Although no one lining the street that afternoon could see the Ferris wheel turning out at G.o.dby's field, each person became instantly aware that a carnival had come to town. Time pa.s.sed, and one by one they pulled their eyes away from that dark cloud, each having experienced a profound sense of wonderment. The carnival was here, bringing with it magic and mystery, and a promise of miraculous revelations that lay just beyond their imaginations.

They knew this, just as they knew the sun was in the sky and the road beneath their feet. In the time it took to snap a finger-instantly-they had been whisked away to a mysterious world of fog and smoke and mirrors, and then suddenly returned, full of a knowledge and understanding they had no earthly right to possess. They stood stiff as signposts in the middle of the street, human weathervanes pointing toward the northern end of Pottsboro, each having experienced their very own personalized siren's call.

There was Jack Everett, who stared out at Kreigle's general store with a single thought in his mind: Fun and games tonight, folks! Fun and games! Something else was in there, too. A soft, alluring voice that whispered his name. *Come, Jackie,' it said. *See what we can do. Come play with us!' He stood in the street with a smile on his face, a song in his heart and that seductive voice in his ear, oblivious to his surroundings.

Jerry McCrea heard something, too. A rough and boisterous voice, roaring through his mind like a runaway freight train. *Five'll get ya ten,' it said. *Ten'll get ya twenty!' He was standing two feet away from Jack Everett, a man he truly despised, when he suddenly clapped a friendly hand on Everett's shoulder.

"Jackie-boy!" he called out. "The carnival, Jackie! The carnival!"

He pulled out his car keys and turned back to the sidewalk, where his wife stood looking at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Carnival? What carnival?" she said, as Jerry walked past her, up the sidewalk to his car, where he opened the door and slid behind the steering wheel. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and fired up the engine, and then pulled away from the curb, leaving his wife standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk.

One by one they peeled themselves from the street. Some went back to the bar, others to cars and pickups. A couple of guys turned and walked up the sidewalk, past Tricia Reardon, who stood wide-eyed beside Ziggy Bowers as Jim Kreigle stalked slowly back to his general store, and whoever it was who had stood by the car in the middle of the street got back inside and drove slowly away. Both Tricia and Ziggy, having watched these curious events unfold, just shook their heads and turned back to the Wagon Wheel, away from a scant few disoriented stragglers still milling about the street.

The exodus nearly completed, the street near empty, Chester Roebuck piled into his pickup and took off for home. Dusk was coming to Pottsboro, South Carolina. Before you knew it, it would be dark. Chester wanted to be washed up, shined up and spiffed up and ready to roll before that happened. He'd heard it, too, standing in the street staring up at that curious-looking dark cloud. The laughing and the cheering, the screaming and shouting; calliope music floating through the crisp autumn air as one man called a sweltering throng of people to the Sideshow tent, and another called out, *Girls, girls, girls!'.

He'd been stuffing a receipt into his pocket at the checkout counter of the Ace hardware store when it happened. A fence needed mending, and he'd put it off as long as he could. The boards were in the bed of his truck, the nails on the counter before him. He was paying Jenny Barnes when his eyes clouded over and his face went slack. He didn't hear her thank him for his purchase, did not hear when she called out that he'd left his box of nails on the counter. He was a fish on a line, a compa.s.s pointing magnetic-north, and that magnetic current pulled him like metal shavings across the cement floor, out into the late afternoon, where he looked up at something that could only be described as a magical, mystical artifact. Shaped like a top hat, it called to him. It spoke to him. *Come to me,' it said. *I'm yours to do with as you please. To have, to hold, to nestle in your breast. Magic, you will see; mysteries revealed. The wonders of the world will be yours, its many secrets, too. Come to me. We're waiting. We've always been waiting'.

He stood in front of the hardware store, eyes raised to that soft and inviting ent.i.ty. There was laughter in the air, and music. Other sounds, too: rides clanking and clamoring in the background; bells and whistles and the rushing of the wind, all accompanied by the dulcet tones of a pipe organ. The smell of sawdust and hay found him as the Barkers called the carnival-goers to the different attractions; popcorn and cotton candy wafted in the air around him. The tantalizing scent of charred meat followed close behind.

He was standing on the sidewalk staring up at the sky, when a soft and sultry voice tickled his ear.

*Come to me!' it said to him, and he knew that he would.

Chapter Ten.

