Pathetic. At that I felt an explosion of rage. Mephit was not pathetic. He was an avatar of ancient evil! How dare they!
Without pausing to think, I leaped out of the alcove as their carriage swung into view. With an eldritch scream, I hurled my slushie at the oncoming carriage.
There was a bellow of rage. The carriage jerked to a halt, and I found myself staring into the angry, scarlet-soaked faces of my uncle Walter and his stepson, Lucas, the boy who’d thrown up on me ten years ago.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, I was still in shock. Uncle Walter had ushered me into the well-appointed trailer he’d driven onto the fairground. I had to admit, it was fancy. The walls were real wood paneling, and there was gleaming chrome and brass everywhere.
Uncle Walter helped me onto a velvet sofa while Lucas disappeared, glowering, down the hallway to wash off the slushie. A door banged closed and then a shower turned on.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“Nonsense.” Uncle Walter looked like a picture of my dad taken with an unfocused lens. Everything about him was sort of blurry, including his blurry brownish eyes and indistinct jawline. His hands were pink and soft. “A girlish prank. Nothing to apologize for.”
More thumping came from the back of the trailer. Lucas had stalked behind us all the way from the Tunnel of Terror, refusing to look at or speak to me. He’d taken the full force of the cherry-flavored ice. Uncle Walter had been spattered, but Lucas looked like he’d been slaughtering Muppets.
Uncle Walter leaned forward. “I hope you can think of me as a second father.”
“My father’s not dead.”
“Well, no. I didn’t mean as a replacement. More just … as an addition.”
“Can’t I think of you as an uncle?” I asked hopefully.
At that moment, Lucas stomped out into the living room. He was scowling and pulling on a T-shirt. I’m an honest kind of girl, so I’ll admit I stared. He was wearing low-slung jeans and a gray, much-washed concert tee that clung to him in all the right places. I hadn’t noticed his muscles, on the walk back from the Tunnel, or the fact that he had jet-black hair and green eyes, my favorite combination. A silver chain with all sorts of lockets and pendants on it was slung around his neck, but the jewelry didn’t make him look girly. Quite the opposite.
I shut my mouth, not wanting Uncle Walter to catch me leering at his stepson. I didn’t remember Lucas having blazing sex appeal from the last time we’d met, but nobody looks their best when they’re throwing up on you.
“You ruined my shirt,” he said. “My favorite shirt.”
“Lucas,” Uncle Walter said. “Lulu has been through a time of personal tragedy. Don’t you think we should be generous?”
Lucas thought about it. “No.”
Someone knocked on the door. Scowling, Lucas opened it. It was Strombo, the animal trainer. Mostly he was in charge of the cats—the lions and tigers—but he also trained the rats to perform the Dance of Death. People get really freaked out by rats; I don’t know why. I like them, myself.
“Boss,” he said, and I saw with a pang that he was looking at Uncle Walter. My dad had always been boss. “We’ve locked up for the night. Everyone’s gathered in the tent for the meeting.”
“Thank you, my good man,” Walter said. “I’ll be there momentarily. I’m sure they’ll find what I have to say about the future direction of the carnival … inspiring.”
“If you say so, boss.” Strombo was about to leave when Walter placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll be inspecting the animals tomorrow.” Walter’s voice dropped. “I’ll be deciding which stay and which go. Prepare yourself for a new regime.”
Strombo looked worried. He never let go of any animals, not even Throckmorton, the toothless panther. And he probably didn’t know what regime meant.
There was an awkward silence when the door shut behind Strombo. Walter heaved himself to his feet. He was a skinny guy, but he gave the impression of someone with a weight on his shoulders. “I need the trailer to myself for a moment. Lulu, Lucas, perhaps you can show yourselves to the tent for the meeting.” He chuckled. “Lulu and Lucas. Sounds like you were made for each other!”
My cheeks grew warm. Lucas glared. His hair was still dripping. He reminded me of a cup of coffee: wet, hot, and bitter. I tried to decide if it was immoral to lust after your step-cousin. I figured it wasn’t. We weren’t actually related. No shared blood.
I bounced up off the couch. “Not a problem.”
