Carnival of Dead Girls Read online

  I wandered around the park aimlessly, trying to think of anything else I could do to find Freya. Damn you, Freya. You’re always so damn selfish, I thought. I still felt angry with her for ditching me for a jerk like Pockets and saying such hurtful things. But as much as I didn’t want to, I cared for the girl and needed to know she was safe.

  If I found her, I didn’t expect to be friends again. In fact, I didn’t want to be her friend anymore. But at the very least, I wanted to find her for her mother. I could only imagine what Filomena was going through. I’d never met Freya’s father, but I’d guess he was going through something similar.

  Thinking about Freya’s family reminded me of my own. I pulled my phone out, staring at the childish smiley face on the cover. My father bought it for me. It was stupid, but I loved him too much not to put the damn thing on and carry it around.

  I turned the volume back up, my eyes glazed over as I waited. Instantly, there were hundreds of chimes and dings, alerting me of missed calls, texts, and social media notifications. There were also several voice messages.

  I didn’t have to read the text messages or listen to the voicemails to know who they were from. Undoubtedly, my dad and Candy. They must be irate right now, I thought nervously. More than anything, I could imagine both of them wracked with worry and concern for my well-being. Hell, they probably thought I was kidnapped too.

  I found a semi-quiet picnic area before I dialed Candy’s number. I don’t know why I chose to call her instead of my dad, but it felt like the right choice.

  I wasn’t ready for her to answer, but she picked up quick, her voice filled with relief. “Josie! Thank God!” she exclaimed. I could hear from the quake in her voice that she’d been crying. Even though I didn’t like her much, I had to fight back tears of my own.

  “Candy, I’m okay…I promise,” I said breathlessly. “I’m so sorry for taking off on you, and I can’t tell you where I am, but I want you to know that I’m safe.”

  Suddenly, I could hear my dad’s worried voice in the background. “Please tell Dad I’m fine, and I’m s-sorry,” I stammered.

  Candy immediately began asking questions—where was I and what was I doing and could they come pick me up?

  Pinching my eyes shut, I said, “I’ll be back in a few days. Try not to worry too much, Mom.” And then I hung up.

  While waiting for Rachel to come back, I decided to enter the Big Top to ask more people about Freya. The seats were filling up for the next show, and little kids were in the middle again, awaiting their turn on the animals’ backs.

  I walked toward the center of the arena. A handful of entertainers were stretching and setting up props for their performances. I pulled up the picture on the phone, strolling up to the lion tamer.

  The man was musclebound and shirtless with a posture straight as an arrow. I approached slowly and nonthreateningly so as not to upset the lion standing beside him.

  “Hi,” I said softly. The man jerked his head in my direction. Slowly, I stuck the picture out toward him.

  “Have you seen this girl?” The line was getting extremely old, and the only good information I’d received was from the semi-crazy man in the clown dunk booth.

  The man with the lion hesitated just long enough for me to realize he might know something. “What do you know?” I demanded, suddenly unaware of the lion now. The man shook his head.

  “Not me. I don’t know anything. But she does,” he claimed, pointing at the miniature, dainty girl who I recognized as the flying trapeze artist. She was stretching on the tips of her toes, bending her arms in a seemingly inhuman stretch behind her head. “Her name is Georgina. But she can’t talk,” the lion tamer informed me.

  “Can she hear?” I asked, dismayed. The man nodded.

  I made my way over to the small, angelic girl. The size of her body made her look similar to a twelve-year-old girl, but as I got closer, I saw the lines on her face clearly marking her as adult.

  “Hey, there.”

  The girl instantly shook her head, placing a hand to her throat, indicating her inability to talk.

  “That’s okay,” I said patiently. “I just want to know what you can tell me about this girl.” I handed her the phone, my hand shaking. She looked at the picture, then back up at me. She seemed frustrated, like she had something to say but couldn’t.

  I felt an equal degree of frustration. But then the trapeze girl stuck up a finger, indicating that she had an idea. She started making an odd motion with two of her fingers, and suddenly I realized she was trying to imitate someone running.

  “She was running?”

  The girl nodded, smiling.

  “Who was she running from?” I pressed, excited to be receiving any type of useful information.

  “She was running in here, inside the Big Top?”

  The girl pointed at the floor, and then pointed toward the marquee door. I tried to stay calm…and patient.

  “She was running out of here?” I asked.

  The girl nodded again.

  “Do you know why she was running? Who did she want to get away from?”

  Next, the girl made an ugly expression, poking a finger in small spots all over her face. I understood her meaning completely.

  “Pockets,” I said, sighing. The girl nodded once again.

  I thanked her, heading back to the midway to try to find Rachel. I was more certain now than ever that Freya was here somewhere in Flocksdale, and that she was trying to get away from Pockets. Maybe she got away, I wondered hopefully. Maybe he forced her to come but then she got away somehow. She is pretty feisty, I considered.

  But if she had, why did she not go to the police and report her kidnapping? Something wasn’t adding up. And as much as I hated to admit it, something sinister might be going on.

  Moments later, I spotted Rachel across the midway, coming out of the freak show tent. She was smiling brightly.

