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  Mr R S Barnett was shutting the circus down. It was hasty, thought Joel. A bad decision, the wrong decision. The circus was a wonderful thing, full of lights and music, life, laughter.

  “Mr Barnett, please,” said Joel. He held his hands out, pleading, to Barnett’s retreating back. To his credit, Barnett stopped, sighed, and turned around.

  “For God’s sake, Joel,” he said. “There’s been a murder. We can’t go on. We can’t.”

  The Great Barnett Show. Full of life, and laughter.

  Full of death and screaming.

  The night was cold and the sky was clear. Joel lay on the grass in the middle of the dark carnival, stared at the stars, wondered what he was supposed to do now. In his waistcoat pocket, the Double Eagle his daddy had given him felt heavy and cold. His imagination, of course. But it was his lucky coin, and when he carried it his daddy walked with him.

  Maybe the lucky coin was trying to tell him something.

  A star fell, high above the circus, a cat scratch of white against the heavens that faded almost as quickly as it appeared. And then another, larger, brighter, flaring for a second. And then it too was gone.

  Falling stars. They were either good luck or bad, depending whose folklore you followed. Joel hadn’t grown up with much in the way of folklore, or religion. When his daddy marched to war and never came back, it didn’t seem much like there was a god smiling down on His creation.

  Or maybe there was, and maybe it was a cruel and capricious master and the world and the people in it were merely toys, a distraction.

  Joel wasn’t sure he believed that. He didn’t believe in much.

  Not since the voice had started whispering in his ear.

  Well, no, it wasn’t a voice, he thought as he stared at the starry sky. It was a feeling, like there was someone over your shoulder, leaning in to mutter secrets. A breath in the ear and a tickle of hair. But there was nobody there. Joel was alone – always had been, ever since his daddy had left – and there wasn’t a voice, not really. It was the memory of a voice, like he’d been told something long, long ago in a conversation that had never happened, and then it swam back into his mind, making him dizzy like a dose of the déjà vus.

  It had started in Oklahoma. The thing he found, buried in the ground. The thing that had come from far, far away – from the stars, perhaps. Although he wasn’t really sure how he knew that for a fact, not really.

  Maybe there was something in the stories about falling stars bringing luck. Good or bad, maybe both. Comets too. Comets were omens, portents, inscrutable somethings that arced across the sky, seeding cold evil from stars wherever they traveled.

  It had told Joel how to build the machines. There was no instruction, no command; Joel just knew what he had to do, and he had an urge to do it like he had an urge to eat or drink or breathe or sleep. It was part of him. It had told Joel to cut the stones from the cave until he had two shining jewels, the red gems which were now the eyes of the carved wooden monkey which sat as the centerpiece of the carnival’s star ride, the great carousel.

  Joel turned his head on the grass, and looked toward the carousel. It was dark and still, but in the center he thought he could see the eyes of the monkey glowing softly in the night. Then he blinked and the red light was gone, and he returned his attention to the sky above.

  He never staked his claim in Oklahoma. He abandoned the territory. Traveled to Philadelphia, although he didn’t know why. Found Mr R S Barnett, although he didn’t know why. Started building the machines, started painting them with stars and planets and moons and comets. Didn’t know why, but he knew he had to. Carved the gems out of the cave rock. Carved the monkey.

  The moon was rising, brightening the sky, blotting out the stars. That annoyed Joel. He wouldn’t be able to see any more falling stars.

  The machines were carnival rides. Barnett had paid for them, given Joel a workforce, funded a workshop. It was simple enough to Joel. He knew just what to do and how to do it. Barnett had been happy. More than happy. No one in the whole wide world would have pleasure machines like his new circus show. Barnett had thanked Joel, given him money, offered him a partnership.

  But Joel didn’t need money. He had no interest in the business of the place. All he had interest in was his machines and their running. His machines, and the power that lived within them. Like a hermit crab in a new shell.

  The circus had opened and the crowds had been wowed, been delighted, been entertained and enthralled and sent home with happy memories and music playing in their ears. Barnett had been happy. Very happy.

