Wild Ride (12 page)

“How about dinner tomorrow night?” he said, and she said, “Yes,” without even thinking about it, and stepped backward off the carousel, stumbling a little as it spun away from her, and then her foot hit something and she really stumbled, falling onto her butt as Joe called, “Mab?” and then disappeared with the carousel's rotation.

“I'm all right,” she began, and then realized what she'd fallen over was large and soft and . . .
“Joe!”

The carousel came around again, and he jumped off and came to offer her his hand as she rolled to her knees. She let him pull her to her feet, fumbling to turn on the light on her hat.

“What's wrong?” Joe said, and then she got the light on and saw she'd fallen over somebody passed out on the flagstone, a big bald guy.

“Another drunk from the Beer Pavilion,” she said, annoyed that their moment was ruined, and then Joe turned him over and she saw blank, staring eyes and a shirt ripped open to expose a black wavy mark on his flabby chest.

Mab screamed.

“That's Karl,” Joe said.

 

E
than lay in the dark in his sleeping bag, alone, a rock poking him in the back, and stared up through the leafless trees at the red lights flashing at the top of the Devil's Drop. He could still hear voices from the last of the beer tent diehards, singing “Alcohol” as they stumbled home and the park closed, but it was mostly peaceful, a good place to—

A scream cut through the air, and he was up and running. He made it down the midway and past the Mermaid Cruise and saw people ahead, a couple of gawkers and somebody bent over something on the ground. He sped up as a man straightened and ran for the park gate.

Ethan skidded to a halt, recognizing Mab as she started CPR, pressing the chest of the guy on the ground like a pro. “What happened?”

“I don't know,” Mab said, breathless as she kept on pulsing. “I just fell over him and called for help, then started CPR.”

Ethan put a hand on the man's throat. No pulse, no breathing. “Damn.” He shook his head, trying to clear the fog. “Stop for a minute,” he told Mab, and she did. Keeping the head tilted back, he leaned over, pinched the man's nose, covered the mouth with his own, and gave two breaths. Straightening, he said, “Go,” and Mab went back to compressing. “I need your cell to call 911.”

“Already did,” Mab said as she pushed. “Joe went to open the gate.”

Ethan nodded, waited for her to stop, then leaned over and gave two quick breaths. Mab took up the beat again as he straightened, and then he saw a wavering light approaching. Gus with a flashlight, leading Glenda and Delpha as they pushed through the growing crowd of drunken gawkers.

“EMTs are coming,” Ethan told Glenda.

Glenda's voice was ragged as she turned to Gus. “Go open the service gate on the bridge.”

“Joe's on it.” Mab kept pumping, but she was starting to flag.

“I'll take it,” Ethan said, and Mab leaned back so he could finish the compressions.

Ethan became lost in the rhythm of two and thirty, staring at the man's unconscious face until his beer-fogged brain realized it was the guy from the Beer Pavilion, the one Ashley had left with.

Glenda knelt next to Mab, the light in her hand, shining it on the man's chest as Ethan took his hands away on the thirtieth push.

“It won't do any good,” Glenda said. “He's gone.”

Ethan heard a siren. “Keep up the compressions,” he ordered Mab as he moved next to the man's head. Mab began again, and he could hear her counting under her breath. Then flashing lights reflected off the carousel mirrors as the ambulance skidded to a halt next to the small group. Two paramedics jumped out pulling a rolling stretcher with gear on it, and Ethan stumbled to his feet and out of the way, Mab with him, to stand next to his mother and Delpha, Frankie on her shoulder, unruffled by the chaos around them as the EMTs did their best to save what Ethan knew was a dead man.

“What the hell is going on?” Ray said from behind them, and Ethan turned to see him scowling at the EMTs as if it were their fault there was a body there. “What happened? Who is that?” He stepped forward and looked at Karl, first at his face and then at the mark on this chest, and stopped scowling. “What happened?”

“Somebody had a heart attack,” Mab said. “Somebody named Karl. That's all we know.”

“Who was he with?” Ray said, and Glenda looked at him sharply.

The EMTs were efficient, but they knew a waste of effort when they saw one. Within minutes, they had Karl loaded into the ambulance and were speeding off into the night, leaving an echoing silence.

