PROLOGUE  

I kept my eyes closed, smelling the buttered popcorn and cotton candy, hearing the ding-dings of the Midway games, feeling the warm sun on my skin. I breathed in and opened my eyes, smiling in readiness for the fun day ahead.

But with my eyes open I saw that the carnival was empty. The smells, the sounds were all there, but no people to enjoy it. I was standing on the platform of the Ferris wheel, and the cars rounded their wide, crayon-box arc through the sky, but there wasn’t an operator tending to the ride.

The blue car was descending onto the platform, and I saw that on the seat was a rose, and tied to the rose was a card, and written on the card was my name. I dashed forward, light with glee, and grabbed up both the rose and the card. The flower was pungent, but when I opened the envelope I cut my finger on the paper, and it bled onto the ground. My finger stung, and then, to my horror, leeches crawled up through the sand and sucked up the blood. They made slurping sounds and left a trail of black sludge behind them. I felt something pinch my shoulder and cringed; one of them clung to me, its mouth suctioned to my skin, sucking my blood out of my veins. Disgusted, I swatted it away and stomped on it, but it left black criss-crosses on my arm. I examined them, but they weren’t painful, so I turned back to the card.

‘Meet me at the Love Boat,’ it read, and my heart soared. I clapped my hands in anticipation and hurried across the fairgrounds.

The Love Boat was a two-person skiff that floated down an underground river, though really the ‘river’ was just a man-made canal built inside one of the carnival houses. But it was dark, and it was quiet, and it was perfect for kissing. And he wanted to meet me there.

The boat was waiting at the quay. It was empty, except for another note sitting on the seat.

‘Set sail, I’ll soon be with you,’ it said, so I did. I pushed off and settled in, and the boat drifted into the darkness of a steel cave.

Pink spotlights dappled off the water ahead, and the place was filled with the scent of roses. I looked over the side of the boat and saw the water filled with rose petals – he’d left them for me! I dipped my hand into the water, scooped them up, and pressed them against my nose…

And screamed. They were not rose petals at all, but dismembered ears, colored red with blood. My screams echoed through the cavern, but I could not go back, only forward through a listening sea.

The river rounded a bend in front of me, disappearing into the black. I called out his name, but there was no answer. The boat drifted forward, and the air grew blisteringly cold. I could see my breath, and the river began to freeze over. Fear sprouted inside me, but there was nothing I could do but float and wait for whatever was coming. I heard the noise of running water ahead, and suddenly my boat tipped, and I was shrieking and falling, falling, down an icy waterfall.

The boat crashed when it hit the waves below, but I just sank beneath them, as if I had stones tied to my ankles. Down and down I floated, the frigid water curdling my skin and freezing my organs.

Finally I reached the bottom, and there was my love, tangled in algae, his skin whiter than snow, his lips bluer than sky, his eyes opened wide and blacker than space. His dark curls wafted to and fro about his once-perfect face. He stared, unseeing, ahead, and then a crab crawled out between his lips. I tried to swim up to the surface, but he grabbed my foot and would not let go, his grip so tight it bore into my bone, and I was stuck there until the fish came to gnaw at my skin and devour my eyes.

Reggie sat up in bed, gasping for breath.

‘Just the dream, just the dream,’ she muttered to herself. She sat still, trying to calm her breathing and push the restlessness from her body. The details of the dream sometimes varied, but the end was always the same.

She rubbed her eyes, tired and frustrated. She didn’t know how to make it go away. Reaching over, she turned on her bedside lamp and took a sip of water. Her glance fell on her history notebook on the night table. Impulsively, she ripped a sheet of paper out of it, clicked open a pen, and scribbled out what she had just dreamt.

A noise in her doorway made her look up.

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s just me,’ said her brother, Henry, and he stepped into the room. ‘I had a nightmare.’

‘They must be going around,’ Reggie replied. ‘Come on, hop in.’

Henry dove onto her bed and snuggled with her, and soon he was fast asleep again. But Reggie lay awake long after, wondering if the nightmares would ever stop.