Carnival of Death Read Online Free Page A

ten-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to her.
    Gloria tucked the money away inside her robes. The hollowness had been replaced with something like despair. She wished the man and woman would go away, but she knew they wouldn’t.
    “Tell his fortune first,” the woman said, and the man held out his hand.
    Gloria was reluctant to take it, but she didn’t see any way to avoid it. When she touched it, her stomach twisted. Her pain must have showed on her face, because the woman said, quite concerned, “Is something wrong?”
    Gloria tried a smile that she knew must be ghastly. No, not with me. It’s him. He has cancer. He doesn’t know it yet, but he does. A tumor of the brain. No cure. He’ll be dead in six months.
    “Please,” the woman said. “Can we help?”
    Gloria straightened her face, put on what she hoped was a genuine smile, and said, “I am fine. And so are you two. I see nothing but happiness ahead. Look here at these lines…”
    She traced the lines in the man’s hand, then those in the woman’s, giving them a cheerful lie about their lives. They were laughing again when they left her tent. They’d be happy for a while longer. It was all she could do for them.
    When they were gone, Gloria slumped in her chair. Tonight had been the worst so far. She knew the girl—what had her name been?—Sue Jean was going to be attacked. Raped. She could see the faces of her attackers.
    So she’d warned the girl, told her to go away from the carnival, knowing all the time that she wouldn’t go, knowing that something bad was going to happen.
    And knowing that Matt Axton would be involved.
    Knowing that Matt Axton wasn’t even his real name.
    Knowing that, whoever he was, he was surrounded by darkness and that someone surrounded by an even deeper darkness was near the carnival too.
    Knowing that things were going to happen, terrible things.
    Even worse, not knowing what they were but certain there was nothing at all she could do about them.
    So she shut the tent, went to her trailer, located the bottle of Ezra Brooks that she kept in a cabinet for special occasions, and opened it up.
    She’d hardly finished her first drink when she heard a crash of thunder. Seconds later rain started to patter down on the roof of the trailer.
    Then all hell broke loose outside, and to her horror, as soon as she heard the commotion, Gloria was sure she knew exactly what the trouble was.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Matt decided that he couldn’t let Sue Jean just walk away from what had happened. The wind came in gusts across the field, and lightning flashed through a cloud. Thunder followed. The rides would be shutting down because of the danger of lightning strikes, and people would begin leaving.
    Matt turned back from the field to look for Sue Jean, but she was already lost in the crowds. He walked almost the length of the midway, but he couldn’t find her. He might have continued to look, but he saw that one of the other security guys, Ken, was having a problem at the ringtoss booth.
    Ken wasn’t a big guy, but he was wiry and had a mean, squinty look. Most of the marks backed down from him without much of an argument, but not this one, a man of about thirty wearing a shirt with the sleeves pushed up to show off his muscles and his tats. He seemed convinced that the ringtoss was rigged.
    Which it was, of course, though not so much that it was entirely impossible to win. Just almost impossible.
    The mark was several inches taller than Ken, and he leaned over him, yelling in his face. A woman stood a few feet away, looking frightened. Matt figured she was with the mark.
    “Ain’t no way that ring fits over those blocks! I’m taking a prize for my wife and leaving now, and don’t you try to stop me.”
    Matt didn’t think a sap cap would do any good against the guy, so he reached back for the tent stake. It was gone.
    What the hell?
    Well, at least he still had the sap cap, even if it was a bit bloodstained. He pulled it from