Jerry McCrea was gone; Jack Everett, too. The latter having roared away in his bright, shiny Cadillac moments after Jerry's wife ran screaming after her husband's fleeing car. In fact, most everyone had left the street.

Tricia Reardon and Ziggy Bowers turned back to the sidewalk to see Liz Fennel standing in front of the Wagon Wheel. Behind her stood Becka Turner, a bottle of beer in one hand, a lit cigarette in another. She was standing in the doorway, staring over Liz's shoulder.

"The f.u.c.k was that about?" Liz said, as Tricia and Ziggy started her way.

"f.u.c.k if I know," Ziggy said.

He knelt down and picked up the errant bottle Tricia had tripped over on her way outside, stood back up and glanced over his shoulder, at the street, which now stood empty. "f.u.c.k if I know," he said, and then he and Tricia followed Liz through the open doorway, past Becka Turner, who had stepped aside to allow them pa.s.sage.

They walked over to the bar, where the three women took up stools while Ziggy returned to his place behind the counter. Tricia sat in the middle, Liz and Becka on either side of her. Becka, her bottle nearly empty, took a drag on her cigarette, and then thumped some spent ash into a black plastic ashtray. Smoke streamed from her mouth as she exhaled, thin ribbons of it spiraling up from the cigarette as she snugged it into a groove on the rim of the ashtray.

"Really, what was that?" she said, as Ziggy reached into the cooler and pulled out a couple of beers. He opened them and sat one in front of Liz and Becka, and then leaned back into the cooler.

"On the house," he said, as he fished out and opened one for him and one for Tricia.

"Why'd they rush outa here like that?" Liz said.

Ziggy said nothing, just took a long pull on his beer.

"And that cloud," Tricia said.

"Never seen nothing like that," said Becka. "Looked like somebody'd nailed it in place in the sky. Sure wasn't moving, was it? Didn't look much like a cloud at all to me."

"I don't know what it looked like," Tricia said. She took a drink of beer and returned the bottle to the bar. "But yeah, didn't look much like a cloud, did it?"

"A carnival?" Liz said. "What the f.u.c.k?"

"I swear, Liz," Becka said. "You cuss more than ten sailors."

"Six brothers," she said. "What do you expect?"

Becka, shrugging her shoulders, nodded her apparent agreement, and then all three started laughing-Ziggy, too, who shook his head and took another drink of beer. He was standing there, watching the three women chuckle, when the door slammed open and in walked Sheila McCrea. She was sweating, her hair, which forty-five minutes ago had been teased up into a perfect bouffant, was now disheveled-a wide swatch of it lay plastered against the side of her face. Obviously angry, she slammed the door shut and stormed across the room, not stopping until she stood in front of the other three women, who had swiveled around on their stools to face her.

"Can you believe that s.h.i.t!" she said. "Run off and leave me standing on the sidewalk like that. Me chasing after his dumb a.s.s, and he still won't stop? G.o.d, I could just wring his neck!" She paused for a moment, then, "What got into him?"

"We've been trying to figure that out ourselves," Becka said. "Think it's got anything to do with that cloud?"

"What do you mean?" Sheila said.

"The f.u.c.k do you think she means?" Liz said. "Every swinging d.i.c.k in the place hauls a.s.s outside to stare up at that weird-looking thing, all googley-eyed and s.h.i.t, and you want to know what she means? Christ Almighty, girl!"

"Is it still there?" Tricia said. She took a drink, and held the bottle against the side of her leg. "The cloud, I mean."

"Far as I know," Sheila said, then, "Why did they all run outside like that? And why didn't you, Ziggy?"

"Yeah, Ziggy," Tricia said. "Those other men ran out of here all zombified, why didn't you?"

Ziggy, smiling, still standing behind the bar, said, "I gotta say it again?"

"What?" Sheila said.

"He doesn't f.u.c.king know," Liz said "Bingo!" Ziggy called out, drawing a quizzical look from Sheila, and chortled laughter from her friends.

Becka plucked her cigarette from the ashtray, took a drag and stubbed it out and tossed it back into the ashtray. She picked up her beer and took a drink, sat for a moment, and then said, "Seriously... what happened here?"

"Something f.u.c.ked-up," Liz said.

"No s.h.i.t," said Tricia, a slight smile playing across her lips.

"Maybe it was a practical joke," Becka said. "Maybe they were all in on it together."

