Nightmare Carnival

SCREAMING ELK, MT by Laird Barron

One night, a trucker dropped me at a tavern in Screaming Elk, MT, population 333. A bunch of locals had gathered to shoot pool and drown their sorrows in tap beer. CNN aired an hour-long feature on survivors of violent crime. The Jessica Mace segment popped around halfway through and I told the bartender to switch it pronto. A sodbuster on the next stool took exception, started to bark his offense, then he did a double take at the file photo of me larger than life onscreen and things went from bad to ugly.

“You’re that broad! Yeah, yeah, you’re her!” Shitkicker had crossed over to the dark side of drunk. “Nice rack,” he went on in a confidential tone. “I wouldn’t pay a nickel for anything above the tits, though.”

I threw a glass of whiskey in his face, as a lady does when her appearance is insulted by an oaf. No biggie — I’d been nursing the cheap stuff. A couple of his comrades at the bar laughed. He recovered fast — animals are like that — made a fist, and cocked it behind his left ear. I puckered my lips. Don’t suppose that I enjoy getting punched in the face. It’s simply that I can make it work for me if it comes to that.

Despite my gravelly voice and rough edges, I know how to play the femme fatale. I can also hold my booze. It’s a devastating combo. My brothers Elwood and Bronson were the brawlers, the steamrollers. Elwood has gone to his reward and Bronson crashes cars for a living. Me? Let’s just say I prefer to rely upon a combination of native cunning and feminine wiles to accomplish my goals. Flames and explosions are strictly measures of last resort.

I’ll put my life in mortal danger for a pile of cash. No shock there, anybody would. Goes deeper, though. I’ll also venture into hazard to satisfy my curiosity, and that’s more problematic. The compulsion seems to be growing stronger. Violence, at least the threat of violence, is a rush. I’m addicted to the ramifications and the complications.

As the CNN story so luridly explained, I did for that serial killer up in Alaska, the Eagle Talon Ripper, and nothing has been the same. It’s as if the stars and the sky don’t align correctly, as if the universe is off its axis by a degree or two. Since pulling that trigger I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with myself. I wander the earth. It would be romantic to say I’m righting wrongs or seeking my destiny. Feels more like I’m putting my shoe into one fresh pile after another.

A good friend who worked in the people-removing business for the Mafia once told me there aren’t coincidences or accidents, reality doesn’t work that way. Since the first inert, superdense particle detonated and spewed forth all that gas and dust and radiation, everything has been on an unerring collision vector with its ultimate mate, and every bit of the flotsam and jetsam is cascading toward the galactic Niagara Falls into oblivion.

The dude possessed a more inquisitive nature than one might expect from an enforcer by trade. He said, Jessica, you’re a dancing star being dragged toward the black hole at the ragged edges of all we know. Drawn with irresistible force, you’ll level anything in your path, or drag it to hell in your wake.

Load of horseshit, am I right? Sloppy, I-love-you-man drivel. Yet his words come back to me as I travel east, ever east. I’m starting to believe him. I’m a dancing star and my self-determination is a façade.

Cut to the drunken asshole in the bar rearing back to knock me into next Tuesday. Not so fast, Tex, said the universe.

A rugged, burly fellow in a safari shirt and work pants stepped in and introduced himself with a left hook to the sodbuster’s jaw. Put the cowboy to sleep with one blow. I hadn’t needed a white knight. I’d palmed a steak knife and knew exactly where to stick it if necessary. But, I must admit, the crunch of the cowpoke’s jawbone and the fast-spreading blood on the scuffed floorboards thrilled me a little. A lot.

Mr. White Knight rubbed his hand. All those nicks and notches on his knuckles, like rocks that had been smacked together a thousand times.

“I’m Beasley. What are you drinking?”

“Ah, the beginning of another beautiful friendship.”

Mist flooded across the marsh and erased the country road. Rounding a bend, we were transported from present-day Montana to Scottish moors circa 1840s, or a Universal Studios sound lot with Bela Lugosi poised to sweep aside his cape along with our feeble protestations.

“Can’t-find-your-own-ass-with-both-hands-and-a-flashlight weather,” I said to cut the tension.

Beasley stepped on the pedal. His face by dashboard light put me in mind of Race Bannon and Doc Savage. The unbuttoned safari shirt contributed nicely. Ten, maybe fifteen years my senior, but some juice left in him; I loved that too. A crucifix dangled from the rearview mirror, also sprigs of dried flowers. More dried flowers peeked from the ashtray. I wondered if these details meant anything; made a note.

We were rocking and rolling like a motherfucker now. That rickety farm truck’s tires cried mercy. But when the moon hove nine-tenths full and full of blood over the black rim of night and screamed white-hot silver through the boiling clouds, everything stood still.

“The Gallows Brothers Carnival, huh?” I said after I caught my breath. I would have said anything to break the spell. “I heard that name somewhere. Want to say a news story. Which means somebody got maimed or murdered. Wouldn’t be news otherwise.”

He grunted and hit me with a sidelong glance.

“So, uh, you know how to shoot a gun?” Maybe he meant the rifle rattling in the window rack behind our heads. A light-gauge shotgun, nothing fabulous. “And would you say you’re fast on your feet? On a scale from a chick in high heels to Carl Lewis sprinting from a lion.”

“I hate it when dudes ask me that. The line of inquiry seldom leads anywhere pleasant.”

“You dames have all had bad experiences.”

I laughed, low and nasty.

“Yeah, it’s weird. Can’t figure what the common denominator might be.”

He shut his mouth for a while, smarting. Guy like him, pain didn’t last long. A whack upside the head with a two-by-four was positive attention.

My thoughts went to a previous fling with another brutish loner type: a coyote hunter in eastern Washington. I hoped my luck was better this go-around. I hoped Beasley’s luck was better too.

“You’re not really a carnival roadie,” I said a few miles later. “You lack that particular something or other.”

“Well, I wouldn’t get on any of the rides.”

The Gallows Brothers Carnival had set up shop in a pasture a few miles outside of town. Unfortunately, I had missed the last show. The great machinery lay cold and silent and would soon be dismantled. Beasley lived in a modular at the end of a concourse of shuttered stalls, Tilt-a-Whirls, and tents. All very Beaver Cleaver 1950s. The night breeze swirled sawdust and the burned powder of exploded firecrackers.

A wolf howled from the north where the forest began.

Then we were inside Beasley’s shack, barring the door behind us. Down, down into the darkness we dove, to the bottom of a blue hole at the bottom of the earth. The wolf howled again. Its pack answered and the ponderosa pines closed ranks, as Beasley’s Herculean arms closed me in.

A hazy nightlight fumed at the foot of the bunk. Beasley, with a physique straight from a picture book of Norse gods, could’ve wrestled bears, looked as if he’d done so on occasion. Once Beasley and I got going he held back for fear of breaking me, the fool. I wanted to tell him it was only really good once it started to hurt, but I’d gone past the vanishing point and dissolved into another, primal self, the one that doesn’t speak English.