  “Okay, I have a plan,” she said, pressing her mouth to my ear. “You see all those trailers parked by the river?” I’d noticed them briefly, assuming they belonged to the carnival crew. “Well, my mom stays in her trailer while she’s working the carnival, so she’s not coming back to the house till next week. My mom called my dad and told him I met a new friend today at the carnival. She’s so clueless. She doesn’t know who’s from around here and who isn’t. She’s gone traveling too much to care. Anyway, she said we could stay with her in her trailer for a few days, as long as I agreed to help out with the carnival. So, I got to thinking…why don’t you try to get some sort of job here? Just temporarily, for a few days…and we can both stay at the trailer.”

  “That still doesn’t help me get any closer to finding Freya,” I complained, aggravated.

  “Sure it does! During the day we can scope things out and ask questions to see if we can find her. And at night, after the carnival closes and everyone is sleeping, we can sneak out and do some serious investigating. What do you think?”

  Her plan seemed crazy. But it just might work, I thought hopefully. At this point, I didn’t have any better ideas…so it would just have to do for now.

  “By the way,” Rachel said, “I asked my mom about the carnival changing names from town to town…She acted like it was no big deal. She said they’ve been doing that, changing the name, for as long as she can remember being with the carnival. She said they often change it from town to town, just like you thought.”

  “What do you think that means exactly?” I asked, feeling more and more puzzled by this strange place.

  “I know my mom isn’t involved in anything bad…but…I definitely think it implies they—or someone working here—has something to hide.”

  Those were my thoughts exactly.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So, who do I talk to around here about getting a job?” I asked, using the sweetest version of my voice I could muster. I was standing in front of Evan’s game booth, trying to bat my lashes.

  Evan raised his eyebrows. “Serio
usly? You want to be a carny?” He laughed heartily. “You can’t be serious. You don’t know the first thing about doing carnival work. Not to be rude, but you’d probably get in the way more than you’d help.”

  “I may not have experience with carnivals, but I do have a skill,” I said, suddenly irritated with this new so-called friend’s attitude.

  “Oh yeah? What is your skill?” Evan asked, unable to hide his sarcasm. The mocking tone of his voice made me want to punch his lights out.

  “This.” I held out my sketch book. After forming our plan, Rachel and I had walked to her house to gather our belongings.

  Evan opened it up to the drawing of the old house. He squinted at it strangely—not the reaction I was hoping for—but then he started flipping through the other pages. “Damn. These are great, girl. Let’s go talk to Malachi about getting you a job drawing people pictures. I think people would pay a pretty penny to get a picture made like one of these.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Relieved, I followed Evan to meet this guy named Malachi.

  “Malachi!” Evan shouted. It was the man with the top hat and he was standing near the freak show tent having a smoke.

  “Let me show you what this girl can do.” Evan held up the sketch pad, flipping through its pages for Malachi to see.

  “Impressive,” the man said, but by the tone of his voice he didn’t sound too impressed. He took a draw of his cigarette, eyeing me with a creepy smirk.

  “Aren’t you the young lady who just got into a fist fight with one of my best workers? Why the hell would I want to give a troublemaker like you a job?”

  “Because I’ll work for cheap, and because I have a talent,” I said defensively.

  He smiled. “I like your confidence. Okay, I’ll give you this job for the week. But I don’t want any trouble, you hear?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.” I turned to walk away.

  “Wait. I want the picture,” he said, pointing at the sketch book. I gave him a confused look.

  “Which one?”

  “The one of our haunted house,” he said pointing at my book and then to the infamous House of Horrors across the midway.

  I turned around to look at it, confused. “But it’s not—” Staring at the drawing, it did look a lot like the creepy old house we’d stayed in last night. In fact, the resemblance was a little uncanny. Shuddering, I tore the page out and handed it to him. I was glad to get rid of the ugly, evil picture anyway.

  Chapter Twenty

  My charcoal pencil glided across the canvas effortlessly, taking on a life of its own. When I sketched like this, in my own little world, I never knew what I’d come up with.

  I’d never drawn vertically on an easel before, but I felt comfortable doing it this way. Charcoal dust fell easily around me as I focused intently on my subject.

  The woman who sat before me was clearly pushing eighty. Her husband stood to the side, tight-jawed, obviously annoyed by this distraction. But the woman sat perfectly still with her hands clasped together on her lap. She wanted the picture to give to her daughter as a present, the old woman explained.

  “I’ve never had my picture drawn, Henry,” she’d whined, until finally her husband relented. Considering her age, I suspected that not only would this be her first portrait, but possibly her last.

  For that reason, I worked harder than ever, trying to produce something truly majestic for this beautiful, aged woman before me. Despite the damage caused by aging, there was so much beauty in the woman’s facial features. Not the sort of “once was” beauty, but a current beauty…a lovely grace she possessed.

  Her skin was thin like tissue paper, nearly translucent with its white color and deep blue veins beneath. A cluster of wrinkles surrounded her eyes and streaked her forehead proudly. The cracks around the circumference of her mouth led me to wonder if she’d once been a smoker, and her knobby, scarred hands indicated a life filled with laborious work.