  Joel too. The machines ran. People were amazed. So many lights, so many colors, all planets and stars and comets.

  Then there had been the first accident. A girl, aged eight, had been crushed by one of the carnival rides. She’d fallen from a spinning car, and had got stuck in the gears of the machine. The mechanism had continued to operate, obstruction or not, and there hadn’t been much left of the girl when they’d managed to stop the ride. Joel remembered the great gears lubricated with blood, so much blood. Barnett was a rich man and had paid the family a fortune. The circus continued, and the news stayed quiet. Nobody would know about the first accident.

  But they would learn about the second. Another woman, older this time. She’d fallen from the top of the Ferris wheel and had hit the frame at the bottom. The impact had split her nearly in two. Barnett hadn’t been able to pay his way out of that one, but he had greased the wheels of the press. It was no accident – it had been suicide. The woman had been disturbed. She had planned it all. So the papers said.

  Maybe she had. Or maybe the machines of the carnival wanted more.

  There were more accidents. None fatal, and most – a half dozen, at least – happening to workers and carnies. This suited Barnett, because he owned his employees like he owned his circus, and it was easy to keep trouble away with a steady flow of money brought in by the customers who enjoyed the show, oblivious to the blood spilled within its perimeter.

  And then the carnies wouldn’t work in the carnival, sticking instead to the Big Top, to the animals, preferring even the man-eating lions and tigers to being around Joel’s machines and rides. There was evil there, some said. Carnies were superstitious. Joel was not. But he knew they were right. Barnett said he didn’t believe them, but Joel knew he did. He had felt it too.

  The carnival was alive. More than that.

  The carnival was hungry.

  As fewer and fewer workers would go into the carnival, leaving Joel to manage the machines and rides on his own, so the accidents ceased.

  The carnival was hungry. Joel knew it, like he knew how to find Barnett, like he knew that he needed to build the machines to host the empty cold nothing that had fallen from the stars. It didn’t need blood. The machines didn’t feed on human flesh. No, the machines fed on terror and horror – the feelings, primal instincts and emotions. That was why it had shown Joel how to build the machines, because the machines generated fear, a little at a time, controlled but genuine enough. The thing from the stars fed on fear.

  Fed on death.

  And it was hungry. And then had come the murder.

  The victim was a clown, one of a troupe of two dozen. Some had left, reducing the group to numbers too thin for Barnett’s magnificent show. So Barnett showed some of his famous money around and soon the troupe was back up to strength.

  With any newcomers, there are tensions. For circus performers, perhaps it’s worse, because circus life is hard and so are the carnies who live it. One of the new clowns laughed at the warnings not to go into the carnival. One of the mechanics took exception to this. They fought while others looked on, carnies baying for blood, like animals. Joel had been tending his machines at the time.

  The mechanic killed the clown in front of everyone, and had fled, the crowd – suddenly dazed, as though released from some evil spell – allowing him his freedom.

  That was the final straw. The circus was finished. Barnett wa
s packing it up, and everyone, everyone knew that it was because of Joel and his carnival machines.

  Everyone knew.

  Footsteps approached. Joel blinked, his eyes dry. He rolled onto his stomach, and saw a shadow move, ducking between two rides, trying to keep hidden. Not someone from the circus, then. Someone else, sneaking around. A thief, perhaps.

  “Hey!” yelled Joel. The night was silent, the circus performers sleeping in their tents. They wouldn’t hear him. After the fight, after the way they had all fallen under some weird spell that left them spitting and snarling for blood, they’d all gone quiet, everyone keeping to themselves, perhaps ashamed of their blood lust. Perhaps afraid at what had, momentarily, seemed to take them over.

  Joel walked over to the edge of the carnival. Toward the Ferris wheel, one hand inside his jacket, on the handle of his daddy’s gun. The fingers of the other hand played over his daddy’s coin in the pocket of his waistcoat.

  The shadows didn’t move. Joel stepped closer, peering into the gloom. The moon was doing a fine job of illuminating the circus and the carnival machines, but the shadows the rides cast were deep, as black as the sky above.

