Just watching him use those things was a wonder. He darted out into the crowd and began slashing them one by one. Blood splashing his face and clothes, but he didn’t seem to care. Pin was decapitating, disemboweling, stomping on his victims, with the cunning of a warrior. His blade twirled and sliced through the air faster than I would have thought humanly possible.
Beside him, other carnies, Mac and Little John, had come in at the sound of the commotion, and had also killed a substantial number of those things; the bloody corpses lay dead at their feet. These men, these people I had lived with all my life, seemed to be reveling in the fight, as though they enjoyed it. And though I wouldn’t admit it, I actually enjoyed it, too. I liked the idea of hurting these things. After all, hadn’t they been hurting people all this time?
But the monsters were holding their own, I realized as I saw Doc Mayor’s body lying dead on the floor. I gasped and held my mouth so that a scream wouldn’t escape. I had known him all my life. If I had had a father, I would have wished it were him. He had a bullet hole in his stomach, and blood seeped from his half-opened mouth. His eyes were wide, and I would have sworn he was staring at me, accusingly. He thought the same thing I did: it was all my fault.
I should be out there, helping. I didn’t know a lot about fighting, but I knew a lot about survival and that would be enough to get me through. If not, then I would die along with my friends out there. I ran through the curtain, and I heard Pin calling my name behind me. But I didn’t stop, I ran head first into the room.
It was chaos in there. A shot rang over my head and went through the wall of the tent behind me. Suddenly someone shouted, “Look out, Stormy!” I turned to see one of the things aim at me and shoot. I jumped, but it was only from fear. His gun clicked, as he was out of ammo. I slowly took aim at him, and watched as he snarled and started straight for me. I shot it, and it fell to my feet, coughing.
I made my way over to the Doc and cradled his head in my lap. I thought about everything that had happened, what I had done, as I began to choke on smoke. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes would not focus anymore. I was losing consciousness.
I had one thought: maybe, if I was lucky, I would wake up dead.
I woke up in the back of the Winnebago. It bounced as it sped away from town. Our convoy of cars, trucks, and Winnebagos left Sun at midnight on Tuesday morning. But no one was out to see it. The normal people would come out later that morning to find a mess. They wouldn’t know it, but their lives had been spared. Even if there were more of those things running around in that city, it would take them a long time to get back to where they were. And if they did…well, that would be someone else’s problem.
Sometimes I wonder if I made it all up—all of it. Have you thought about it? I have. I mean, who sees monsters inside people and then destroys a whole town? That isn’t normal. Or what if that touch from that woman triggered some kind of seizure or something, making me see things that weren’t there. I was the catalyst. Then we destroyed a town.
Perhaps I have infected the carnival, making us all monsters.