He performed as his swagger advertised, or close enough. Afterward, he lay slick and aglow, perfectly scarred. I asked him if he did any acting, because he radiated mucho charisma. He only smiled boyishly and took a swig from the bottle, took it in like water. I suspected his fate would be to die horribly of cirrhosis, or under the claws of a beast, and young, or to turn fifty and appear as if he’d gone face first into a wall, haggard as a kerosene-swilling bum. Probably the dying-young deal: I kept seeing a bleached skull when I caught him in my peripheral vision.

“Gimme some sweet, sweet nothings,” I said to keep him from nodding off and leaving me alone with my two a.m. thoughts, and alone with the howls in the wood.

“Look, doll, I’m a man of action. Sweet talk ain’t my bailiwick.”

“Your wick isn’t going into my bailey again if you don’t humor me.”

“As you say.” He cleared his throat. “How can you be sure you’re here?”

“What, think you were humping your pillow?”

“Sorry, Jess, you started this. Maybe all of it is a projection. Or a computer program. You’re a sexy algorithm looping for eternity.”

We shared a cigarette. Not my brand.

“Kinda smart for a dumb guy,” I said. What I knew of Beasley’s past derived from a few hours over pints — ex-army, ex-footballer, a hunter, a bodyguard, expert driver. Man-at-arms slash valet and satisfied with the role. College had served as a central hub for womanizing, boozing, and playing ball.

“No offense taken, or anything.” He even made petulance sound manly.

“Don’t get riled, handsome. Playing dumb is your protective coloration. It’s how you fool the predators. Most of us are fooled.”

“My protective coloration is a surly disposition and a buffalo gun that’d blast a hole through a concrete bunker.”

“Neither of those require smarts.” I squinted at a movie poster of Robby the Robot carrying unconscious Anne Francis against a backdrop of shooting stars, and another of Lon Chaney Jr. bursting the buttons of his natty white shirt as a devil moon blared through evergreen branches.

“Wait a second. Is that wolfsbane in the pot?”

“Jessica. you’re not a hologram, you’re a dream.” He kneaded my breast. “It had to be the right woman, but I hoped it would be a flake, a bumpkin. I was afraid you’d come here. Ever since I dreamt of you there’s been a dark spot floating in my mind. A mote.”

“Make sense, man!”

“Yeah, it’s wolfsbane.” He rolled away from me, the oldest trick in the book.

I woke to a little girl screaming her heart out, out in the darkness. Beasley gently clamped his hand over my mouth, his other arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn’t going anywhere unless I took extreme measures. Not so much of a turn-on in this context.

“It’s all right.” He spoke so softly, I almost didn’t catch it. “They say an elk screams like a child. Go back to sleep.”

A long time and a lot of silence passed before he let me go.

Oatmeal and kiwis for breakfast in the commissary. Beasley introduced me around to the early risers. Hey, everybody, this is Jessica Mace. She’s wandering the earth. Make her feel at home. Damned if I didn’t despite their clannishness. Free food is free food.

Strongman (actually a strongwoman, after a double take), bearded lady, wolf girl, Poindexter the Geek, the knife thrower, Ephandra the Contortionist, and Perkins and Luther — head carpenter and electrician respectively. The Gallows brothers, Benson and Robert, weren’t on hand. The proprietors had departed on a hush-hush mission, or so Beasley intimated when I asked to meet the gents.

Beasley’s request notwithstanding, I received the hairy eyeball from the company. Nobody said two words to me except for Earl, the Illustrated Man. Earl repeatedly inquired where oh where on my delectable body I might be inked. Answer: nowhere, jerk. I kind of hoped Beasley would bust his jaw too, but it didn’t happen. Several children lurked on the periphery. The oldest, an adolescent girl; the youngest, a grubby boy maybe a year or two out of diapers. They gawped at me from a safe distance, until their minder, a matronly lass named Rocky, swept them away with brisk efficiency.

After breakfast, Beasley escorted me on a tour of the environs. I tasted snow. A lot of the stuff covered the mountain peaks.

“This doesn’t jibe,” I said. “Are you hiding from the law, or what?”

We’d moseyed a distance from the encampment. He wore a battered Australian drover’s hat, light jacket, work pants, and lace-up boots. He also carried a big-ass hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Double barrels, very serious.

“Whatever happens, don’t get scared.”

“Scared of what? And, too late.”

“Of nothing. I’m not on the lam, by the way. Vacation.” He knelt and traced flattened grass with his entire hand. We were surrounded by an ocean of it, tall and white, dying.

“How everybody spoke to you, you’ve been here a while.”

“Ten months next week.”

“Ten months! Sounds more and more like you’re on work release.”

He laughed. Nice white teeth. Considering the battered condition of his face, it was a small miracle he’d kept most of them.

“I live back east. My regular employers are having a disagreement.”

“Dare I ask what they do?”

“Big brains. Quantum physics, exobiology, anthropology. They’re famous, infamous, one of those things. A pair of mad scientist types. They’d love to build a time machine or a doomsday device for the kicks.”

“Sounds like wacky fun. I could use a spin in a time machine, for sure.”

“Backward or forward?”

I shrugged, bored.

“Sorry your bosses are trying to kill each other. Family feuds are the worst.”

“It’s all the shooting that made me nervous.” He turned away and scanned the ground again.

“What’s the argument about?”

“The ethics of temporal collocation of sapient organisms.”

“No shit?”

“I shit you not. Mainly, they’re at each other’s throats about a dog.”

“Oh, I get that. I’d kill over a good dog.”

“Hmm. This one sure as hell is. Or it will be, after they build it.”

“Build it? Are we talking about a robot?”

“A cyborg. It — he — is a war machine. Weapons contractor is financing the project. My bosses are making history. Rex has a positronic brain. First of its kind, and Toshi and Howard are fighting over the ethics. Look, stick around a few days, we’ll fly to the compound, I’ll show you. Easier that way.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Man, I wish Rex was online. We’d make short work of. ” He cleared his throat and stood. “Be seven or eight years before the prototype is even in alpha phase. Gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Do what the old-fashioned way? Aren’t you on vacation?”

“So to speak. Personal business. I traveled with this carnival as a kid. Ran away from a bad scene at home. The Gallowses took me in, gave me a job, made sure I got an education. They’re my uncles and they’re in trouble.”

“A debt of honor. How sweet.” Sweet like rat poison. Daddy the Marine had taught us kids a whole lot about honor. Honor had put him and my eldest brother into early graves. Can’t say I have much use for the sentiment.

“I didn’t pick you out of that bar just because you’re a looker,” Beasley said. “You’re something special.”

“Huh, that’s some heavy duty charm you’re laying down.”

“Yeah, it’s exhausting. I’ll stop.”

“Since you’ve already had your way, I’m steeling myself for the worst.”

“The Gallows Carnival is cursed. I’ve come to put things in order.”

“Wait, what? A curse?”

“Right.”

“Like voodoo, desecrated-Indian-burial-grounds kind of curse?”

He pointed to a splotch of maroon on the grass.

“Stay tuned.”

I decided to give Twenty Questions a break. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and tagged along as he inspected a rusty overgrown fence. Soon, he found a break in the wire. A black funnel bored through a copse of pine trees, juniper, and nettles. The hole had obviously been formed by the crush of a massive body wallowing its way through the tangle.

