This was no fucking nightmare.
“Help her!” Evan cried. “Don’t let him take her away.”
Pope grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where, Evan? Where is he taking her?”
“The house of mirrors. Dr. Demon’s House of Mirrors. Do something. Now.”
Pope didn’t need much more of a kick in the ass than that. Quickly pulling Evan’s seat upright, he strapped Evan in again, jammed the Tercel into drive, and hit the accelerator, shooting back onto the off-ramp.
He wasn’t sure what Evan was babbling about, but the bit about the house of mirrors had triggered something in his mind:
The carnival.
The carnival was in town.
Pope had spent part of every summer of his childhood haunting the grounds of Ludlow High, flirting with girls, riding rides, and navigating the maze inside Dr. Demon’s House of a Thousand Mirrors.
Middle of July meant carnival season, and whatever was going on down there did not bode well for Special Agent Anna McBride.
Pointing the Tercel in the direction of the school, he fumbled for his cell phone and hit speed-dial.
Two rings later, Jake was on the line.
1 8
He had her by the collar and was dragging her through the carnival grounds as if she were nothing more than a sack full of old bones.
Every time Anna tried to resist, he hit her with the stun gun again, sending a spark of electricity straight into her central nervous system, dazing her, her heart pounding uncontrollably. Every shock seemed to drive her deeper into her own mind. She felt as if she were floating in and out of darkness, only half-conscious of the world around her.
Then, as she came into the light again, she tried to twist away, grabbing at his hand, feeling the coarse flesh and the hardened bones beneath it-the hand of a working man, a farmer, a peasant — a carny?
He was dragging her toward the dark doorway of one of the carnival sideshows-the one from the photograph in Evan and Kimberly’s room — Dr. Demon’s House of a Thousand Mirrors.
And as she tried to pry his fingers loose, he brought the stun gun down again, jabbing its probes against her neck for what must have been the fourth or fifth time, sending another jolt through her.
This one drove her so deep into the darkness that she felt as if she were tumbling through a long black tunnel, only to emerge to light on the other side, shadows flickering in it, moving across a surface of some kind.
But what was it?
As her eyes cleared, Anna realized that she was now staring up at the tattered ceiling of a moving car, tree shadows flitting across it as its old engine rumbled and the road bumped beneath her.
But how had she gotten here? Had she lost consciousness long enough for him to hoist her into a car and drive away?
No, something was wrong. Very wrong.
Anna remembered those shadows. Remembered them from one of her visions of the little girl. Had the trauma of what was happening to her brought on another episode?
If so, the experience was no longer the detached, observational view she was accustomed to. No glimpses of mayhem and carnage that faded from the mind almost as quickly as they came.
This time it was happening to her.
She was the little girl.
Anna had somehow inhabited the girl’s mind and body, experiencing every pain, every thought, every fear as if it were her own.
The pungent smell of cigarette smoke filled her nostrils. Something constricted her mouth and she realized it was taped shut. Glancing down, she found that her wrists and ankles were bound-the wrists and ankles of a ten-year-old-duct tape wrapped around them, making it nearly impossible to move.
She was lying on the backseat of the car, and for some reason she kept thinking about someone named Stinky.
Mr. Stinky, to be more precise, who had been hit by a bus.
Confusion crowded Anna’s brain. Her thoughts seemed to be intermingled with those of her host and she had trouble discerning whose thoughts were whose.
Looking out her window through the little girl’s eyes, she saw that they were driving through a dark forest, thick green trees growing black in the waning twilight.
Turning slightly, she strained to see the car’s driver, but all she saw was the red baseball cap sitting atop a closely cropped head of dark hair. Just above his collar line was a tattoo-another goddamned neck tattoo-but instead of a dragon, this one looked like a wheel, a wagon wheel, with at least a dozen spokes, a couple of them missing:
It was a symbol of some kind, but of what?
Shifting her gaze, Anna caught a glimpse of the driver’s face in his rearview mirror: a single dark, brooding eye, obscured by a cloud of cigarette smoke.
An ornate locket dangled from a chain on the rearview mirror, clacking against the windshield as they bumped along.
And all at once, Anna knew she was about to die.
Brakes squeaked as the car came to a sudden halt. The driver pushed his door open and got out, moving stiffly, as if some sort of physical handicap was slowing him down. A moment later, the trunk was unlatched, the car bouncing slightly as the man pulled something out of it.
Then Anna’s own door flew open, and for the first time she got a full view of his face.
The sight made her shudder.
It was a study in God’s plan gone wrong. The entire left side looked as if it had been squeezed by forceps at the moment of birth-a misshapen, lopsided mess.
Anna flinched, the little girl in her instinctively squeezing her eyes shut as revulsion welled up. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
Then hands grabbed her, those same coarse working man’s hands, pulling her out of the backseat, dropping her roughly to the ground. She let out a yelp of pain, her breath hot against the tape, as the man took her by the collar and dragged her through fallen leaves, her bound wrists and ankles making it impossible for her to resist.
He dragged her into the middle of a forest clearing, struggling to carry a small, battered suitcase in his free hand. Dumping her to one side, he crouched down, laid the suitcase on the ground, and opened it, taking a moment to make his choice. Then he brought out a narrow-bladed knife. Suitable for boning.
It was covered with dried blood.
The wind was high, bending the trees above them, leaves swirling around Anna as she began to cry uncontrollably, desperately wriggling her wrists, trying to loosen the tape. But it was no use. She wouldn’t be going anywhere until the man in the red baseball cap sent her there.
Grabbing her left hand, he closed it into a fist, then pried the index finger loose and extended it, staring down at her out of his one good eye, a crooked yellow smile forming on that hideous face.
“I’ve come for what is mine, Chavi. I’ve come to make it right.”
Chavi. The same name he’d called her back on the carnival grounds. Back in the real world.
The girl who stole my soul.
Is that what he was here for now?
Was he the Devil incarnate? Some kind of demon who cuts the life force out of his victims only to leave them to wither away and die?
“Don’t cry, my darling. The pain you feel will be mine for eternity.”
Then, wiping the blade on his sweater-a ratty blue pullover-he brought the knife down to her finger and — a voice shouted out from the distance “Hold it! Stop right there!”
Suddenly, the wind and leaves and the bending trees disappeared and Anna opened her eyes to discover that she was back on the carnival grounds, only feet from the entrance to the house of mirrors, the man in the baseball cap still clutching her collar as — Deputies Worthington and Chavez ran the length of the football field toward them, moving past the carousel, Worthington bringing his weapon up to fire “Stop! Let her go!”