"Over there, too," Reardon said, as they went by another house whose lights could be seen shining through a front door which also stood wide open. "What do think?"

"I don't know," Justin said.

"Old man Terwillegher's door was open like that, those two houses, too. The old man was staring up at that cloud, ranting and raving about the carnival. Now his door's open and so are these?"

Reardon hung a right at the corner. "That one, too," he said, nodding across the way.

Then he pulled into a driveway, put the car in Reverse and backed out into the street.

"What are you doing?" Justin said, as they drove back down the street.

"Ears' front door was open tonight."

"So what?"

"I wanta see if it's still open."

"What's that gonna prove?"

"Something, maybe," Reardon said. "Maybe nothing."

They were in Justin's neighborhood now, so close to those warm covers he could almost feel them sliding up over his head. And for one brief moment, he wondered what might have happened had Mickey Reardon not been riding his bike out by G.o.dby's field this morning. Justin would have stayed on his porch reading his X-Men comic. They would never even have known the carnival was out there if they hadn't gone looking for it. They'd be at Mickey's house this very minute, playing computer games or watching DVD's, reading comics and busting each other's chops.

But Mickey Reardon did ride his bike past G.o.dby's field this morning, and now neither of their lives would ever be the same again.

They were on Danny Roebuck's street now, a few houses away from their destination. Justin could already see the living room lights spilling out through the open front door. The door was wide open but Chester Roebuck's F250 pickup wasn't in the driveway. He looked at the dashboard, at the digital clock on its face. It was one-thirty in the morning. Even if Danny's dad had gone out to the carnival, he should have been home well before now. Tricia Reardon, too, for that matter. Unless they'd never gone out there at all, which, Justin supposed, was too much to ask for.

Reardon sighed. "There it is," he said.

"What are you, crazy?" Justin said, as Reardon pulled into the driveway.

They sat there, the engine idling, twin beams of light casting a stark white illumination into Danny Roebuck's back yard as Reardon slipped the car into Park.

"I've gotta know," Reardon said. "One way or another."

He opened the door and stepped out of the car, grabbed his ax from the backseat and slammed the door shut. He stood for a moment looking up at the porch, and then said, "C'mon, Justin."

Justin opened his door, stepped out of the car and closed the door behind him.

On his way up the narrow concrete walkway, he said, "What's the ax for?"

"Just in case."

"Just in case what?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know, after what we've seen tonight?"

They were at the house now, directly in front of the porch. They could hear the TV in the background, the same kind of canned laugh track as before. If it was the same Andy Griffith rerun from earlier in the evening, Justin thought he might take off running and never stop, or start screaming until his voice gave out.

"Let's just knock on the door and see what happens," Reardon said.

They climbed the steps and crossed the porch, Reardon in front, clutching his ax, Justin right at his heels. They could see Mary Roebuck through the screen door, still seated at the end of the couch, her arm still resting beside her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open. Her head was turned sideways, pressed against a thick, green couch cushion.

"Mrs. Roebuck," Reardon said, his voice barely a whisper.

"Mrs. Roebuck," he said, and then rapped on the doorframe.

Mary Roebuck didn't move an inch. She didn't open her eyes and she didn't move.

"Let's go," Justin said.

"Mrs. Roebuck!"

"Let's just go!"

"Something's wrong here."

"No s.h.i.t," Justin said, as Reardon opened the door, and Justin followed him inside, across the hardwood floor to where Mary Roebuck sat stiff as a statue, a ball of string and a b.l.o.o.d.y butcher knife on the coffee table before her. Laughter from an old Jerry Seinfeld episode playing on her color TV stood in stark contrast to the horrific scene playing out opposite it. Mary's eyes were closed, her mouth open. There was blood on her face and blood on the light grey blouse she wore. Her long black hair did not cover her ears like it usually did, and when Justin looked closer at that sticky, matted mess plastered to the side of her head, he saw a ragged hole where one of those big ears of hers had been sliced away. Her bruised and swollen neck reminded Justin of the clutching and clawing fingers that an hour or so ago had come close to ending his own life.

He didn't take off running and he didn't scream. He stood beside Reardon, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open, wondering what in the h.e.l.l they were going to do now.

"Jesus," Reardon said.

"Let's get out of here," Justin said. "Now."

"What about Ears?"

"He isn't here."

"No. He isn't, is he?"

"No," Justin said. "He isn't. He's at the carnival, floating around in that jug."

They turned and crossed the room, leaving Mary Roebuck dead on her couch, as the Seinfeld theme song played and Justin and Reardon went down the walkway and back to the car. The doors opened and the doors slammed shut, and Mickey Reardon backed down the driveway, pushed the shifter into Drive, and headed off into the night.

"What's going on here?" Justin said.

"I don't know," Reardon told him.

"You think every house with a wide open door tonight has a murdered family inside it?"

"I don't know."

"You think old man Terwillegher's wife is lying around all hacked up like Danny's mom?"

"Probably."

"Why just some of the houses? Why not all of them? What does old man Terwillegher have in common with Chester Reardon and Ronnie Nelson's dad? Why were Freddy Hagen's crazy old granddaddy and his neighbor staring up at that cloud? Why not every man in Pottsboro? And why not the women? Why did Hannibal Cobb come here? Who is he? What is he?"

"He d.a.m.n sure ain't no magician, is he?" Reardon said. "Or a hypnotist."

"He's much more than that."

"But... what?"

"I don't know. Some kind of monster, some kind of nightmare."

"You think we could be dreaming all of this?"

Justin pounded a fist down into Reardon's thigh. "Did that hurt?" he said.

"h.e.l.l yes, it hurt!"

