Carnival World Boxed Set (Episodes 1-3) (2 page)

Looking down at her hand on his groin, Darien said, “Could you not do that?”

She must not have heard him. She just smiled at him, batting her long, dark lashes and still massaging his privates.

He grabbed her hand, stilling her movements, then pulled it out of his lap and set it in hers. “Can we wait ‘til later?”

“Fine.” She snatched her hand away from his. “Be that way.”  She kind of turned sideways, which proved difficult because the ride was moving so fast.

He glanced at her and saw that she was pouting. Her bottom lip was actually sticking out and down-turned, just like a little kid. Great, he thought, now he’d literally have to babysit her for the rest of the day.

Some fun carnival this turned out to be.

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J
ustin was laughing so hard his gut hurt. The ride was going so fast that he was crushing Maddie into the side of the car. She was laughing hard, too.

He liked seeing her happy. Lately she’d been moody and hard to be around. He knew it was because she was worried about Mom and Dad possibly getting a divorce. They’d been talking about it for months now. That was why he and Maddie were staying at their grandmother’s—so their parents could work their shit out.

Justin didn’t have the heart to tell Maddie the truth. The talking had stopped. The chances of their parents getting a divorce were high. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. At least the fighting would stop. He was sick to death of hearing it all the time.

This was why he’d been spending so much time out of the house. And he knew it bothered Maddie that he was gone so much. More and more, she’d been relying on him for stuff. Including friendship. He knew it was because of the problems at home. But it was wearing thin on him. Especially when his buddies at school teased him about it.

He hoped that once everything was resolved at home, Maddie would stop hanging on him. Because it was increasingly becoming a pain in the ass.

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D
arien was a jerk. Sometimes he was so mean to her, when all she wanted to do was make him happy. Isn’t that what a good girl was supposed to do, take care of her man? That’s what her mama always told her. Once you snag a good one, hold onto him anyway you can.

Maybe he didn’t think she was pretty anymore. She had been wearing her hair differently. She stroked a hand through her shoulder-length hair. She’d gotten it cut a month ago; it was too damn hot to be wearing all that thick, dark hair long down her back. Maybe he didn’t like it shorter.

She risked a glance at him to see if he was still mad at her. His eyes were closed and he had a half-smile on his handsome face. He looked like he was really enjoying the ride. The canvas top had come over the little car, encasing them like a cocoon.

She had to admit that it was rather peaceful underneath the canvas, just the two of them, as if no one else existed. She closed her eyes as well, to get the full effect of the ride’s dipping sensation. Maybe when she opened them again everything would be back to normal.

She worried that the summer would break them apart. For the past month she could already feel Darien pulling away from her. He had more excuses not to see her than reasons to be with her. Just last night, he’d given her some lame excuse to not come over and watch Duck Dynasty with her, something they had done on a regular basis. He claimed that he had to help his dad with something.

Everyone knew Darien’s dad didn’t do a damn thing. He was so rich, he hired people to do things for him. Nicole couldn’t imagine what his dad would ever ask Darien to do with him. It wasn’t like Darien had any chores to do around the house. He got everything he asked for. He never had to earn it.

Not like Nicole. She had to earn every damn thing she’d ever gotten. Including a boyfriend.

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H
is stomach was rolling over like the ocean waves he saw once. But it was a good feeling and not an icky one, like when he’d eaten too much Halloween candy. War Heads were his favorite, but he couldn’t eat many of them now without getting sick.

The ride was spinning really fast and he was smooshed into Summer’s side. At first he’d tried to stop himself from sliding across the seat and squishing her by holding tight to the end of the metal bar. But his hands started to hurt, so he let go. She didn’t seem to mind, though. She was laughing pretty hard.

So was he. This was an awesome ride and Summer was awesome for taking him to the carnival. She was a good sister. She always took good care of him when Mom couldn’t, which seemed to be a lot lately. He didn’t mind so much because Summer let him do stuff Mom didn’t. Like stay up past nine o’clock, or watch a scary movie that usually gave him nightmares. One night the two of them stayed up until ten and played video games. Summer even let him eat two hot dogs with French fries and soda. He had an awful stomachache that night, but it had been worth it.