* * *
It was a perfect summer night, with fireflies blinking in the fields surrounding the carnival. I led Lucas toward the center of the fair, taking my own zigzag path between the stands.
“When did you get here?” I asked, after a few beats of silence. Mostly because I was desperate for something to say. He was looking around, expressionless, taking in the sights. Carnivals are creepy after hours, and dark carnivals are doubly creepy. Shadows drifted eerily between the tents.
“A couple hours ago,” he said. The last customers, girls in tank tops and boys in shorts, were filing out of the gates. The grass was littered with empty popcorn boxes, napkins, and ice cream cones, though it would all be cleaned up by morning. “So do the people coming here think it’s make-believe? Or real?”
“They think what they think.” I shrugged. “Do they think they’re really drinking blood and seeing vampires and watching Strombo get eaten by a lion? They have to not believe it, or it’d be too scary.”
“So is it dangerous? Do people get killed?”
“Of course not!” I was mortally offended. “My dad always said it takes a lot of magic to make something real look fake in the right way.”
Lucas shook his head, his dark hair falling in his face. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, if you don’t like ghost brides or the sinister sounds of giggling children, there’s always the Tunnel of Love.” I pointed toward its sparkling entrance, a dot of bright pink in a sea of dark.
He smiled. It changed his whole face. My heart bumped. “What’s the story there?”
“They drizzle love potion through the air,” I said, as we paused at the Snack Shack. I unlocked the little gate that blocked off the space behind the counter and went in. “Not too much. Just enough to make you feel affectionate.”
I fished around in the big steel refrigerator until I found what I was looking for—a red slushie, premade—and fitted a lid onto it.
Lucas watched me with his eyebrows drawn together. “Are you thirsty?”
“Not exactly.”
“Didn’t get to finish your previous slushie because it ended up all over my face?”
“You were talking crap about the carnival.” I headed back out into the night. “No one talks crap about the carnival. Also, the last time we met, you threw up on me, so we’re even.”
“I threw up out of nerves,” Lucas said. “I was a nervous child.”
We passed by the Mysterious and Macabre Museum of Mirrors. When I was a kid, it had been my favorite attraction, with its many corridors lined with shining reflective surfaces leading to a massive central square of huge mirrors that showed you tall and short, doubled and cut in half, old and young. Now I tried not to focus on any of them if I had to go in there. Their silvery faces could surprise you, and not in a good way.
“What were you nervous about?” I asked. The merry-go-round loomed up under the moon. The horses were snarling, rearing, terrified. The rounding boards and central cylinder were painted with a pattern of screaming faces.
It was a good place to come and be alone and think.
Lucas looked incredulous. “The terrifying demon your dad was shoving me in front of?”
I laughed. “That was Mephit. I thought you said he was pathetic.”
Lucas’s incredulity only grew. “Mephit’s your carnival demon?”
So Lucas knew more than I thought. The real truth is, every dark carnival has a familiar. A demon. A real one is the
heart of a carnival, powering its darkness, infusing attractions with a sense of menace and the customers with jumpy nerves.
“That’s right.” I hopped onto the carousel and wove between the horses to get to the central cylinder. It glittered with light when the carnival was open, but it was dark now. I knocked on a central panel and it popped open, revealing a descending staircase. I was halfway inside when I turned around to look at Lucas. “You coming?”
He shrugged a resigned shrug and followed me in.
The staircase led to a hastily dug area, lit with a couple generator-powered lamps. It was hot down here, even on the ledge. The pit underneath the ledge was hotter still.
“Mephit!” I called. “Mephit, dinnertime!”
Lucas looked horrified, though to his credit, he stood his ground. “You’re going to feed me to the demon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, as Mephit uncurled from the depths.
It’s hard to describe a demon—they all look different, and they all look like nothing else on earth. Mephit most closely resembled a giant hairless cat with huge blue eyes and triangular ears. If, you know, a hairless cat had a snout full of fangs and black bat’s wings and a long, scaly tail that slapped the ground impatiently. I held out the red slushie. Unlike the others sold in the Snack Shack, this one really was made with blood. Cow blood, but Mephit didn’t mind. As long as it was cold, he liked it fine. His tongue shot out like a frog’s and nabbed the cup from my hand. He swallowed it in one gulp, crunching the bloody ice between his teeth, and grinned.
