Katherine Dunn: Nightmare Carnival

“Because we only need you to play a role — you get to stand in for the woman who got murdered back then. The Gallowses, Victor, our resident guru, they believe a reenactment of that original crime will allow them to interrupt it and break the curse. None of the ladies with the carnival has the guts to act as a decoy. I’m good at taking a person’s measure. My hunch is, you’ve got a gift for survival.”

I had another sip.

“Bait doesn’t sound fun.”

“Bait just hides the hook.”

“This is about Alaska. Oh, boy, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think Eagle Talon qualifies me for what-the-fuck-ever freak Olympics you got going on here.”

“Damned right it’s about Alaska. Alaska was the crucible that made you. Your life ended when that man slashed your throat. The old you went up in smoke. You’re a dancing star.”

“What did you say?” Fear stirred in my heart. Fear and an incongruous trickle of exultance. A sense of deeper purpose.

Beasley retrieved his flask.

“I recognized your face the second I walked into that tavern. What’s more, I recognized the light in your eyes. I wasn’t there looking for Ms. Goodbar or a heroine to pull our fat from the fire. I went there to get drunk because we’d failed to find a leading lady for the big night. Meeting you is fate. Can’t be anything less than the machinery of the universe clicking into place.”

“Flattering, except I still don’t understand what you want. Eagle Talon doesn’t mean anything. I went head to head with a creep and lived to tell. The media tried to spin the hero angle. That ain’t me. I’m a survivor, not a savior.”

“Remains to be seen, Jess. Come on, you need to speak with Conway. He was there during the bad days.”

“Ask the dismembered people in the den, they’d probably say these days are pretty lousy,” I said.

“The other bad days.”

On the way to the knife thrower’s tent, we crossed paths with Victor, the carnival’s resident fortune-teller/mentalist. Youngish guy, seven or eight years my senior. He dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Lacking the glamour and glitz of a stage, his salt-and-pepper goatee belonged on a ski bum rather than a fortune-teller or magician.

Victor did a double take at the sight of me. He clutched my hand and kissed it with unctuous ardor.

“Oh, you magnificent man,” he said to Beasley. “You have accomplished the impossible. She is perfection.”

“Yeah?” Beasley said. His cheeks seemed ruddier than usual.

“No question. Ephandra must be wild with jealousy.” Victor finally released my hand. “My dear, it is a pleasure. You must visit Conway. Go, go! Time is short.”

The interior of the tent lay in gloom, although it didn’t matter — Conway, the knife thrower, blindfolded himself and continued to chuck the knives with eerie accuracy.

“Oh, Beasley, what have you done?” he said. He spoke in a deep, trained voice that made me marvel why he wasn’t an actor instead of a knife thrower. Tall, and muscular. Wouldn’t have guessed him for his midseventies. Raw boned with the hands of a pianist. The ace of spades tattooed on his left forearm.

He threw a brace of specially balanced knives at a slowly rotating wheel with a busty silhouette for a non-bull’s-eye. A scantily clad assistant would occupy the blank heart of the wheel whenever the curtain lifted again. I’d seen the chick, Gacy, stumble from the animal wrangler’s shack, hung over and falling out of her sun and moon robe. Every fifth or sixth cast of a knife thunked solidly in the center of the silhouette. Obviously Conway knew where she’d slept too. I’d caught a gander of Niko, the Lord of Beasts, and he was easy on the eyes. Conway had run afoul of an immutable law of physics — chicks dig a guy who knows his way around cats.

“I’m not sure if I should go into family matters with young Jessica,” Victor said. “For her own protection. It is unethical to inveigle her into our wretched troubles.”

“I agree,” I said. “This whole deal seems extremely personal.”

Beasley smoked a cigarette. His hair stuck out every which way from crawling into the bushes. He smelled rank. Still sexy.

“There’s a bus station half an hour down the road, Jess. Say the word.”

I didn’t give the word. Could be my heart in my throat blocked the way. My ever-intensifying death wish might’ve compelled silent complicity, or whatever wish it was that had followed me since the debacle in Alaska. There was also the distinct possibility I desired round two in the sack with Beasley. What can I say? I’m a complicated woman.

“Okay, tell it,” Beasley said to his pal the knife thrower.

Conway shrugged and orated a real potboiler. Back in 1963 when the Gallows Carnival was purchased from a central European mountebank who shall remain nameless, some of the original players immigrated to the US and continued under new management. Chief among them, a pair of star-crossed lovers: Artemis, the animal trainer, and Vinette, lovely assistant to the Magician from the Black Sea. The magician was a handsome and acerbic, mature gentleman named Milo. Milo, a longtime widower, coveted sexy, young Vinette and schemed to win her affection from his rival Artemis.

Predictably, nothing good came of this situation. Milo failed to woo the object of his affection through honest means. He turned to skullduggery, black magic, and plain dirty tricks. It failed. Then Artemis and Vinette announced their engagement and Milo lost the remainder of his wormy, rotten mind.

On the couple’s engagement night, while everyone else attended the celebratory feast, Milo slinked into the tent where the dancing bears, big cats, and wolves slept in their cages. Some beasts he poisoned and they died, foaming at the muzzle. Others he slew with a carbine. The aftermath proved so disturbing, even hardened veterans of World War II (and there’d been several on staff) wept to see the carnage.

Ah, the worst remained. Innocent Vinette, who had no conception of the magician’s sickness, considering him a dear and trusted friend, slipped away from the supper to collect him. After searching high and low for the magician, she came upon the scene and screamed in horror to witness Milo skinning Artemis’s prize animal, a black wolf. A massive and terrifying beast, originally captured along the Mackenzie River, the wolf hadn’t gone down without a struggle — a savage slash of its fangs took a swath of the magician’s face to naked bone.

Legend insisted that Vinette fled blindly, Milo on her heels. She in her dinner gown, he wrapped in the dripping pelt of the wolf, his face flayed. He brought her down in the field and tore her flesh with nails and teeth. When he had done for her, the magician fled into the hills. His wounds festered, as did his madness. Over the course of a fortnight, he roamed the land, murdering farmers, truck-stop waitresses, untended children, and other hapless folk.

Eventually, he took shelter in an abandoned wolf den on a desolate mountainside. The men of the carnival, led by an enraged and grieving Artemis, came with lanterns and rifles. Milo charged the hunters and they cut him down in a blaze of gunfire. He cursed them with his dying breath. And lo, a few years later, the carnival troupe became aware of a dark presence haunting the show. Mysterious and brutal killings began. Beasley had filled me in on the rest.

“Tonight is the fiftieth anniversary of Milo’s murder of Vinette,” Conway said.

“Of course it is.” I considered a void, then a crack of white light, all the fire pouring forth, and a sweet young thing’s face contorted in screams at the heart of the inferno.

Beasley leaned over and whispered into my ear.

“Please help. The Gallowses will make it worth your while.”