His friends at school always talked badly about their sisters, if they had any. But not Sam. He never said anything bad about Summer. He liked her and she always made him laugh.

“This is the best ride ever!” he yelled.

Summer laughed, then threw her arms into the air and hollered at the top of her lungs, “Wahoo!”

He did it too and it made his stomach sink and reel even more. Then the ride started to slow down and he shouted, “Booooooo!”

Summer put her arm around him. “We can go again if you want.”

“Cool.”

The whirring of the ride’s engines spurted, then stopped, and its cars slowed even more. Sam didn’t want it to end, but he knew it couldn’t go on forever. Other people would want to ride.

The car slowed even more and after some creaking and groaning, finally came to a complete stop. Sam groaned but when he looked up, he noticed the canvas canopy was still overtopping the car.

“Hey, they forgot to lift the top,” he said.

Summer shuffled in the seat and lifted up a little so she could see over the car’s metal back.

“Do you think it’s broken?” he asked.

“Must be.”

A little kernel of fear started to bounce around in his belly. What if they were stuck in here? The air seemed to be getting hotter and thinner. Sam found he was having a hard time breathing.

He grabbed Summer’s arm. She looked down at him and frowned. “It’s okay, buddy. Nothing to worry about. They’ll fix it and we’ll be out of here.”

He nodded but he didn’t feel reassured. Something was wrong. He just knew it. He had the same sort of feeling he had the day before his hamster, Chuckles, died. It was a terrible ill feeling that made his stomach clench tight. The same type of clench he got right before throwing up. He once threw up spaghetti and long strands of it came out of his nose. It had burned something awful. He tightened his jaw, forcing down the urge to retch.

And that was when a bloodcurdling scream pierced the strange, unnerving silence.

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“
I
’m scared.”  Sam huddled into Summer’s side, gripping her arm with his little hands. The knuckles on his right hand turned white.

“It’s all right, Sammy,” she reassured him, even though her heart hammered so hard it hurt. That scream had rattled her right down to the bones.

“It’s not. Sumthin’s really wrong.”

She saw the terror in his pale face. She’d never seen him so frightened before, not even after watching Halloween 2.0 with her in the dark. His little body was even shaking.

“Okay. Let’s get this top off and we can see what’s going on.”  She tried to stand but Sam was glued to her so tightly she found it hard to move. He was shaking his head, eyes wide, lips pressed together so hard they were turning blue.

She grabbed his hands and tried to disentangle herself. “It’s okay, Sammy,” she tried again, “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I just need my arms so I can drag this canvas away, so we can get out.”

He was still shaking his head but his grip loosened a little and she was able to stand unhindered. Her head hit the canvas barrier. Leaning over the side of the car, she grabbed the edge of the fabric tube and pulled on it.

At first it didn’t move, but she pulled harder and it gave way. She was able to pull it up enough that she and Sam could get out. “Out you go,” she said to Sam as she held up part of the canvas.

He shook his head. “I don’t wanna.”

She sighed, running out of patience. “Sam, it’s fine. Just go.”

“It’s not fine. There’s something bad out there. There are monsters out there.”

“You’re being silly.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him across the seat toward the opening. “I don’t want to push you out, but I will.”

He struggled against her at first, but she gave him the look, the one that told him that she wasn’t playing, and he better do as he was told. He settled down. With a big sigh, he scrambled through the hole she’d made. She followed him out, not wanting him to be alone for more than a few seconds.

Standing, she brushed at her shorts (there was dirt and what looked like oil on them), then smiled down at Sam. “You see? Nothing to it.”

Except Sam wasn’t smiling. He was staring wide-eyed into the distance, his mouth gaping open. “I told you. I told you something bad was going to happen.”

She turned in the same direction to see what he was looking at, and wished she hadn’t.