Glenda turned to the crowd. “Nothing happened here,” she said.

People looked at each other, confused.

“Nothing happened here,”
Glenda said again, and the crowd began to disperse, staggering off home.

“A tragedy,” Ray said without expression, and turned and walked away.

“What was that mark on his chest?” Mab said.

Glenda looked into Mab's eyes. “Go back to the Dream Cream and go to sleep.” Mab looked confused, and Glenda leaned closer and said,
“Sleep.”

Mab yawned. “Okay.” She pulled her ugly canvas coat even tighter around her and yawned again. “If Joe comes back, tell him I went to bed.” She looked around at the group. “I'm so sorry. I don't know who to say that to, but I am.”

“Go sleep,”
Glenda said.

Mab nodded and walked toward the Dream Cream, the light from her miner's hat going before her.

Ethan dropped any pretense of normality. “What the hell is this?”

Glenda took out her cigarette pack and lighter. “He was killed by a demon.”

“Okay, enough,” Ethan said. “That's not funny—”

“I know,” Glenda said. “I tried to tell you this morning, but you wouldn't listen—”

“Look, you want a secret society, good for you, but some guy just
died
—”

“We know, Ethan. Tura killed him. Her mark was on his chest. Gus's going to run the Dragon, but we already know there'll be only three rattles.”

“Yeah, I better do that.” Gus shambled off toward the roller coaster.

Ethan looked at his mother and little Delpha, older than God, nodding in agreement beside her. Crazy. And Gus, going off to listen to roller coaster rattles. Crazy. All of them. Crazy—

“We've been waiting for our new Hunter,” Glenda said. “And now here you are. You've been called, Ethan, and you're going to have to answer because Tura will kill again if we don't put her back in her chalice.”

“Have you had a checkup lately?” Ethan said, trying to keep his voice respectful.

Glenda looked more tired than he'd ever seen her. “Get Gus when he's done with the Dragon and come to the trailer. We need you, Ethan.”

She turned and walked back down the midway, toward the Dragon and beyond that the trailers, Delpha by her side and Frankie flying overhead.

“Yeah, you do,” Ethan said, and went to get Gus.

 

W
hen Ethan and Gus got to Glenda's trailer, she was seated on one side of the banquette beside Delpha, smoking as usual. She surveyed him with the acuity of a mother. “Hangover. There's coffee in the pot.” She turned to Gus. “Three rattles?”

Gus was dejected. “Yeah.”

Ethan poured himself a cup that was as thick as mud and sat down on the banquette across from her as Gus pushed in beside her, making Delpha slide around to the back of the banquette.

The door opened, and Young Fred came in.

Glenda lifted her chin and looked Ethan in the eye. “I will explain this to you once more, and then we will plan. Dreamland is prison for five dangerous demons, the Untouchables: Kharos, Vanth, Selvans, Tura, and Fufluns. Forget bell, book, and candle; forget holy water; forget anything that sends them screaming back to hell—the only thing that can be done with these demons is to hold them. That's why the park was built. On an island in a river because demons can't cross running water. With us to guard the cells, maintain the park, and keep the world safe. We hold the Untouchables here in their chalice cells, inside their iron statues, and hell is not opened up on earth.”

“Hell,” Ethan said, skeptical.

“They feed on emotional pain,” Glenda said. “They create it and then harvest it, using humans like cattle, feasting on their hopelessness and depression and despair. The last time all five of them got out, an entire town in Italy was wiped out; some went mad and murdered their neighbors, others killed themselves. The Untouchables were moving on to other towns when the Guardia finally recaptured them. We can't let them get out again.”

“When was this?” Ethan said.

“Eighteen ninety.” Glenda nodded to the others. “There are five Untouchables and five Guardia. The Guardia are sworn to defeat the demons and support each other, bonded until death. Young Fred is the Trickster, I'm the Sorceress, Delpha's the Seer, and Gus is the Keeper. Hank was our Hunter until he ran his car into that tree. That's when you were called, Ethan. You're our Hunter now.”

“Too bad.” Young Fred looked at Ethan with a mixture of respect and pity. “Sorry, dude.”