"Sure, Becka," Liz said. "They all got together and hung that cloud up there, then ran out of here like a bunch of morons so they could go out and stare up at the sky like a bunch of r.e.t.a.r.ds."

"It's just a cloud, Liz. A dark cloud shaped like a top hat. Just happened to be out there when they hit the street."

"Yeah, right. Just like Jim Kreigle happened to be standing in front of his general store staring up at the son of a b.i.t.c.h. And I'm sure old Herbie Pender got out of his car in the middle of the street so he could be part of the gang."

"Was that Herbie?" Sheila said.

"d.a.m.n sure was," Liz told her, then, "I don't know what happened here this afternoon. And I'm not sure I want to know. But I do know this: I'm going straight home when I leave here, and I ain't coming back out *til daylight. And that d.a.m.n cloud had better not be there when I do."

Chapter Eleven.

His name was Danny Roebuck, and he was a thirteen-year-old kid who lived two blocks over from Justin Henry in a red brick house with forest-green wood trim. His hair was red, his eyes blue; the freckles spread across his face and arms plentiful. Like Justin, and many other kids their age, he liked bicycles and baseball cards, comic books and DVDs. And just like Mickey Reardon, he had a physical characteristic, an abnormality that had followed him like a gypsy's curse since his very first day of kindergarten. But unlike the prep.u.b.escent acne that would some day disappear from Mickey Reardon's life, Danny Roebuck would never outgrow what he considered to be a major affliction.

Danny Roebuck had his mother's ears. Round at the bottom and tapering up to a fine point at their zenith, they looked like elves ears, gigantic elves ears. And no matter how much Danny had grown over the years, he did not seem able to outrun those disproportionately large ears of his. But contrary to his mother, who kept hers hidden under a thick head of luxurious brown hair, Danny's ears hung off the side of his head like big, bright, flashing neon signs.

Danny, much to his dismay, possessed a set of ears that would rival the open doors of a Volkswagen Beetle. And that was exactly how his cla.s.smates-friends and foe alike-described him. Danny Roebuck had not been called by his Christian name for more years than he cared to remember. He had barely made it through the first fifteen minutes that first day of kindergarten, when during the calling of the role, his teacher said, *Roebuck, huh? Like the catalogue.', and one of his little cla.s.smates called out Ears Roebuck! It was a name that had stuck with him like glue ever since, one he had begrudgingly over the years found himself answering to.

He was sitting in the living room in front of the television when his dad pulled into the driveway. The door of the old F250 groaned when it opened, and again when it slammed shut. Footsteps hurried across the yard and up the steps, and then thundered across the wooden porch. Then the front door opened and Chester Roebuck blew into the house like a Texas tornado, eyes wide and wild, his hair a disheveled mess; an excited, whirling dervish of nervous energy, running through the house talking about the carnival out at G.o.dby's field. He had to get ready. He had to go!

He was on his third pa.s.s through the living room when his wife, Mary, came in from the kitchen. "Carnival?" she said. "What carnival?"

"Why, out at G.o.dby's field, of course."

"G.o.dby's field? Since when does the carnival set up at that old rundown lot?"

"Since today, I reckon."

"Can I go, Dad?"

"You ain't going nowhere near that place," Mary said, and to Chester, "Neither are you."

"My a.s.s, I ain't going," Chester said, then, "Ohhh, the carnival. The carnival's come to town, and it's gonna be grand!"

"Grand. Since when do you talk like-"

"Momma, why can't I-"

"You heard me!" Mary said, arching that right eyebrow of hers, signifying case closed, all business has been concluded and don't you dare bring it up again.

And Danny d.a.m.n sure knew he'd better not bring it up again. Not unless he wanted to be grounded for a solid week with no TV or computer time! But he also knew that he wanted to go, to see for himself what had gotten his dad so fired up.

His parents were going at it pretty good now, with the *no you won'ts and the by G.o.d, yes I wills'.

"Momma," Danny said. "I'm going over to Justin's for a while."

"Don't be late for supper, baby," she said, and then fell right back into arguing with her husband.

Danny went down the hallway to his bedroom. He had a paper route, and he hardly ever spent any of his money, so he had a pretty good bit of it saved up under his mattress. Fifty-two dollars, to be exact. And when he got to his room, he fished two ten-dollar bills from his hiding spot. Then he was back down the hallway, out the front door and down the porch steps, where he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his bike and straddled it.