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N
icole didn’t scream again, but as she clutched Darien’s arm she made mewling noises like an injured puppy would make. Her sharp nails were digging into his flesh. But he didn’t know how to tell her to stop. He wasn’t really sure he wanted her to. Maybe the pain zinging up his arm would wake him, because he was certain beyond all reason that he was dreaming. He had to be, because there could be no other explanation for what he was seeing.

After the ride had stopped and he and Nicole crawled out from under the canvas, Darien expected pandemonium as carnies rushed to fix the problem with the ride. He expected scowls and sighs of impatience from the people waiting in line to ride next. But that’s not what happened.

There were no carnies, not one. And there weren’t impatient people lined up to get on the caterpillar. Not one of those, either. In fact, there was nothing. Except the dustbowls that swirled around on the cracked and curled dirt ground surrounding the ride.

Darien looked around him as others emerged from underneath the caterpillar’s cocoon. There was Ryan, the strange kid from school, two other teens he didn’t know (a brother and sister, it looked like), and the last to come out were Summer and her younger brother. They all glanced around, vacant looks on their faces, just as confused and shocked as he was.

“What the hell is going on?”

This from the boy he didn’t know. He stepped up to stand beside Darien and Nicole. The girl he was with hung on to his hand. “Where is everyone?”

“I don’t have a damn clue,” Darien said. “It’s like everyone just upped and vanished.”

But it was clearly more than that. Not only was the carnival completely empty, except for the seven of them standing on the platform of the caterpillar ride, but it looked like everything around them was timeworn and deteriorating. As if years had passed instead of a few minutes.

The ground was hard-packed dirt, cracked, with pieces curling up like pale brown paper. It appeared to have not gotten water in years, not one drop, instead of the surprise downpour they’d had just a few weeks before. Where the ground cracked open, weeds and yellowing grasses jutted through. Not a lot though, because of the obvious lack of moisture. There were some weeds standing at least six feet tall near the other broken-down carnival rides. Like reedy plant people waiting to ride the Ferris wheel.

The buildings surrounding the caterpillar—like Game Alley, where Darien had been planning to try his luck at the shooting gallery, so he could win Nicole a giant, stuffed bear—had the look of old ramshackle shanties. In some places the white paint had peeled completely off, leaving the wood underneath, also cracked and aged, to show.

The Ferris wheel’s bars were rusty. Weeds crawled along the bottom of it like snakes. Some of the cars were hanging by one bolt, a slight breeze causing them to swing. The creaking sound was like nails on a chalkboard to Darien. It took all he had not to put his hands over his ears.

There was no other sound beyond that creaking, except for the few intakes of air from Summer’s little brother as he cried into her side.

She soothed him as best she could by drawing a hand over his head. It was probably something she learned from her mother. Darien’s mom did the same thing to his little sister when she was sad or upset over something. He wished his mother was here to soothe him right about now.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.” The freak Ryan leaned against the metal railing and lit up a cigarette. He blew smoke rings into the air as if this was just any other day to him. Maybe for him it was like that.

Darien had the sudden urge to walk over to Ryan and punch him in the nose. But he refrained. He felt like he needed to keep it together. Someone had to. Someone had to be tough and strong. A leader.

He just wasn’t certain he was up for the task.

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C
lutching Justin’s hand tight, Maddie stared at the emptiness around them. Her heart hammered in her throat. She’d never been so scared in her life. “It’s like an episode of The Twilight Zone.”

“What’s The Twilight Zone?”

Startled by the little voice, she whipped around to look at the little boy who spoke. He was pressed tight into someone she assumed was his sister. His eyes were wide and tears streaked his pale cheeks.

“It’s an old TV show where something weird always happens to some guy. One of the first episodes is about this guy who finds himself completely alone in a small town. There’s evidence that people once lived there, but he doesn’t find anyone.”

“What happened to him?”

“Find out he’d been hallucinating and he was actually an astronaut in isolation training for his trip to the moon.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say that we aren’t astronauts in some kind of training facility,” said the tall boy next to Justin.