Then the breeze shifted and the reek of putrefying flesh almost knocked me down. Beasley handed me his hat and unlimbered his rifle. He carried a flashlight in his left hand. Its beam didn’t cut very far into the darkness.

Motioning for me to stay put, he crouched and moved into the burrow.

“Bad idea, Beasley. Bad, very bad.” Over the stench of death, I whiffed something else, something born of musk, dank fur, sweat, and piss. This was the lair of a ravenous beast, a creature of fang and lust. The combination of scents, the crimson aura of the den, made me dizzy, made my nipples hard and my thighs weak. I slapped myself across the mouth and that shocked me out of my little swoon.

Maybe slightly too effective. Every birdcall, every snapped twig caused me to twitch. The shadows in the trees became sinister. I gave serious thought to leaving Beasley there, strolling back to camp. I’d have coffee with a nip of bourbon and wait to see if he ever returned.

“Jess.” His voice floated from the tunnel, muffled and strange. “Dial 911. Ask for Sheriff Holcomb. Tell him to come right away.”

I made the call and identified myself. The dispatcher asked the usual questions and said a squad car would be on site shortly. Beasley crawled from the den, shirt torn and stems in his hair. He tossed a man’s severed head on the ground. Dead two or three days at most. The left eye was still intact. Blue as milk. Hours later, I still saw my shadow reflected in it, the beetles and the flies crawling around, unsure where to start.

“Five or six bodies in there,” Beasley said in a hoarse voice. He lighted a cigarette. Reached for his hip flask of whiskey, glanced at the sun, and reconsidered. Then reconsidered again and down the goddamned hatch. “Gonna have to reassemble the pieces to know for sure. Lotta pieces.”

“Cops are on the way.”

I’m not sure if I said it to reassure myself or to warn him that there’d be no more axe murdering on my watch. I ninety-nine percent dismissed the possibility of his involvement in a massacre. My instincts are hellishly sharp when it comes to detecting the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. Beasley had issues. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t one.

The sun inched across the sky. Beasley checked his watch every couple of minutes.

“Did the carnival lose a tiger?” I said. “Or a lion? The neck wound is. chunky. That’s how a big cat might savage its prey.” As if I knew jack shit about big cats or mauled corpses. My mouth pops into gear when I’m nervous.

“The Gallowses own three panthers. All accounted for. This ain’t a wild animal attack. This is a whole other thing.”

I couldn’t stop staring at the head, its mouth agape, teeth and tongue clotted in gore. I ran my thumb along the scar on my throat, felt a sympathetic pang, and relived the searing slash of the blade as it sawed on through.

“Here’s the sheriff,” Beasley said. He looked me in the eye, hard. “Be careful.”

“We’re hunting rabbits?” I always try to be brave.

“Don’t get cute with him. He’s not your friend. Take my word.”

I decided to heed his warning. A bad black vibe pushed forward thick as the dust from the cop cars tearing along the road.

Two Lewis and Clark County police cruisers nosed into the field. Several cops in midnight blue suits and white Stetson hats trudged the rest of the way to us. They patted the guns on their hips. One had a German shepherd on a leash. Poor dog wanted fuck-all to do with the murder scene. He pissed himself and cowered between the legs of his mortified handler, a lantern-jawed gal in mirrored shades.

Beasley shook hands with the sheriff. Two dogs deciding whether to sniff asses or just get to tearing each other apart.

Blond bearded and heavy through shoulders and hips, Sheriff Von Holcomb seemed at least a decade underseasoned for the post. On the other hand, one glance at the austere panorama and I concluded that finding a taker for the position might mean the electorate couldn’t afford to be too picky.

“Huh, well fuck a duck.” Sheriff Holcomb toed the severed head. He covered his mouth with a bright red handkerchief. His deputies took tape measurements and snapped photographs of the crime scene. The unluckiest of them all, a goober with a painfully large Adam’s apple, got sent into the burrow with a Maglite and a camera.

“Any idea who we’re lookin’ at here?”

“Alfred Fenwood.” Beasley passed the sheriff a bloodied driver’s license. “Don’t know him. Drag the bars, you’ll find Al likes cheap beer and long walks along the highway after dark.”

“We got missing-person reports galore over the past three weeks. Hikers, ranch hands, some folks snatched out of parking lots. Lots of wild animal calls, too. Ripped-to-hell pets, the usual sort of crap.” The sheriff glanced at me slyly, propped his boot on the head like a kid resting on a soccer ball, and slipped off his wedding band and made it disappear.

“Oh, man, are you kidding?” I stepped back and gripped the Ka-Bar under my coat. Come to it, I’d stab a hillbilly psycho, badge or not. My shiny new policy.

“You snuffed the Eagle Talon Ripper,” he said.

“No surprise you’re the lead detective in Timbuktu,” I said. A mistake because his smirk suggested he mistook contempt for flirtation.

“See my girl Friday with the dog?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Know why she wears them mirror shades? My mama was a gorgon. Deputy Cooper thinks some of the evil runs in my blood. She’s afraid to look me in the eye.” He grinned when I didn’t answer. Ogled my scars. “Wow. It’s true, you Alaska broads are tough as leather. Bastard really did slice your throat from ear to ear. Then you rose from the dead and sent him to hell. Amazing. Marcy at Dispatch ran your name. It’s flagged, big time. I suppose we’re gonna have to keep tabs on you while you’re visiting our fair state. Mm-mm-mm.

“How you survive something like that, eh? Don’t seem possible. Don’t seem possible, ’t all. That freak cut you anywhere else?” He actually reached for my collar and I tensed, ready to shorten his fingers by a knuckle or two.

“Von,” Beasley said, saving the day. “We’ve got a situation. Best to focus.”

“Plainly.” Sheriff Holcomb grudgingly lowered his hand. “The Gallowses think Injun ground gonna do the trick when nothing else ever has?”

“This ground represents a full circle. Fifty years, Von.”

“Ain’t sacred. Ain’t holy. It’s elk shit and dirt.”

“Red moon last night.”

“I ain’t blind.”

“We proceed with the plan. Gallowses’ orders.”

“Ha! Oh, as if I jump when they yell froggy.”

“Today you do.”

Sheriff Holcomb watched the shepherd twist himself into a pretzel and snap at his deputy K-9 partner. The cop in mirror shades swore and danced to avoid losing a hunk of her flesh.

“Things fallin’ to pieces around here,” the sheriff said.

“And you gotta keep a lid on this mess,” Beasley said. “Unless you want the feds on it like flies.”

“Be serious, amigo. The feds won’t figure into this.”

“Fifty years is a high-water mark. I assume nothing. Hell could be waiting in the wings.”

“And her?” The sheriff jerked his thumb at me. “Where she fit into your plan?”

“She’s our secret weapon.”

“You mean bait.”

“Same thing.”

“Bait?” I said.

“Secret weapon,” Beasley said.

“The sight of blood doesn’t faze you,” Beasley said after he got me back to the camp. We sat at a bench while two bearded guys in coveralls loaded boxes onto a trailer.

