Billy stared at the Octopus. He saw scaly, rust-eaten metal behind a hanging flap of tarpaulin. The faint screaming went on and on, drifting in and out. "Why's that gondola covered up?" he asked the man.
"Needs work. Gonna repaint it. Don't you have nothin' better to do?" He glared up at a couple of approaching teenagers and snapped, "We're closed!"
Abruptly, the eerie voices stopped, as if they'd been silenced by a stronger force. Billy felt himself stepping closer to the hidden gondola. He had the sudden urge to climb into it, to close the canopy over his head, to let the Octopus whirl him high into the air. It would be the best ride in the world, he thought. The most thrilling ever. But for the most excitement, the very most, you have to ride in the covered gondola. . . .
He stopped in his tracks, and he knew.
There was something deadly in that scabrous gondola.
"What're you lookin' at?" the man said uneasily. When Billy turned toward him, he saw a heavy set woman with a sad face and coarse blond hair coming out of the shadows.
"Buck?" she said tentatively. "Buck, it's time to close down now."
"Don't bother me, woman!" he shouted, and then he paused, frowning. "I'm sorry, hon," he said wearily, and then he looked again at the Octopus. Billy saw a strange combination of fear and love on his face. "You're right. It's time to shut it down for tonight." Buck started walking to the generator that powered the ride.
The woman came toward Billy. "Get away from that machine, boy. Get away from it right now!" she warned him. And then the Octopus sign went out.
"What's wrong with it?" he asked her, quietly so the man wouldn't hear.
She shook her head, obviously afraid to say any more.
"Go on about your business!" Buck shouted at him. "This is a good ride, boy!" Something was about to break behind the man's eyes. "I was in control all the time!"
Billy saw the torment in both their faces, and he hurried away. Lights were flickering off all over the midway. He saw the Jungle Love sign go out, and knew he'd missed the last show.
The Octopus had just gone up this morning. He remembered that one of the roustabouts had split his hand open on a bolt, but then he'd thought nothing of it because accidents were common. The roustabout had bled a great deal. He decided to stay away from that machine, because he remembered his mother telling him that evil could grow in the most unexpected places—like an oak tree.
Or a machine.
The screams were silenced, Billy thought, as if the machine had offered them up to whet his curiosity. When he looked over his shoulder, the man and woman were gone. The midway was clearing out.
Billy glanced over at the Jungle Love sideshow. There was a figure standing near the entrance, where the sexy photographs were tacked to a display board. He decided to walk over, to find out if the man worked with the sideshow. But before Billy could reach him, the man stepped into the darkness between the Jungle Love trailer and the Mad Mouse maze.
When Billy reached the display board, he saw that the photograph of the blond girl—the one who troubled his dreams so much—had been ripped away.
31
"You'd better slow down," Helen Betts said. "Wayne won't like it."
At the wheel of his fire-engine-red Camaro, Terry Dozier was watching the speedometer climb to sixty-five. Before the headlights, the highway—ten miles north of Fayette—was a yellow tunnel cut through the mountain of night. Terry smiled, his eyes full of devilment. No one, not even his steady girl friend, Helen, knew that one of Terry's favorite hobbies was beating out the brains of stray cats with a Louisville Slugger.
Wayne was stretched out in the backseat, his legs sprawled on a half-empty box of Falconer Crusade Bibles, the last of a dozen boxes that Terry and Helen had helped Wayne hand-deliver. Fayette County residents who'd donated upward of one hundred dollars during the highly publicized "Bible Bounty Week" got a Bible and a visit from Little Wayne Falconer. It had been a long, tiring day, and Wayne had healed whole families today of everything from inner-ear trouble to nicotine addiction. His restless sleep was haunted by two recurring dreams: one of a snake of fire fighting an eagle of smoke; and one in which the Creekmores were standing in that hospital waiting room, the woman's eyes fixed on him as if she could see right through his skin to the soul, her mouth opening to say Do you know what you're doing, son?
He feared he was falling under some kind of spell, because he couldn't get his mind off the woman and boy. They were using strong power on him, he thought, to draw his mind from the straight-and-narrow path. He'd been reading a lot lately about demon possession, about demons that were so strong they could inhabit both the living and the dead, and nothing scared him any worse. Praying in the chapel at home seemed to ease his brain for a while.
Wayne came up out of a light sleep and saw Helen's autumn hair blowing in the breeze from the open window. Both she and Terry were going to college in a few weeks on Falconer Crusade scholarships. Helen was a pretty girl, he mused. Her hair smelled nice, like peppermints. He was horrified when he realized he was getting an erection, and he tried to blank out the thought of sinful sex. Nude girls sometimes cavorted in his mind, begging him to take off his clothes and join them. Stop it! he told himself, squeezing his eyes shut. But as he drifted off again he thought: I'll bet Helen and Terry do it do it do it. . . .
"Where are you going?" she asked Terry in a nervous whisper. "You missed the turnoff!"
"On purpose, babe. Don't worry, it's cool."
"Tell me where, Terry!"
"Steve Dickerson's having a party, isn't he? We were invited, weren't we?"
"Well . . . sure, but . . . that's not exactly Wayne's type of crowd. I mean . . . with everybody going off to college and all, it might be kinda wild."
"So what? It'll do old Wayne good." He squeezed her thigh and she gave his hand a little love-slap. "And if somebody gets drunk, Wayne can just touch his hand and draw out the deeeemon of al-ke-hall!" He giggled as Helen looked at him, horrified. "Oh come on, Betts! You don't take that healing crap seriously, do you?"
Helen blanched, turning quickly to make sure Wayne was still sleeping. She was sure glad it was such a clear August night, no thunderstorms around—struck by lightning would be a bad way to go.
The Dickerson house was a two-story colonial on the edge of a six-acre lake. There was a long expanse of emerald green lawn, dew glittering in the squares of light cast from the windows. Terry whistled softly when he saw the tough specimens of high-horsepower cars parked along the curb.
He parked the Camaro and winked at Helen. "Wayne? We're here."
"Huh? We're home?"
"Well . . . no, not just yet. We're at Steve Dickerson's house."
Wayne sat up, bleary-eyed.
"Now, before you say anything," Terry told him, "there's a party goin' on. Steve's folks are out of town this weekend, so he invited everybody. I thought we could all . . . you know, unwind."
"But"—Wayne stared at the house—"Steve Dickerson isn't saved."
"Helen and I worked hard today, didn't we? By the time we take you home and come back, it'll be pretty late. So why don't we go in for a while, just to be social?"
"I don't know. My . . . my father's expecting me home by . . ."
"Don't worry about it!" Terry was getting out. Helen was irritated at him for dragging Wayne to this party, because she knew the hell-raisers of Indian Hills High would be here, the kind of people Terry associated with before he'd been saved. Sometimes she thought that Being Saved was rubbing off Terry like old paint.
Uneasily, Wayne followed them up the flagstone walkway. They could hear the muffled thump of loud music from inside. Helen said nervously, "Wayne, it'll be fun. I bet there are a lot of girls who'd like to meet you."