He paused for a moment when he looked out at the horizon. There was something up there, something odd. It looked like a cloud, a dark cloud-black, even. A black cloud shaped like a magician's top hat. But it couldn't have been a cloud because it wasn't drifting along like clouds usually do, and it had a gleam to it. This thing, whatever it was, looked as if it had been drawn across the sky, painted on it. An artist's rendering of a perfectly drawn top hat that looked real enough to have been hanging in someone's closet. Danny didn't have time to work out what it was, what it might be. And whatever it was, he didn't really care. So he pushed off and went peddling furiously down the driveway, out onto the old dirt road that would take him into town.

It was four o'clock, soon dusk would be settling in on the landscape. With forty minutes to get out to G.o.dby's field and another forty to get back, Danny figured he had a pretty good while to look around the carnival. A little more, really, if he showed up back home a little late. And since Danny was always a little late, he could pretty much take that extra bit of time. But he'd better not be too late, *cause there'd be h.e.l.l to pay if his mother called over to the Henrys' and found out her son hadn't even been there.

He could look around, and if he liked what he saw he could sneak back tomorrow afternoon-maybe with Justin and good old pizza-faced Mickey Reardon, who was always good to have around to take some of the attention away from Danny and those ginormis ears of his.

On his way down the road, Danny wondered why his dad had been so fired up about the carnival. Heck, he hardly ever went to the thing, much less got excited about it. But he was excited about this one, all right. What did dear old dad know that had gotten him all worked up? What had he been told? Something, that was for sure. Something neat, from the look in his eye, and the way he was fighting tooth and nail with Danny's mother over whether or not he was going out there tonight.

He was going, all right. No doubt about it. Danny knew it, and despite all her protestations, Danny's mother probably knew it, too. So shocked by her husband's apparent unbridled enthusiasm had she been, she had to feel something wasn't quite right about it. That, and the location. There d.a.m.n sure wasn't anything right about that place. Danny had heard the stories pa.s.sed down through the ages, some of them pretty wild, as far as Danny was concerned. Like old black Joe, the young farm hand who, after being caught naked with his master's wife, had been castrated and made to eat his own s.e.xual organs, and then lived out his days working the fields as a eunuch, until years later, having outlived his usefulness, he was taken out to G.o.dby's field and flayed alive by the son of the master he had so betrayed. His own half-breed offspring the master had allowed to survive for the express purpose of humiliating the woman he'd cast out of his fine house, to live out what was left of her days with the darkies she had kept so much company with, until one day her bloated body turned up hanging from a tree deep in the woods behind G.o.dby's field. The same half-breed the aged master shot dead-center between the eyes moments after old black Joe's final screams echoed away into the night.

Then there was Moses, who fancied himself a modern day Moses of the Bible. Good old Mose, who tried to lead his people out of slavery to the promise land of the Underground Railroad, only to have the whole lot of them caught halfway across South Carolina, and then dragged kicking and screaming back to G.o.dby's field, where nearly every tree surrounding the clearing was utilized by a hangman's rope, until over twelve groveling men, women and children once again found themselves kicking and screaming-this time at the end of a noose-while their would be savoir was drawn and quartered by four clansmen, who sat upon four white steeds in the middle of the clearing.

No gra.s.s would ever grow there again, nor would anything good ever come of the place. These were the rumors pa.s.sed from father to son, from son to brother to friend, until every child in town knew better than to set foot in the place. But Danny had been out there, plenty of times, and had never seen anything to validate any of that. Gra.s.s grew at G.o.dby's field-spa.r.s.ely, for sure, and there were dead patches all over the place, plenty of them. But gra.s.s did grow there. And now the carnival was settling in, which, as far as Danny Roebuck was concerned, was a very good thing.

Down the road and through the town he went, past the school yard and the courthouse, past the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, peddling faster, peddling harder, until he finally found himself approaching the outskirts of Pottsboro, South Carolina.

He could see it now, the tree line out near G.o.dby's field. And as he approached the trees, the sounds came to him: rides, the rattle of them as they rose and fell, whoops and hollers and joyful laughter, that good old carnival music, the kind that always set his blood to pumping a little quicker when it found him.