“Are you kidding? It fazes the shit outta me. Just that I see more than my fair share. I’m building a tolerance, one snakebite at a time.” I took a slug from Beasley’s flask. Too early in the day, even by my bohemian standards, but I’d earned it. “Let us recap. There’s a pile of human bodies in yonder animal den. You knew they’d be there. Or, like me, you’re super-duper unflappable.”

“Ain’t a den. It’s a trophy room. We’re not dealing with an animal. Not in the strictest sense of the term. I’m not very cool, either. Scared spitless, honestly.”

“Uh-huh. These murders are revenge oriented, sex fantasies, rituals, what? You said something to your sheriff pal about fifty years. ”

“Revenge ritual. The Gallows curse. Goes back to the fall of 1965. There was an. incident, I suppose you’d say. I’ll have Conway fill you in. He’s our knife thrower. Been with the carnival since the sixties.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“A curse?”

“What they call it,” he said.

“Going to stop you right there, big fella. I don’t live in a hut in the Dark Ages.”

“Well, my uncles swallow the whole bit. Power of suggestion cannot be denied.”

“Fine. Go on.”

“They say it clouds the minds of outsiders. The carnival settles into an area, some gruesome murders occur, the carnival pulls stakes and moves on. The cycle repeats. Reports get filed, news stories are written. Locals squawk. Nothing comes of it, though. The outside world forgets, as if the incident is erased from memory. It becomes an urban legend, a woolly tall tale to scare the kids, and everybody accepts it as myth.

“Only family remembers the details. Blood kin and those who are so tangled up with the carnival they may as well be kin. Company members who flee? They disappear or wind up in pieces. Doesn’t matter where they run. Our last sword swallower made it to Malaysia. Authorities found his arm in a hedge.

“The Gallows travels far and wide, nonetheless, the cycle continues. Sometimes it goes weeks, sometimes months, maybe even a year or two. The company members aren’t the ones who suffer the worst. Those victims in the woods? Locals. The curse cuts down innocent bystanders like a lawnmower through grass. I was around for the last occurrence. Ohio. Seventeen citizens in three weeks. Horrible, horrible shit. Not a peep in the national news.”

I gave this a few seconds to percolate in my imagination.

“Some freak has a hard-on for your uncles, okay. Obviously it’s an inside job.”

“Could be. Might be something stranger.”

“Either way, you gotta have a theory.”

“Sure, I’ve got suspicions. About all I got, though.”

“How many people work this joint?”

“A couple dozen.”

“Kinda narrows down the suspect list.”

“Jess, you don’t understand. This isn’t simple.”

“Doesn’t seem complicated either. Can’t the cops catch this murderer? Must be a trail of corpses strewn across the country. Clueless as law enforcement tends to be, brute force will out eventually. For the love of god, all those bodies, dude. Where’s Nancy Grace and Geraldo? This is national news. A CNN spectacular.”

“You’d think so,” he said.

“My instincts are razor blades, else I’d figure you were running a con, Bease. Is this reality TV? Got a camera crew stashed nearby?”

“Trust your instincts.”

“Dude, I’m open minded, as you are intimately aware. What I saw in the field, how the cops reacted. None of it adds up. Sheriff Blondie seems to be in it to win it, though. What’s his story?”

“His great-grandfather was sheriff in ’65 when the, ah, inciting incident occurred. Vinette, a woman who worked at the carnival, got butchered by a jealous suitor. That suitor went on to terrorize the countryside until Grandpa Holcomb helped bring him down with a load of double-aught buckshot. He didn’t get reelected. Von’s the first Holcomb to be appointed sheriff since the curse took hold.”

“You keep using that word as if it’s not superstitious bullshit.”

Beasley dragged a cardboard box from under a table. He emptied its contents onto the bed — a meticulously dissected series of clipped newspaper articles and photographs. The oldest were blurry, preserved from the decade of Flower Power and Vietnam; the newest had been shot recently. Articles about wild animal attacks, mysterious slayings, missing persons, all connected by some elusive thread. The connection seemed patently obvious — every article covering these incidents was juxtaposed with another featuring the Gallows Brothers Carnival.

He watched me thumb through the clippings.

“Curses might be country bumpkin nonsense, sure. I just try to see it from the rustic perspective. Forget curses. Imagine. Imagine there’s a conspiracy. Nasty, violent, spans generations, and we’re going to put an end to it. You and me.”

“Conspiracies I can sink my teeth into.”

“Now we’re speaking the same language.”

“The authorities can’t make a dent in this case, what makes you think I can help?”

“Because we only need you to play a role — you get to stand in for the woman who got murdered back then. The Gallowses, Victor, our resident guru, they believe a reenactment of that original crime will allow them to interrupt it and break the curse. None of the ladies with the carnival has the guts to act as a decoy. I’m good at taking a person’s measure. My hunch is, you’ve got a gift for survival.”

I had another sip.

“Bait doesn’t sound fun.”

“Bait just hides the hook.”

“This is about Alaska. Oh, boy, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think Eagle Talon qualifies me for what-the-fuck-ever freak Olympics you got going on here.”

“Damned right it’s about Alaska. Alaska was the crucible that made you. Your life ended when that man slashed your throat. The old you went up in smoke. You’re a dancing star.”

“What did you say?” Fear stirred in my heart. Fear and an incongruous trickle of exultance. A sense of deeper purpose.

Beasley retrieved his flask.

“I recognized your face the second I walked into that tavern. What’s more, I recognized the light in your eyes. I wasn’t there looking for Ms. Goodbar or a heroine to pull our fat from the fire. I went there to get drunk because we’d failed to find a leading lady for the big night. Meeting you is fate. Can’t be anything less than the machinery of the universe clicking into place.”

“Flattering, except I still don’t understand what you want. Eagle Talon doesn’t mean anything. I went head to head with a creep and lived to tell. The media tried to spin the hero angle. That ain’t me. I’m a survivor, not a savior.”

“Remains to be seen, Jess. Come on, you need to speak with Conway. He was there during the bad days.”

“Ask the dismembered people in the den, they’d probably say these days are pretty lousy,” I said.

“The other bad days.”

On the way to the knife thrower’s tent, we crossed paths with Victor, the carnival’s resident fortune-teller/mentalist. Youngish guy, seven or eight years my senior. He dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Lacking the glamour and glitz of a stage, his salt-and-pepper goatee belonged on a ski bum rather than a fortune-teller or magician.

Victor did a double take at the sight of me. He clutched my hand and kissed it with unctuous ardor.

“Oh, you magnificent man,” he said to Beasley. “You have accomplished the impossible. She is perfection.”

“Yeah?” Beasley said. His cheeks seemed ruddier than usual.

“No question. Ephandra must be wild with jealousy.” Victor finally released my hand. “My dear, it is a pleasure. You must visit Conway. Go, go! Time is short.”

The interior of the tent lay in gloom, although it didn’t matter — Conway, the knife thrower, blindfolded himself and continued to chuck the knives with eerie accuracy.

“Oh, Beasley, what have you done?” he said. He spoke in a deep, trained voice that made me marvel why he wasn’t an actor instead of a knife thrower. Tall, and muscular. Wouldn’t have guessed him for his midseventies. Raw boned with the hands of a pianist. The ace of spades tattooed on his left forearm.