"Then you ain't dreaming."

"d.a.m.n, Justin," Reardon said, as he rubbed the flat of his hand over his leg.

They were on the main road leading into Pottsboro, two thirteen year old boys who should have been sleeping soundly in their beds, safe from all the evils of the world. But they weren't in the safety of their homes, and evil had found them. They went past the schoolyard, down into town, past the courthouse, whose ancient clock now read: 2:07.

They were halfway down the street, when Reardon said, "Look."

Rusty Piersol's patrol car was still parked in front of the general store, the store lit up just as it had been when they'd ridden by on their bikes, earlier in the night.

Relief washed over Justin-Reardon too, probably, though he never would have admitted it.

"Thank G.o.d," Justin said, as Reardon pulled up next to the patrol car, and slipped the gearshift into Park.

They got out of the car, and up onto the porch they went, through the screen door, where they stepped into a scene as ugly as the one they had just walked out of, as horrifying as any they had so far encountered.

Rusty Piersol lay sprawled on the hardwood floor, a pool of sticky, coagulated blood surrounding him. Half his face and most of his head was gone, leaving one wide eye staring up at the ceiling from the gory and misshapen lump of flesh it now resided in. There were pieces of skull in that pool of blood, and dark bits of meat that could only have been the brains that had been blown out of him. The store was a mess, too, shelves knocked over, all the snacks and candy bars from the front display table dumped onto the floor, as if Rusty Piersol had walked into a robbery in progress, and been gunned down before he could even draw his weapon from its holster. Or maybe old man Terwillegher and some of his cloud-watching cronies, not content with slaughtering just their own families, had flooded into the place like a pack of rabid animals looking for something else to sink their teeth into.

Justin looked up past the counter at yet another gruesome sight, framed by the doorway which led into Jim Kreigle's back office. "Oh, G.o.d," he said, Reardon's eyes widening with shock as they followed Justin's gaze past the cash register, straight to Helen Kreigle, who hung like a broken mannequin in front of her computer monitor. The cratered remains of her ruined skull looked no better than the slain sheriff's, and quite possibly looked worse.

Reardon stepped forward into the drying blood that surrounded Rusty Piersol's corpse.

"What are you doing?" Justin said, as Reardon knelt beside the body.

"Getting his gun," Reardon said. "What do you think?"

Footsteps thudded across the porch as he pulled the gun free.

The door banged open, and in walked Bo Johnson, a pump-action shotgun held out before him.

Reardon stood up, Rusty Piersol's pistol in his hand as Bo jacked a round into place. There was a crazed look in Bo Johnson's eyes, a look of intense anger, one that made Justin wonder if he might have been lined up with the rest of the men in front of Ziggy Bowers' Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill this afternoon.

"The f.u.c.k's going on here?" Bo said as he shouldered his weapon, pointing the barrel directly at Mickey Reardon. "What'd you do to him, you pizza-faced freak?"

"We didn't do nothing," Justin said, as Reardon called out, "Whoa, man, wait a minute!"

"He was like that when we got here!"

"Do anything I don't like," Bo said. "Just one little hinky, geeked-up move, Reardon, and I'll blow your f.u.c.king head off."

"You don't understand. He didn't-"

"What I understand is it looks like your pal here just shot Rusty Piersol with his own gun."

Justin stood there, wondering if Bo Johnson's angry face would be the last they'd ever see.

"Step over there by your geeky little buddy, Reardon. Then drop the gun on the floor, kick it over and tell me what the f.u.c.k just happened here."

Bo kept his weapon trained on Reardon as he made his way to Justin's side.

Rusty Piersol's gun was laid on the floor. When Reardon kicked it away from him, Bo lowered his weapon. "I'm waiting," he said.

"We just came from Danny Roebuck's house," Reardon said. "Somebody cut off his mom's ears and strangled her. We think Danny's dad did it and went off to the carnival."

"We came in here to tell Rusty Piersol-that's when you showed up."

"Carnival, huh?" Bo said. "That's why I'm here, myself. My crazy old man came home crowing about the carnival this afternoon. Slaughtered d.a.m.n near my whole family and ain't n.o.body seen him since. Would've killed me too if I hadn't gone out for a while. Came in here to get Rusty Piersol to go track his a.s.s down, and here you are standing over Rusty's dead body. Guess I'll just have to go out and find the p.r.i.c.k myself now."

"He's at the carnival," Justin said. "They're all at the carnival. They slaughtered their families and ran off to G.o.dby's field."

"My mom, too," Reardon said.

"Oh yeah? Who'd she kill?"

"n.o.body," Justin said. "Jack Everett kidnapped her."

Bo looked at Justin, and then trained his cold, blue eyes on Reardon.

"The f.u.c.k're we standing around here for then?"

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Byrum Terwillegher didn't care for children, his own or anyone else's. Of course, there wasn't much about Byrum's boys to care for. One was gay and the other was a high school dropout, both of them a major disappointment to their father, although Bruce was the proud owner of a graphics design firm. Bruce. What kind of name was that to hang on a child, anyway? h.e.l.l, half the gay guys in every cornball movie Byrum's wife had ever forced him to sit through was named Bruce. It was her fault. She named him. She was the one babying him his entire life. And she still did it. She didn't breast feed the boy. That was the problem. Always dipping her finger in the milk and sticking it down his throat, dressing him up in frilly little pink outfits all the time *cause she thought it was cute.

Oh, look, Byrum. He's so dang cute. Isn't he cute, Byrum?

No wonder the boy ended up fruity as a can of Del Monte peaches.

No wonder he ended up sucking c.o.c.k.