  Joel pulled the gun, its silver shining in the moonlight. “Come out. You have no business here, my friend. None at all.”

  The shadows moved and resolved into a man. His clothes were rough, tattered, and he wore a kerchief around his neck, his face streaked with grease.

  “Come back to the scene of the crime, then?” asked Joel. At this, the other man smirked. In one hand he held a cloth cap, which he batted impatiently against his leg.

  Alexander Harrison. Mechanic. One of the workshop men Barnett had employed to help Joel with the upkeep of the carnival machines. The man who had picked a fight with a clown and won.

  “There’s evil here, Duvall,” said Harrison, his eyes sharp and bright in the moonlight. “You know it, and I know it.” He nodded toward the carousel, his eyes wide. Joel followed his gaze, saw the red eyes of the monkey glowing.

  Joel smiled and turned back to Harrison. He cocked his head, kept the gun level. “Maybe you’re right. But then so says every man who has stolen the life of another, I suppose.”

  Harrison took a step forward, not apparently inconvenienced by the weapon pointed at him. “That wasn’t me, Joel! I swear it. I was like, I don’t know, like–”

  “Like you was possessed, I suppose you’re going to tell me. Like you weren’t yourself and you couldn’t remember. A moment of insanity that clouded your vision.”

  “It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t.”

  “Oh,” said Joel. He lifted the gun, pulled back the hammer. He wasn’t afraid, wasn’t worried. He had the gun, and Harrison was a man on the run.

  But there was something else. The coin buzzed in his pocket like a trapped bee.

  Had Harrison heard the voice? He’d spent as much time among the carnival machines as Joel had. Maybe more. Had the cold dark thing touched his mind as well?

  Harrison snarled and leapt forward, grabbing Joel’s gun arm and forcing it up. Joel slid his finger from the trigger for safety. Harrison was strong – he’d hammered most of the carnival into shape himself – and he growled like the lions that slept in the cages on the opposite side of the Big Top.

  Joel hit the ground on his back, Harrison on top of him. There was a light in Harrison’s eyes, something red and bright that might have just been a reflection of one of the lights on a carnival ride, if the lights had been on. But they weren’t – the carnival was dark – the only light a flare like a falling star from the black center of the carousel, from where the monkey with the gemmed eyes sat, watching in silence. A moment later the light was gone.

  They scuffled on the ground, grunting, kicking up dirt and dust. Joel brought his gun arm in, sticking the barrel into Harrison’s stomach. Harrison was already grabbing Joel’s wrist, twisting his body sideways, out of the way. Joel screamed with the effort; then his wrist cracked. The gun was pulled from his hand, and Harrison scrambled backward in a crawl, then stood.

  Joel stood, held his hand out.

  “I know the power, friend. I know what it is you feel, what it is you hear. I hear it too. I feel it in my very bones. And I know what that power wants.” He took a step forward. “I know what you–”

  Harrison fired. The bullet entered Joel’s head through his left eye and removed most of the back of his skull. Joel toppled to the ground. In his dead hand was the gold coin, burning cold, humming like something electric.

  The second gunshot brought him back. Joel coughed and opened his eyes. He took a breath that was cold, cold. The world looked different. Brighter, like there was a light shining to his left. Unsure of where he was, he turned his head, and the light moved with it. He closed one eye, opened it, closed the other. Something was wrong with his left eye. The world looked different through it.

  He uncurled his outstretched hand. The Double Eagle felt as heavy as a boulder. Clenching his teeth, Joel lifted his hand, but suddenly the coin was just that, a large gold coin, heavy but ordinarily so.

  He pulled himself to his feet, dusted himself down. People were coming – he could hear running, muted chatter. They were coming toward the gunshot. The second gunshot. Joel remembered the first, remembered spinning white light and pain, hot and exquisite. He fingered the back of his head, felt something wet and sticky. He looked at his hand. It was covered in something that looked black in the moonlight.

  Joel followed the sounds. Out of the carnival, toward the Big Top. People were huddled around something. Barnett was there. As Joel approached, Barnett directed a couple of workers clad only in nightshirts to fetch the police.