He threw a brace of specially balanced knives at a slowly rotating wheel with a busty silhouette for a non-bull’s-eye. A scantily clad assistant would occupy the blank heart of the wheel whenever the curtain lifted again. I’d seen the chick, Gacy, stumble from the animal wrangler’s shack, hung over and falling out of her sun and moon robe. Every fifth or sixth cast of a knife thunked solidly in the center of the silhouette. Obviously Conway knew where she’d slept too. I’d caught a gander of Niko, the Lord of Beasts, and he was easy on the eyes. Conway had run afoul of an immutable law of physics — chicks dig a guy who knows his way around cats.

“I’m not sure if I should go into family matters with young Jessica,” Victor said. “For her own protection. It is unethical to inveigle her into our wretched troubles.”

“I agree,” I said. “This whole deal seems extremely personal.”

Beasley smoked a cigarette. His hair stuck out every which way from crawling into the bushes. He smelled rank. Still sexy.

“There’s a bus station half an hour down the road, Jess. Say the word.”

I didn’t give the word. Could be my heart in my throat blocked the way. My ever-intensifying death wish might’ve compelled silent complicity, or whatever wish it was that had followed me since the debacle in Alaska. There was also the distinct possibility I desired round two in the sack with Beasley. What can I say? I’m a complicated woman.

“Okay, tell it,” Beasley said to his pal the knife thrower.

Conway shrugged and orated a real potboiler. Back in 1963 when the Gallows Carnival was purchased from a central European mountebank who shall remain nameless, some of the original players immigrated to the US and continued under new management. Chief among them, a pair of star-crossed lovers: Artemis, the animal trainer, and Vinette, lovely assistant to the Magician from the Black Sea. The magician was a handsome and acerbic, mature gentleman named Milo. Milo, a longtime widower, coveted sexy, young Vinette and schemed to win her affection from his rival Artemis.

Predictably, nothing good came of this situation. Milo failed to woo the object of his affection through honest means. He turned to skullduggery, black magic, and plain dirty tricks. It failed. Then Artemis and Vinette announced their engagement and Milo lost the remainder of his wormy, rotten mind.

On the couple’s engagement night, while everyone else attended the celebratory feast, Milo slinked into the tent where the dancing bears, big cats, and wolves slept in their cages. Some beasts he poisoned and they died, foaming at the muzzle. Others he slew with a carbine. The aftermath proved so disturbing, even hardened veterans of World War II (and there’d been several on staff) wept to see the carnage.

Ah, the worst remained. Innocent Vinette, who had no conception of the magician’s sickness, considering him a dear and trusted friend, slipped away from the supper to collect him. After searching high and low for the magician, she came upon the scene and screamed in horror to witness Milo skinning Artemis’s prize animal, a black wolf. A massive and terrifying beast, originally captured along the Mackenzie River, the wolf hadn’t gone down without a struggle — a savage slash of its fangs took a swath of the magician’s face to naked bone.

Legend insisted that Vinette fled blindly, Milo on her heels. She in her dinner gown, he wrapped in the dripping pelt of the wolf, his face flayed. He brought her down in the field and tore her flesh with nails and teeth. When he had done for her, the magician fled into the hills. His wounds festered, as did his madness. Over the course of a fortnight, he roamed the land, murdering farmers, truck-stop waitresses, untended children, and other hapless folk.

Eventually, he took shelter in an abandoned wolf den on a desolate mountainside. The men of the carnival, led by an enraged and grieving Artemis, came with lanterns and rifles. Milo charged the hunters and they cut him down in a blaze of gunfire. He cursed them with his dying breath. And lo, a few years later, the carnival troupe became aware of a dark presence haunting the show. Mysterious and brutal killings began. Beasley had filled me in on the rest.

“Tonight is the fiftieth anniversary of Milo’s murder of Vinette,” Conway said.

“Of course it is.” I considered a void, then a crack of white light, all the fire pouring forth, and a sweet young thing’s face contorted in screams at the heart of the inferno.

Beasley leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Please help. The Gallowses will make it worth your while.”

We’d see, wouldn’t we?

Benson and Robert Gallows returned from wherever in an antiquated flatbed truck. Fraternal twins, middle aged, dressed in fleece and plaid and denim. It appeared Benson was the drinker of the pair. His hair had gone white. Gin blossoms patterned his squashed nose. Robert’s hair was dark, his features somewhat delicate. No burst blood vessels or cauliflower ears. Both wore revolvers under their coats and wolfsbane garlands around their necks.

Beasley explained that I knew the history of the alleged curse and that I hadn’t entirely decided to play the role of doomed Vinette.

“What do you think?” Benson Gallows said.

“She doesn’t resemble Vinette,” Robert Gallows said. “However, the proper spirit counts for everything. There’s also the factor that we have little choice.”

“Agreed.”

“Hello, boys,” I said. “You two could try talking to me since I’m standing right here.”

“You were with Beasley when he discovered the remains,” Benson Gallows said. “You haven’t hightailed it for the hills. That is an intriguing sign.”

“Technically we’re in the hills. Also, I think you’re a bunch of kooks, or you’re having me on.”

“Come now, you saw the corpses,” Robert Gallows said. “No chicanery there.”

“I’ve some experience with murderers and none with mumbo- jumbo curses. Primarily because murderers are real while curses are not.”

“The belief some hold in them is real enough to draw blood. Leaving that aside, what would it take for you to indulge us our role-playing exercise tonight?”

“Role-playing?”

Robert Gallows nodded.

“Easy as pie, my dear. You dress to the nines, enjoy a world-class supper with the company, and then retrace Vinette’s path from the night she died.”

“From the night she was horribly murdered, you mean.”

“Yes. While you’re wandering in the field, the rest of us will enact—”

“We’ll perform our mumbo-jumbo,” Benson Gallows said.

“Your hoodoo is going to do what? Trap the ghost, or werewolf? My bad, I don’t know what you boys are calling your fairy nemesis.”

“It’s a revenant, a spirit of vengeance. We want to trap it in a circuit. Then open that circuit. Not your concern. Your concern is to look pretty and follow a scripted sequence of movements.”

“So, how much?” Robert Gallows said.

I thought fast.

“Uh, ten grand. Cash.” The ol’ Mace piggy bank rattled emptily of late. My heart sank when the brothers smiled as one.

“Done,” Robert Gallows said. “Let’s make you presentable, shall we?”

“Keep that creepy sheriff away from me. He’s a deal breaker.”

“As you say. Sheriff Holcomb will not come within a country mile of your person. Right, Beasley?”

“A country mile,” Beasley said without enthusiasm.

“Then we have a deal,” Benson Gallows said. “I must warn you, however. A deal really is a deal. Sealed in blood as far as we’re concerned.”

“Indeed,” said Robert Gallows. “Should you renege on our arrangement, there will be consequences. The sheriff sounds as if he’s taken a shine to you, Ms. Mace. I am sure he’d be amenable to drumming up any number of phony charges to lock you in his jail for a while. Vagrancy and trespassing on private land among others.” At least the bastard had the decency to seem embarrassed. He shuffled his feet and glanced away. “Apologies for this element of threat. The warning is necessary.”