“Whoa,” Lucas said, as I scratched Mephit between the ears. He felt like warm rubber. Mephit had been around long enough that he’d developed a fondness for humanity. Lucas edged closer. “Can I … pet him?”
“Sure,” I said, surprised. I backed away, and Lucas approached Mephit, rubbing him gently on the nose and between the ears. A purr rose up like the sound of a rusty motor. Blazing sex appeal and Mephit liked him? I was in trouble.
* * *
We were late to Uncle Walter’s big speech in the main tent, and I could feel his glare as Lucas and I arrived. The carnival staff sat in the bleachers, looking grim. Otto winked at me, but I could tell he was in a bad mood. The clowns were holding each other and crying. Strombo was crouched on the floor with Throckmorton. Ariadne glanced over at us and gave Lucas an appraising look.
Walter stood before an enormous square that was covered in a velvet drape. “And so,” he was saying, “this is the beginning of a brand-new day for Walter’s Darke Carnival of the Unnatural, Unreal, Frightful, and Grotesque.”
Reggie raised his hand.
“Yes, my good man?” Walter asked. I was beginning to suspect that he called everyone that to avoid remembering their names.
“That’s great and all,” Reggie said hesitantly, “but how will we get that much power? I mean, you’re talking big stuff, really evil stuff. It’s out of our league, you know? You’d need the demon equivalent of a ten-ton generator.”
Walter smirked. “Fortunately, we have just that.” He whipped the cover off the cage. It was a real carny gesture, I’ll give him that. “Meet Azatoth!”
Lucas put his hands on my shoulders as if he was worried I would scream. I didn’t, though his hands felt nice and warm.
The thing in the cage wasn’t that huge, but it was sleek and slippery and sharklike in a subtle, unpleasant way. Unlike most demons, it didn’t have claws or stingers or anything like that, just featureless steely-gray skin and a body that ended in a head that was all mouth. The teeth looked like they’d been found in a dozen different places. Jagged teeth, pointed teeth, teeth like ice picks, teeth made out of broken glass. Its eyes were black and dead as pits on the moon. They made me feel dizzy. Dizzy and a little sick.
Otto stood up. “No.”
Walter gave him a dark look. “What do you mean, no?”
“That’s a Keres demon.” Otto picked up his jacket, slung it on. “No good ever comes from running a carnival on that kind of energy. There’s dark, and then there’s evil, and they ain’t the same.”
I thought of my dad. But the price you pay for that kind of evil, Lulubee … that’s a high one.
Walter’s face soured. “Does anyone else feel that way? Because you’re quite welcome to follow Mr.—”
“Otto,” Otto said.
“Mr. Otto right out that door,” he said. “Just don’t expect to ever come back.” There was something slippery and cold in his voice. As if he’d learned to talk just like his demon looked.
A few people scrambled to their feet. Ariadne rolled her chair out, her head held high. Strombo followed Otto, carrying Throckmorton. Overall, though, it was fewer people than I would have thought. Most everyone stayed put. Curious, maybe—or maybe, like me, they didn’t have anywhere else to go.
* * *
Lucas walked me back to my trailer. The rest of the staff shambled off to their own trailers and tents, looking like zombies.
As we crossed the midway, I saw Walter in the distance, leading Azatoth on a long, black metal leash that shimmered in the moonlight. He ushered him toward the structure I’d noticed earlier, the weird brushed-metal dome near his trailer that gleamed like a spaceship.
“Where did your dad get Azatoth?” I asked.
“Not my dad,” Lucas said. “My stepdad.” There wasn’t any hostility in it, though; he just sounded sad. “I don’t know. After my mom died, he was restless. He drove around a lot, disappearing at night. I thought maybe he was depressed. Then he came home with Azatoth. Said he wanted to get back into the carnival business. It was the first time he looked happy since she died.”
“Was that before my dad left?” I asked.