  Through my drawing, I could capture it all…

  Her smiling, misty-eyed expression when I handed her the drawing made all the hard work worth it. Usually, I hid my drawings from the world, but suddenly, I felt something new—something that felt like pride.

  There was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to spend every day of my life doing this—drawing for a living, making people smile.

  The woman urged her husband to leave me a generous tip. I accepted the twenty and nodded in thanks, watching the fragile couple move slowly across the midway.

  “You’re doing quite an impressive job, young lady,” said a voice from behind me. It was the man who always wore the coat and hat, the one others called Malachi. Nobody had officially told me, but I suspected that Malachi was the man in charge around here, despite his menial station as a ticket taker of the freak show. There was an air about him, some sense letting me know his position. People respected him, listened to him. Perhaps even obeyed him.

  “That girlfriend of yours, what’s her name?” the man asked unexpectedly. I was about to insist I wasn’t a lesbian again when I realized I was just being stupid and insecure.

  “Rachel,” I answered simply.

  “And how does this Rachel know the bearded woman, Lucy?”

  My mouth gaped open. All this time, Lucy working for the carnival, and they’d never met her own daughter? Rachel wasn’t lying when she said she never comes to the carnival, I realized.

  “Lucy is her mother.” I waited, expecting some sort of explanation for his odd line of questioning, but Malachi offered none.

  He moved on, checking in on the other workers in the next booth over. He seemed strange and eccentric, a little intimidating. But as far as being odd, that description seems to fit most of the workers here, I thought, chuckling.

  Strangely enough, I was sort of enjoying myself. Getting paid to draw for people was an amazing feeling. But I still knew my reasons for coming. I had to investigate Pockets.

  According to Evan, I could take breaks whenever I wanted—I simply had to place the ‘Be Back Soon’ sign in the window of my booth. I did exactly that, gathering up my bag and heading toward the freak show tent to check in on Rachel. When I found her, she was standing near her mother’s tent, chattering amicably with the man who called himself “The Human Pin Cushion.” For a moment, I just stood there, silently watching my new friend. Her personality was the exact opposite of Freya’s—bubbly and light, always worried about others. Her short blonde hair was pulled back in a stubby little ponytail. She wore little or no makeup. With a face like that, she could bankrupt a whole slew of fancy cosmetic companies.

  She smiled when she saw me coming, waving me over to meet her friend—unlike Freya, who never introduced me to anyone. For a brief second, I was struck with sadness. The thought of having to leave Flocksdale, and my new friend, depressed me.

  “Hey,” I said, shaking hands with “Pinner,” which is how Rachel introduced him. He smiled back pleasantly, the piercings on his face stretching painfully. He leaned forward, touching my new ear gauges. With everything going on this week, I’d nearly forgotten about them.

  “They’re looking a little crusty. Better keep them clean or they’ll get infected,” he warned. Coming from an expert on needles like him, I made a mental note to clean them really good tonight when I stayed with Rachel.

  “Ready for a break?” Rachel asked. We’d been working for hours now and it was nearly one a.m. My belly growled irritably.

  We grabbed a couple corndogs and two glass bottles of Coke from one of the concessionaires on the midway, then found a quiet place to sit on a parched strip of grass. We ate our food in silence, both of us hungry since we hadn’t eaten anything since lunch.

  “I’m ready to give a report. Even though I’ve been ‘working,’ I’ve mostly been watching the workers,” she said, using air quotes. “You know, their comings and goings…”

  She updated me about Pockets’ whereabouts and activities for the past few hours. “I’ve figured this much out—he
spends a lot of time around the Big Top and freak show tent, in and out behind the scenes, but doesn’t seem to do anything in particular. Always wearing that smug expression of his…I get the sense he’s running errands or taking orders from Malachi, because I saw him ‘check in’ with him several times each hour. They spoke in hushed voices, looking around nervously each time, like they didn’t want to be overheard. And there’s another man that checks in regularly with Malachi. I heard someone call him Joseph.”

  “What does Joseph do around here?” I asked, wondering if I’d seen the man and just didn’t know it.

  “He seems to be Pockets’ right hand man because Pockets and Joseph go back and forth, bringing some heavy props and buckets of material to and from different areas of the carnival. They both check in with Malachi often, but they always do it separately, like they’re working in shifts. And here’s the thing…there’s definitely something going on in that back barn—the one attached to the dead, creepy animal displays.”

  “I knew there was something fishy going on behind that door!” I exclaimed

  “But what that something is, who knows?” she said pensively, taking a sip of her soda. “You don’t really think they’re holding Freya hostage here, do you?” she asked, a look of horror crossing her face.

  “I really hope not,” I said, suddenly losing my appetite. “But until I actually see what’s in that room for myself, I’ll never know.”

  “Well, let’s think this through…If Freya’s here, or at the carnival somewhere, we surely would have seen her by now. Don’t you agree?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, probably…”

  “The only way he could hide her here is in his personal trailer or in the back of that room. There’s nowhere else she can possibly be without us having seen her by now,” Rachel said solemnly. I had to agree.