“Beasley,” I said.

“Hey, you shook hands.” He too averted his gaze.

Benson Gallows sighed in exasperation.

“Please, please, everyone. Dispense with the melodrama. No one is going to jail. Keep your word and all will be well. Simple as that.”

“I’ll alert the girls,” Robert Gallows said. “They’ll prepare you for the festivities.”

“Blow it out your ass,” I said. But I went along.

Mary the Magnificent and Lila the Bearded Lady took me into their trailer to get ready for the “dinner and a séance” portion of my upcoming date with Beasley. I had doubts about Mary — her spine was so twisted with muscle she hunched; her hands were enormous and rough as cobs. Nonetheless, she could’ve had a chair in a Beverly Hills salon if the magic she worked on my snarled mane with a jug of warm water and a washtub was any indicator. After bathing and styling came the glamour detailing. I’m okay with makeup, though I don’t usually apply much, if any. The ladies laid it on thick. Lila took charge, and she too exhibited a deft touch. After the detailing, they put me into a dress that would’ve done well for a night on the town visiting swanky 1960s hotspots. White and flowing, open in back and slit up to here on the side. Entirely too seductive for supper in a carnival tent in the middle of nowhere, Montana.

When they finally handed me a mirror I gasped.

The ladies’ reflections smiled at one another. I turned my head and dark clouds descended.

“Lila and I ran away from the circus,” Mary said. “This is where we landed.”

“A grave mistake,” Lila said. “Carnivals are much direr.”

“Because of the psycho killers?” I admired my cleavage. “Or because this one killed the clowns? Seriously, what gives? I’ve hunted high and low and seen nary a trace. Isn’t that carnival sacrilege?”

Mary smiled venomously.

“Scoff. We thought the curse was a joke too. Bitterly, bitterly we’ve learned otherwise. We are trapped.”

“Someone should do something,” I said, dry as toast.

“We’ve tried,” Lila said. “This is beyond our reckoning.”

“It’s not beyond mine. People’s heads are getting severed. Kinda physical for a ghost.”

“Perhaps you are an expert in this area,” Lila said.

“I straighten horseshoes with my bare hands. I can lift a grand piano on my back.” Mary flexed her massive biceps. “Even I could not hope to confront the terror in the hills and survive.”

“Run,” Lila said. “And don’t look back. You aren’t a part of this yet.”

“She won’t run. Ever seen a more stubborn jaw? Our friend is a warrior. She will fight.”

“Who’s out there?” I said. “Really, no bullshit.”

“Some sort of Jungian manifestation,” Lila said. “The shadow personified.”

“Baby, that’s the best description I’ve ever heard.” Mary kissed the bearded lady’s cheek. “Whatever the truth, don’t mess with it, it’ll turn you to mincemeat.”

“A shadow? Here I thought we were dealing with the wolf man. Silver bullets, belladonna, all that jazz.” I sighed. “Come on. I’ve seen the horrible shit man does to man. No need for werewolves or shadow monsters.”

They exchanged unhappy glances.

“A shadow personified,” Lila said, emphasizing each word. “Whether it’s man or beast is irrelevant for it is most certainly a distilled and concentrated horror that exists on the edge of human experience. Tread lightly.”

Mary lifted my dress and strapped a stiletto in its sheath to my thigh. Snugged it against the stocking. All right, that improved my mood.

“Your Ka-Bar is a good blade. Won’t help. Mine is cold iron and it has been blessed. Doubt it’ll help either. Still, you’re okay. I like you.”

“See you two at the event, I guess.”

“No,” Lila said. “We’ve decided to skip this one. Good luck, Ms. Jessica.”

“Remember to take off those heels if you need to start running,” Mary said.

“Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs,” I said.

I thanked them and tottered out the door.

Benson Gallows handed me a bag with scads of rolled hundred- dollar bills stuffed inside. I stuffed the bag under Beasley’s bunk and we gathered to head for the big top and supper. The boys could spin whatever fantasy they liked. Made no difference to me. Besides, I trusted Beasley, insomuch as I trust anyone. More importantly, I trusted myself and the derringer I’d swiped from his footlocker and slipped into my sweet little handbag.

Beasley and the Gallows brothers carefully explained my duties, which were negligible, considering the amount of dough they parted with to secure my participation. They assured me that all aspects of the ritual had been assiduously researched and rehearsed. As long as I followed my cues, events would unfold smoothly. In some respects this seemed similar to the slavish preparations of hardcore Civil War reenactors. Except for the actual pile of human heads and assorted parts in the back forty.

“I’ll be out in the field tonight, just in case.” Beasley had squeezed into a cream-colored number, slicked his hair down, the whole bit.

“In case of what?”

“Uh, in case you run into a rabid coyote.”

“Or a rabid elk,” I said. “Mary and Lila seem to think—”

“Those broads are eccentric,” Beasley said.

“This is a carnival. What else would they be?”

“Yeah, well, even for a carnival.” He offered his arm.

The séance cum last supper, or whatever you’d care to name the ritual, occurred in the big top. The roadies had broken out a massive mahogany table inlaid with granite and matching chairs. They left a flap open in the ceiling. No moon yet, but plenty of stars sprinkled against the black. Jazz piped in soft and slow.

Our fateful supper included a honey-braised roast, wild rice, pineapple and grapes, sorbet, and plenty of red wine. I may have proved slightly unladylike in my enthusiasm for the various dishes. Free meals this swanky were rare.

I had nothing better to do than stuff my face, anyhow.

The girls wore dresses, although none as nice as mine, and the boys were in suits.

“Yowch!” I said as Beasley pulled out my chair. “Did I tell you how hot you look?”

His melancholy expression merely flickered.

“Do me a favor and don’t argue,” he whispered. He slipped the crucifix from his truck around my neck.

I would’ve given him grief except for the fact that bit of adornment drew the attention of every man at the table who hadn’t already surreptitiously ogled my bosom since I’d strolled in.

Though I was supposed to be the centerpiece of the evening, it seemed as if the entire company had secretly agreed to exclude me from the conversation. Fine, the silly bastards could stare at my tits and leave me out of it.

Ephandra, the lovely, long-in-the-tooth contortionist and apparent paramour of Benson Gallows, eyed my vampy dress, silver choker, purple eye shadow, and hair piled high. She smirked with voluptuous malice, pulled on a pair of ermine gloves, and lit a cigarette. She smoked it in a holder, Greta Garbo style, or somebody like that.

“Tell me more about the séance,” she said to Benson Gallows.

“You’re a little séance virgin?” His white eyebrows lifted.

“Oh, I did a séance in spectacular fashion. And you?” She stared at him now, like a cat at a bird.

“There was this one time. Me and a couple of my cousins spooked each other on an overnight camping trip. I was in middle school.”

“Did you make contact with the beyond?” Ephandra said.

“I made contact with my cousin’s boob for a second or two,” Benson Gallows said.

Victor the Fortune-teller frowned at this exchange.

“Perhaps this is not the occasion for jocularity.” He’d gone the extra mile and decked himself out in a fabulously extravagant black silk cape and a red turban studded with gemstones.