Ethan frowned at Young Fred. He was a wiseass, but he hadn't seemed nuts. “You believe this stuff?”

“It's true,” Young Fred said. “We're as trapped as the demons. We're stuck here for eternity.”

Ethan nodded. They were all crazy. “So you have this . . . club,” he began carefully.

“The Guardia,” Glenda said. “For twenty-five hundred years, the Guardia held the Untouchables in Italy until 1925 when a betrayer sold the five chalices that held them to an idiot American art collector. The Guardia followed the chalices here in time to save the collector from one of the demons. The collector built the park here on a place of power and gave it to the Guardia to keep the world safe, and we've been here ever since. When one of us dies, another is called to take his or her place. That's why you came home. You were called. On the twenty-ninth of July when Hank died.”

Ethan took a deep breath. His headache was getting worse.

Glenda snapped her lighter and drew on the cigarette until the end glowed red. Then she shut the lighter. “The Untouchables will make their move on Halloween at midnight, All Saint's Eve, when the borders between the earth and the underworld grow thin and their powers grow stronger. If all five get out, they will have their full strength and can assume their true forms, and then . . .”

“We're fucked,” Young Fred said. “I vote we all go somewhere else.”

Ethan scowled at Young Fred. “Why are you helping them with this farce?”

“It's not a farce, it's real.” He smiled without humor. “Welcome to the Guardia. It's a life sentence.”

“It's a calling,” Delpha said sharply, and Frankie fluttered his wings, evidently annoyed, too.

“Yeah, and how many of your ninety-odd years have you been called?” Young Fred said. “Do you even remember normal life? Because I do.”

“Stop it,” Glenda snapped at him. “There are demons in the park killing people. You can whine when the park is safe again.”

Ethan stood up. “You're trying to tell me that Ashley's a demon and she killed that guy?”

“Not Ashley, but Tura possessing Ashley,” Glenda said.

“Demons possess people,” Gus said, sounding as if there was an
of course
attached. “Take over anybody close to them. They can't find a person, they'll take something else, like the FunFun statue. The clown's named after him. Fufluns. FunFun. See?”

“Yeah, that proves it,” Ethan said. “Especially since it's iron and you said demons can't touch iron.”

Glenda glared but kept her voice level. “All the statues are made of wood, it's just the outsides that are iron. When Mab put that flute in the carousel clown's hand, it opened the back of the FunFun statue down by the gate. I tried to stop her, but I couldn't get her off the roof in time. That wouldn't have been that bad, he'd still have been held in his chalice, but the lid had broken from all the times his statue had been knocked around, so he used the statue to find a host, got out through the open door in the back and possessed somebody, and then went to let Tura out. He always does.”

“Why didn't he let them all out?” Ethan said, tired of humoring them. “Go ahead and take the town, get it over with?”

“The other keys weren't in place,” Glenda said. “I think they're waiting for Halloween.”

Halloween.
“I get it,” Ethan said, angry now. “This is some stunt you've cooked up for Screamland. Because the
media
will be here. Well, thanks a whole hell of a lot for screwing around with me—”

“Ethan,”
Glenda began, angry now, and Young Fred said,
“Hey,”
and Ethan looked down at him.

“Watch,” Young Fred said, and changed into Gus. It wasn't a very good Gus, the edges wavered, but it was definitely not Young Fred. Then he changed back. “Like me to be something else? I take requests.”

That was not real
, Ethan told himself. “I'm tired, I have a hangover. I'm not trusting my eyes.”

“Sure,” Young Fred said. “Why believe what you can see? Especially since it's an illusion.” Ethan glared at him and he added, “I don't change. You just think I do.”

Ethan turned to look at Glenda. “So Fred does impressions. Good for him—”

Glenda held up her left hand and spread her fingers and flames appeared on the end of each one. She put her cigarette into the middle of one of them and drew on it, and the end glowed to life. Then she inhaled and sat back, shaking her fingers to put the flames out.

“What the hell?” Ethan said.

“Illusion,” Glenda said, and showed him the end of her cigarette, unlit and unsinged. “I'm a sorceress. I can make you see things that aren't there, make you believe things that aren't real.”