He nodded. “Walter was looking forward to setting up his own show, but when he heard about your dad, he said we should come back here, make sure you were okay. He said he’d always loved this place.”
I knew I ought to feel grateful. But I couldn’t. Everything was changing, and not in ways I wanted it to change. “I’m sorry about your mom. My dad, he’s still alive but—I know what it feels like to lose someone.” I swallowed, and the next words spilled out of me. “Having somebody leave you like that on purpose, you end up asking yourself what you did. To make them go.”
His eyes softened. “Nothing. You didn’t do anything.” He paused. “Is this your place?”
We’d reached my trailer. It wasn’t hard to spot. Otto had spelled out Lulu in gold glitter paint along the sides. I had a brief urge to invite Lucas in, maybe sit and talk, but he was already turning away.
“Night, Lulu.” He touched my arm lightly and disappeared into the shadows.
* * *
The carnival changed a lot over the next few weeks.
Carnivorous mermaids were installed in a massive tank, with a sign that read “Brand-New Attraction.” Our happy evil clowns were replaced by clowns who carried carving knives and had a murderous gleam in their eyes. Walter hired a hag with bleeding cheeks and a howling screech to roam the carnival warning people about death. Couples emerged from the Tunnel of Terror looking groggy, bite marks on their necks. Ticket prices were jacked up one hundred percent. We were making money—lots of money—but it didn’t feel good.
I stuck to my job at the Snack Shack, but I started to see something different about the customers buying hot dogs and Cokes. Their hands shook. There was a genuinely haunted look in their eyes. Some of them were crying, especially the ones who’d staggered out of the Museum of Mirrors.
As they exited the carnival, trembling and shocked, they’d pass Walter, who would grin and hold out a hand to shake. “You had a good time,” he’d say. “Tell your friends.” And they’d nod, looking convinced, their eyes as blank and dark as Azatoth’s.
These days I was keeping a stack of college brochures under the counter. I’d always planned to enroll in business classes online and then take over the carnival from my dad. I wanted to update it, brighten the place up, maybe bring in some fireworks and
dancing and technology—nothing too weird, just a little modernization. But now I was wondering if I’d have anything to come back to. The smiling young people on the brochure covers seemed to mock me—would they get where I’d come from? Would they think I was weird? How would I fit in with them? And, even more importantly, who would pay for me to go?
There was only one bright spot in the summer. Every night, Lucas came with me to feed Mephit. Walter hadn’t tried to move Mephit, but now that Azatoth was powering the carnival, there wasn’t much for our old demon to do. Lucas and I would scramble into the merry-go-round and climb down to Mephit’s pit with his cup of icy blood. He would open his glowing blue eyes and stare at us sadly, like he missed being the heart of the fair. Like he missed Dad and how things used to be.
I would pet him on the nose. “You’re not the only one.”
After that, Lucas and I would go and talk. It wasn’t a planned thing, but something about having him around made me realize how much I didn’t know what normal teenage girls were like. Sometimes, when they watched their boyfriends lose games on the midway and stamp and swear, they’d look over at me, and our eyes would catch for a rueful second. Then I liked them, and I’d think about what it would mean to go to high school in a real building and not online.
But I didn’t long for it. I’d grown up in the dust and smell and music of the carnival, and that was home to me. It was why those college brochures scared me so damn much, but it was also why I looked forward to the nights, when I could talk to Lucas.
We’d sit on the dry grass under the big summer moon, eating shaved ice from the Snack Shack, or sticky-sweet cotton candy. We had an unspoken pact not to talk about anything related to our parents or the carnival. We talked about music—I knew some, because it blared from the speakers of the rides—and about the places we’d been. I’d been all over America, seen every state, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Tappan Zee.
Lucas had been all over the world. He told me about the Eiffel Tower and I told him about the Paris casino in Las Vegas. He told me about Stonehenge and I told him about Carhenge. He told me about eating lemon gelato on the Amalfi Coast and I told him about the oil spill I’d seen on the Gulf Coast. I found out that he laughed a lot, actually, and he was good at making me laugh, too. Enough that I didn’t mind that sometimes we were up so late I’d see the sunrise.