“Nice, Ben,” Ephandra said, dismissing Victor with an eye roll. “Weren’t we supposed to hit a séance gig together once?”

“No. Wait, yes — we were on a break. You called, but I had a date with, what’s her name? Crazy blonde who dragged me to the pool hall every other night.”

“Ginny the psych student? Her dad had a place in Coeur d’Alene. Slut. Whore. Bitch.”

“Yes, you met, apparently. I never got past first base, then you snatched me off the market.”

“Sorry, honey.” She stretched to stroke his arm, digging with her shiny white nails.

“What was the deal, anyhow?” he said.

Ephandra shrugged.

“The medium slaughtered a cat. Slit its throat.”

“Ahem! Now that we’re all in the proper mood — thank you, Ephandra — I propose a toast,” Robert Gallows said.

I reached for the wine and Poindexter deftly snatched the bottle.

“Vinette did not touch a drop the evening of her, er. demise. Here, try the cider.”

“Sorry, dear.” Benson Gallows poured a glass of cider from a ceramic jug and set it near my left hand. “Absolutely no blood of the vine for you. We must not risk spoiling the ritual, hey?”

I gritted my teeth. Ten thousand dollars bought this cuckoo crowd a tiny bit of forbearance. I tasted the cider and nailed Beasley with my most reproachful glare. He wilted, then raised a glass of cider in a gesture of solidarity.

“Did you folks know that Sheriff Holcomb’s mom is a gorgon?” I said.

Victor sighed.

“The Gorgon. There’s only one. Von’s a liar.”

“Most definitely a liar,” Ephandra said. “The only creature that let his bloated sack of lard father touch her was a hick sheepherder maid from Butte. Probably not twice, either.”

Perkins the carpenter killed the electric lamps and the music. The chamber fell into shadow, illuminated by a candelabrum and the edge of the moon now shining through the screen in the roof of the tent. The moon burned with a ruddy light.

Robert Gallows tapped his glass with a spoon.

“I propose a toast — to the memory of those poor souls taken before their time, and to a reversal of our own prolonged misfortune. Thank you, Jessica Mace, for making this restoration possible.”

Everyone drank. Beasley rose, gave a courtly bow, and exited the tent. My mouth dried and I instinctively touched the crucifix before I realized what I’d done. Stupid, inane, social programming at its worst.

“Shall we begin?” Robert Gallows said. “Jessica, be so good as to stand over there — perfect. Victor, I cede the floor.”

Victor waited for complete silence.

“Join hands.” He inhaled deeply and blew out the candles.

Took a few moments for the moonlight to kick in.

“Milo,” Victor intoned. “Milo, are you with us, you scurrilous fuck? We’ve brought you an offering. Come among us and claim your prize, if you’ve the balls.”

Well. I am not too proud to admit this spiel caught me flatfooted.

Chairs creaked. A staccato thumping emanated from the table; it and the chair creaking grew louder, becoming violent. Knuckles, rings, and bracelets clacked against wood as the shadowy company trembled and twitched, caught in a mass seizure. Their spasms ceased and the enclosure fell silent.

Was this a con job? Or had they taken a psychotropic drug and were frying together? Damned weirdoes. The lovely vision of ten grand in a bag steadied me, although I was tempted to step forward and shake Ephandra, see if she was playing possum.

“Girl, that’s your cue,” Perkins said, inches from my elbow. He didn’t seem quite himself in the near darkness.

“Gah!” I thought about having a heart attack.

A dozen chairs squeaked as the company unfolded to their feet in a unified motion. All of them stood stock still and regarded me in eerie silence. Their eyes blazed white with captured fire from the moon.

Hell of a cue. I got going.

Outside, a cold breeze sliced through my barely there ensemble. I called upon my reserves of hardcore Alaskaness and merely shivered.

Stars flared and died. The moon burned a hole through the black and into my mind. I decided to heist a truck and haul ass for town, or anywhere directly away from the remnants of the carnival. Keys were in everything around here. I didn’t heist a truck. I decided to fetch my loot from under Beasley’s bed and ride shank’s mare in a straight line until I hit something like civilization. Didn’t do that either.

Sensible action slipped my grip. I walked toward a massive rectangular tent, domain of Hondo the Panther Lord, as I’d been instructed. My flesh tingled the way it does when I’ve gone over my limit of booze. Weird, since I hadn’t had a snort since early in the day. I wiggled my fingers and clucked my tongue to test the theory. All systems go.

An offering, Victor had said. A human sacrifice, he’d said. Okay, he hadn’t said that, merely implied it. How much danger was I in? My hair-trigger alarm system kept sending garbled messages that filtered through static. Meanwhile, there went my sun-darkened hand on the mesh screen, and there went my feet, bearing me into a den of beasts, and there awaiting my arrival, crouched Satan, golden-black in the glare of a kerosene lantern suspended from a hook.

I call her Satan because she smoldered with an inner radiance that I’d intuited from a thousand glimpses of the devil’s likeness in illuminated manuscripts of the holy and the occult. Her shadow spread across the floor and up the wall, massive and primeval and bestial.

Satan, a.k.a. Deputy Cooper, wore blu-and-white uniform pants streaked in dirt, and nothing else. Broad shouldered, narrow hipped, sinewy, her feet sank into a puddle of gory mud. Before her lay the carcass of her K-9 partner, its jaws caked in red. She’d skinned it with a flint knife from the Neanderthal King exhibit.

Deputy Cooper slowly pivoted and revealed that the dog had eaten some of her face before it died. No, I didn’t vomit, quite.

“Damnedest thing,” she said. “I was chilling in the cruiser. Baxter tore through his kennel and went right for me.”

I almost didn’t recognize the deputy, for obvious reasons. She’d also ditched the mirrored shades. Her shape twisted and thickened into steroid-fueled contortions. Her hands were bigger than Mary the Magnificent’s, and those long, sharp nails weren’t press-ons. She lacked much in the way of body hair. That was incongruous, I guess. Folklore and Hollywood have conditioned us to expect pointed ears and a fur coat.

We were alone in the tent. Earlier in the day, a crew had loaded the animals into traveling enclosures and cruised toward Idaho. Victor had said that the phantom of Milo wouldn’t require the meat of a panther or wolf. The only force acting upon the Black Magician was his lust for Vinette. All else was pantomime. The dog’s corpse and Deputy Cooper’s wrecked face suggested Victor might not have possessed total command of the facts.

None of this was following the script. Dead dog, mutilated cop, me armed and dangerous.

“Good fucking god, Deputy.” I pulled the derringer from my purse, aimed at her head, and cocked the hammer. The pistol felt like a toy in my fist, in the presence of evil. Had I believed in evil prior to this instant?

She drove the flint blade into the ground and straightened. Blood oozed over her breasts, painted her belly and thighs. The blood flow showed no sign of slowing. Black-gold blood.

“You smell. great,” she said through impressive canines.

“Thanks,” I said. “Get on the ground.”

She tilted her partial death’s head. Her eyes were bloodshot and yellow.

“I’m going to eat your whoring heart, Nettie.”