He could see it now, the Ferris wheel, spinning high above the tree tops. And the further he moved down that old dirt road the larger it grew, until he broke through the tree line and saw before him the largest Ferris wheel that had ever been constructed-impossibly large. He braked to a stop and placed his feet firmly on the ground, and then sat for a moment, staring out across the clearing, at the Ferris wheel and all that stood before it. There were tents and trailers, canvas-covered metal carts, and an a.s.sortment of booths. Large colorful banners hanging off the tents flapped in the cool breeze blowing across the clearing. There was writing on those banners, fine bold text heralding what might be found within the confines of those tents.

*Girls! Girls! Girls!' said one.

*See The Wonders!' said another.

There were pictures woven into the fabric, one of a child's body, with gnarled hands and an old man's wrinkled face. Another showed a man with the hilt of a sword protruding from his wide-open mouth. There were others, too. A woman whose face stretched like rubber, impossibly long, while one of her arms coiled like a snake around her slim waist, looping it several times-like something out of a cartoon, or a comic book, Danny thought. There was a boy, young, not much older than Danny himself, who wore a sailor's outfit, with a funny little hat, and white bellbottom pants with dark blue piping. He stared out from his banner, a smile on his face and six multicolored b.a.l.l.s spinning in the air above him.

Danny wondered what it would feel like seeing himself on that banner.

Danny Roebuck, juggler extraordinaire!

He sat on his bike, looking up at the string of pennants surrounding the clearing, at the garishly painted sign hanging midway between two poles that served as the entrance point: *Hannibal Cobb's Kansas City Carnival!' it read, and it drew Danny's eyes to it as no sign ever had.

Danny looked around for the mirror-filled Fun House, but no Fun House was there. No painted horses or Merry Go Rounds, either; no Spinning Teacups or any other ride that Danny could see. Except for that perpetually spinning Ferris wheel, dwarfing the landscape before it. That was there, all right.

Most carnivals he had attended consisted of a line of tents, and multicolored stalls housing a variety of games, an a.s.sortment of rides, all arranged on opposite sides of a dusty thoroughfare in a wide sweeping circle.

But this midway was unlike any he had ever seen before. There was no wide sweeping circle, and other than that huge Ferris wheel, no rides. Nothing but some booths and a few lousy tents. Sure, there was a game or two: balloons pinned to a wall inside a stall, water pistols lined up on a counter at the edge of another. But nothing to get excited about. His dad had been fired up about the place, though-Danny had seen it in his eyes, heard it in the fervent pitch of his voice. Maybe he knew something Danny didn't know, something about what was going on inside those tents. Because something was going on in there. He could hear the laughter all around him, joyful sounds of merriment carried to him on that gentle Carolina breeze.

He pushed off on his bike and peddled beneath the sign, and felt a magical, mystical world open up before him. His pulse quickened as he entered the clearing, his mouth became instantly dry. He rolled over to an old pickup truck, got off his bike and leaned it against the truck, and then walked off toward the line of tents stretched throughout the field. Off to his right, a man stood before a canvas-covered booth. He had a short piece of a chewed-up cigar in his hand, a straw hat upon his head. A red and white striped jacket draped him-ill-fitting, Danny thought as the man stepped forward, because at first glance the jacket seemed loose on him, the hat too tight. A second look told him the jacket was tight, not the hat. But as the man drew nearer, Danny could see that from his straw hat down to his gleaming black patent leather shoes, his clothes were a perfect fit.

"Ah," the man said. "First customer of the day. And what a fine young man he is!"

He waved a hand at a wooden table off to his side, housed in the booth that stood by him. The table looked like an old-time version of a pinball machine, a precursor, maybe, to a modern-day c.r.a.ps table. A four-foot by four-foot panel slanted its front, a rectangular panel rose from its rear. The wood was old-petrified, Danny thought. A petrified table! Small, round grooves had been cut into the slanting panel, numbered, each number a different color. The number twenty-five was painted on that board, six times in bright green letters. Another six had the number thirty. Three, as bright and orange as the setting sun, were numbered with fifty. They were scattered throughout a bunch of tens and fifteens and fives and ones, all of which were painted a myriad of colors: yellow and purple, blues and golds and glossy blacks. Square in the middle of the board, one final groove stood out from the rest. Numbered one-hundred in blood-red lettering, it instantly drew Danny's eye to it.

The man stepped back into his booth, directly beneath a small wooden sign that read: The Moment Of Truth! Suspended by twine, it swayed slowly back and forth in the cool, crisp autumn breeze.

"Yes. Yes, my fine feathered friend. Step right up. Five'll get ya ten! Ten'll get ya twenty! Step right up to The Moment Of Truth!"