  Joel made his way to the front. People drew away from him, fear and confusion rippling around the crowd.

  On the ground lay Alexander Harrison. He was face down, the top of his head was missing, and in one hand he held Joel’s gun. It was pointed in such a way as to make the cause of death clear. Suicide by gunshot wound. He’d blown his own brains out.

  Joel eyed the gun, his gun, his daddy’s gun. He reached down to pick it up, but Barnett’s hand closed around his wrist.

  “I don’t think you should touch it. Not until the police get here.”

  Joel stood back and looked at Barnett.

  Barnett frowned. “What happened to your eye?” he asked.

  Joel smiled and said nothing. In his fist the coin grew cold, as cold as the abyssal black of the ocean, and he saw a light, bright, like the glint of gold on a distant hilltop.

  Joel walked away. He could feel the eyes of the others on him, but he didn’t care. Barnett would close the circus.

  It was a setback, true, but now that Joel could see the light shining, he knew what he had to do. Barnett could destroy the machines, the carnival, Joel knew that, but he also knew that Barnett wouldn’t. That Barnett couldn’t, because some of the power that filled Joel, that had seeped into Harrison and driven him to death to feed that power, some of that had seeped into Barnett also. Barnett couldn’t destroy his machines – it wouldn’t let him. Instead, he would separate them, splitting the carnival into component parts, some big, some small. He’d burn through his family fortune to scatter and hide pieces rather than burn the evil that lived inside the machines, inside the monkey with the glowing red eyes. And all the while Barnett would fight it, without knowing what it was that he was struggling against.

  And then it would begin again. Joel would bring it all back together. It would take time, but the circus would be reborn and the carnival would go on.

  In time.

  — V —

  AQUATIC PARK, SAN FRANCISCO

  TODAY

  “One-two-three, two-two-three.”

  Bob led the tourist around in the sand of Aquatic Park in the hot morning sun. His partner was from Alabama, had a laugh and an accent to die for, and had kept her blue flannel hat on. She burned easily, she said, as he swept her into his arms, leaned her back so far she screamed in deligh
t, blue hat firmly in place, as the others watching from the low tiered seating clapped and whistled. And then the music started, and Bob began to give a dance lesson.

  Bob was a fixture, as much a part of Aquatic Park – at least in the eyes of some – as the squat, curved Maritime Museum, sitting like a cream-iced Art Deco cake farther along the beach. As much a permanent feature of the beachfront and park as the pier that stretched out in the cool water, as the twin fans of concrete tiered seating that many found a restful spot on a hot summer’s day. And today it would be hot, no doubt about it.

  Bob danced, slowly teaching the woman from Alabama. Her name was Julie and her friends catcalled from the tiers, the gang of late-fifties housewives transformed into a group of teenage girls by the sight of their old friend in the arms of a bare-chested, barefooted Adonis, all blond hair and bronzed skin, as he dragged her slowly, slowly around the sand, teaching her to dance. She would be the first of many that day. Bob and his free dance lessons were something to check out, for sure, if you were on vacation in the Bay Area.

  “Is it true you don’t sleep at all, Bob?” asked Julie, her eyes fixed on Bob’s face while Bob spent most of the time watching her feet, keeping his own out of the range of her shuffling steps. He glanced up at her, his eyes as blue as the water, and she smiled. “Because that can’t be right, can it? I mean, ain’t nobody can go without any sleep at all, can they?”

  Bob smiled. There were many stories about him, how the handsome beach bum was a retired champion surfer from Hawaii, had to be, a build like that, his hair long and salted, his stubble just so. He’d made it big back whenever and didn’t need money anymore, and had retired to the beach to teach ballroom in the summer because that’s what he liked to do.

  Or that he was a retired software engineer from Silicon Valley, Cupertino maybe, and he’d hit a certain age and had cashed in his shares, swapping boardrooms and annual keynote speeches down at the Yerba Buena Center for something more important, for swimming and enjoying the summer and for dancing in the sunshine on the beach.