“Okay, lady.” I pulled the trigger, saw a tiny hole bore into the exposed bone of her skull. A wisp of smoke curled from the wound.

Deputy Cooper blinked.

“There’s mud in your eye,” she said.

Her arm looped around fast and smacked me across the chest. Oof, let me tell you. Back in junior high a kid walloped me full force with an aluminum bat. This felt kind of similar, except somebody had filled the bat with rebar and Babe Ruth slugged me with it. A flash of insight suggested that in a parallel reality, the blow had struck claws first and my insides had splashed all over the place.

I flew backward through the tent opening and landed on my ass. Here came the skull-faced wolf woman, striding toward me. Mary, dressed in her carnival tights that showed off a lot of grotesquely bulging muscles, stepped out of the shadows and clobbered her across the back of the neck with a steel wrecking bar. The steel clanged meatily. Deputy Cooper dropped to a knee and Mary hit her again like she was chopping into a log.

Deputy Cooper caught the bar on the third swing, ripped it from Mary’s grasp, and slung it away. She covered her ruined face with her hands and wailed. Neither woman nor animal should be able to produce such a cry. The kind of sound you experience once and hope to never hear again. The deputy shuddered and collapsed into a fetal position and remained still. She appeared to diminish slightly, to sag and recede, as if death had taken from her a lot more than twenty-one grams. Made me seriously reevaluate my contempt for the Catholic Church and its hang-up with demonic possession. Sir Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. In my humble opinion, that goes double for sufficiently advanced lunacy being indistinguishable from supernatural phenomena.

“I suppose that’s one way of solving the problem,” Mary said.

“Is it solved?” I said.

“The Gallowses will have to send a postcard with the news. I’m taking Lila away from here.”

Beasley’s mention of the sword swallower who got chopped to bits in Malaysia occurred to me. I kept it to myself.

“Thanks, Mary. Adios.”

She nodded curtly and walked away. Deputy Cooper lay there, one eye glistening as wisps of steam rose from her corpse.

I gained my feet and stumbled along the concourse. Dim lights peeped here and there from the recesses of shuttered stalls. The moon swallowed all else. I swear the moon resembled Deputy Cooper’s flayed skull, and it wouldn’t stay put, it rolled across the heavens to glare at me. I staggered to an empty squad car parked on the grass between the shooting gallery and a temporary-tattoo stall.

Yep, keys in the ignition, shotgun missing from the console rack. The interior reeked of wet fur. I jumped in, got her revving, and then floored it, barefoot on the cold pedal. I raced along the dirt road that curved away from the carnival. A veil of dust covered the sky and the damnable moon in my wake.

Crippling pain set in as the bouquet of survival chemicals polluting my veins diminished. Cracked ribs for sure, deep-tissue bruises in my back, everywhere. I’d bitten my tongue and jammed my neck. My feet hurt. It began to settle into my frenzied brain that I’d commandeered a patrol car, was mostly naked, had helped murder a sworn officer of the law, and worst of all, left ten grand behind. Perhaps I should turn around and retrieve the money, at any rate. Hard to split for parts unknown without a few dollars in one’s pocket.

That’s when the wheel wrenched in my hands. The cruiser slewed violently and I couldn’t work the pedals fast enough to avert disaster. It left the road at forty-five, flipped over, and skidded upside down until it came to a halt in the bushes.

The crash tossed me around inside the cab. Ruined my hair and tore my gorgeous dress all to shit. Might’ve loosened a tooth or two as well. I was partly stunned when Sheriff Holcomb got the driver-side door open and pulled me out and dumped me onto the soft ground without ceremony. He looked pissed. The pistol in his hand accentuated my impression of his mood.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” I said with groggy reproach.

“Jumping Jesus lizards,” he said. “My rig is totaled. Biggest clusterfuck I ever did see.”

“I bet you’ve seen a bunch too.”

He holstered his pistol with an expression of regret.

“What the hell are you doing in Coop’s car? Where is she? I heard a shot. What the fuck happened?”

“Easy, easy. Give her a second.” Beasley emerged from the gloom, rifle in hand. He knelt at my side and checked for broken bones. Contusions, mainly, but I didn’t mind the attention. While he worked, I closed my eyes and related the appalling tale of the past few minutes. I considered editing out the part where I put a slug into Deputy Cooper’s brain — admittedly, it might not have killed her, the wrecking bar swung by a carnival performer who could bench a grand piano was the most likely candidate. Once I started spilling, I couldn’t stop, though.

“Real sorry about your deputy,” I said at the end and wiped my eyes to emphasize the point. “Sorry about the dog, too. He was probably a good dog.”

Beasley stood and faced Sheriff Holcomb.

“Shut up, Von.”

“Screw you, Beasley. I didn’t say anything. She’s admitted—”

“To putting down a murderous psychopath. Damned good at it, isn’t she? All those bodies? I’m sure lab work is going to connect your girl to the crime scene.”

“Shit, man. We all were there. That scene is a mess.”

“Montana’s finest,” I said.

“Put things in order,” Beasley said. “Be the hero who solved the case.”

“Huh. Think the curse is broken?”

Beasley shrugged.

“Can’t see how it matters for you. If it is, you’re sheriff for life. If the situation remains unchanged, nobody outside of our circle is gonna remember anything in a week or two. Besides, there’s Jessica’s not-insubstantial fee. Check under my bed.”

“Yeah? How much.”

“Ten grand.”

“Beasley!” I said, too weak to jump up and slap him.

That did it. The clouds cleared from Sheriff Holcomb’s demeanor. He grinned.

“Okay, then. Okay.” He clapped Beasley’s shoulder. “Yeah, okay. Reckon I’ll mosey on back to camp and straighten everything out.”

Watching the predatory smirk and swagger of the sheriff, his easy acceptance of such a dramatic turn of events, was chilling. How many two-bit criminals had he left in the woods? How many hookers had he strangled and dumped along the highway?

I only exhaled when he tipped his hat and ambled toward town.

“Lean on me,” Beasley said. “I parked not far from here.” He half carried me to his truck and put me inside. He gunned the engine and got us moving.

“I can’t believe you gave that pumpkin-headed sonofabitch my cash.”

He chuckled.

“Von’s gonna be hot. It’s behind the seat.”

I relaxed. A hundred aches and pains faded into the background and I almost smiled. Didn’t last long — the dead cop’s face would haunt my dreams, or worse.

“Where to?”

“Home. Ride with me as far as you want.”

“Oh, is it that easy? We’re done? Weren’t you planning to trap the. spirit in that den? Sure Mary and I didn’t totally blow the whole deal?”

“I’m done is all I know. Gave it the college try. You look sort of spectacular in what’s left of that dress, in case nobody mentioned it yet.”

We continued in silence until we hit the interstate and turned east.

Beasley reached over and patted my scraped knee.

“Yep, it’s over. The moon feels different.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the last thing I’d seen before I booked out of there in Sheriff Holcomb’s cruiser was Deputy Cooper’s grinning corpse, or how its eyelid drooped in a ghastly wink.

Besides, Beasley was right. The moon did feel different. Surely it did.

I gave him a cheery smile and clicked on the radio. Hank Williams Sr.’s lost highway carried me into dreams.