The Faire didn’t even have a damn website. Everybody has a website. Everybody’s dog has its own website at this point. Not even a Facebook page. Weird.
She texted her friends who still lived in town. Trent, Lisa, and Emily. The four of them had grown up together, and they were all too stupid to leave. Trent had landed a job as the event coordinator for Castle in the Clouds on the north side of the lake, so he was pretty much set. Lisa was a housewife now with two kids and working on more. Emily was still pining after Trent, working alongside him at the historic mansion, seemingly unable to accept the fact that Trent was not into her. Or ladies in general.
When Cora told them in text about Harrow Faire reopening, Lisa didn’t believe her, and neither did Trent. But Emily—always being the pragmatic one—had gone to investigate since she had the morning off. She texted back with a photo twenty minutes later of the same restored gate and grand reopening sign Cora had seen.
It was quickly settled. They were going right after they all got out of work. Trent worked until seven, but they’d be clear after that.
Cora smiled. She was excited.
She couldn’t remember the last time she went out on the town with all her friends. Especially anything as weird and silly as going to a carnival. It wasn’t the biggest park in New England, but it was still going to be fun. She’d have to get a bag of cotton candy and leave it out to let it get stale. It was always better stale. She didn’t care what people said.
She dazed her way through the rest of the day—not like anybody noticed—and was eager to pack it up and go home. Standing from her desk, she held back a cringe again. Sitting at a desk all day sucked, but everything else sucked worse.
Living with constant pain was a gradient. Either it hurt, or it hurt worse. Physical therapy helped, insomuch as it kept her joints from randomly dislocating. Less frequently, anyway.
Heading home, she showered, fed her fish, and made herself a salad to tide her over until she got to the Faire with her friends. She was probably going to eat her weight in funnel cake and other fried bullshit, so she should take it easy.
Hopefully, they sold alcohol. She knew she drank too much. She wasn’t an alcoholic, not by any means, but a drink a night was probably not a great way to live. But that, coupled with the medical marijuana she was allowed to smoke, kept the pain, and her life, vaguely tolerable.
Six thirty, and she climbed into her car to head to the Faire. To her surprise, the parking lot was packed. For a company with seemingly zero marketing budget, they seemed to be doing just fine for themselves. She parked in the first spot she could find and headed to the ticket booth. Not seeing anyone she recognized, she texted her friends.
The smell of popcorn and spun sugar filled the air. She could hear laughter and the sound of rides clanking. The hurdy gurdy and pipe organs of all the rides made for a cacophony that joined the other perfectly archetypical sounds of a circus.
It brought back every memory of every fair she had ever been to. This place had been abandoned even when she was little, but all fairs more or less sounded and smelled the same. She remembered holding on to her dad’s hand as he led her through the rows of games designed to con people out of a dollar. The giant toys she always wanted to win but knew she never would. She remembered screaming on all the old rides, getting lost in the rickety funhouse, and staring at her distorted reflection in mirrors.
She wondered if everybody had all the same memories of places like this. But Harrow Faire seemed like a lot more than just the standard carnival—they had circus tents. The ads on the fencing of the ticket booth, painted like old sideshow posters, promised tightrope acts, flying trapeze, monsters and animals, a bearded lady, and more. It was dizzying. It was like a traveling circus had humped a theme park and Harrow Faire was its bizarre, mutant offspring.
Oddly, it looked like there were two entrances. One normal one—a series of turnstiles that ka-chunked as people passed through them—and a second one that was a giant painted face of a skull, with a gaping jaw for a door. Over it, the sign read “The Dark Path Awaits,” but nothing else. No explanation as to why there was a second way in. The second entrance wasn’t nearly as busy, but she saw a few people trail into it, chuckling and shaking their heads as if unsure about what they were getting themselves into.
Her phone buzzed. Looking down at the screen, she sighed. Trent and Emily were late because an event ran over. Lisa was stuck with a sick kid and couldn’t make it.
Typical.
This was why they never went out anymore.
“Hello there, pretty lady, want to come inside? Or do you just like lingering in the parking lot?”
She looked up at the sound of the voice. A man stood in the ticket booth, leaning on the counter, grinning at her.
The booth was painted in gold and crimson stripes. Flashing lightbulbs overhead that were meant to draw the eye and became dizzying after too long.
The man who had spoken, like his set dressing, was old-fashioned. He looked…there was no nice way of putting it. He looked like a sleazebag from the 1920s. His brown hair was slicked back, carefully combed and gelled into a pomaded dome. He even had a narrow mustache that would have been fashionable a hundred years ago. He’d be attractive, if she thought she could trust the fucker as far as she could throw him.
He had his chin on his hand and his elbow on the counter, and he was smiling at her like there wasn’t anybody else in line. There were other people running the rest of the counter, and he seemed content to ignore the pileup of humans and talk to her where she stood off to the side.
“I’m just waiting for my friends.”
“You might as well go in without them. No sense waiting out here where there’s nothing but my handsome face to look at.” He waggled a finger toward her phone. “You have one of those thingamajigs, don’t you? Makes it very easy to find people nowadays. Go on in and tell them where you are when they get here.”
He even talked like someone from an old movie. What was that accent called? Transatlantic. That was it. A fake accent that people put on to make themselves sound posh on the silver screen or on the radio. It went with the scenery; she’d give him that. Along with his insistence that he didn’t know what a phone was called.
The park must have hired interactive actors. She tried not to snicker. “I gotta give you props for sticking with the theme.” She smirked. “I’m betting five dollars you own one of these.” She held up her phone toward him.
“I love a quick buck. That’s a deal!” He cackled and slapped his hand on the counter. “Not sure when you’ll pay up or how I’ll prove it, but I like a bargain where I see one. And I’ll tell you what, pretty lady—I’ll make you an offer. See, there are two ways to get into Harrow Faire.” He gestured at the two gates, the normal one to his right and the morbid one to his left.
“I noticed.”
“And you didn’t ask me why?” He put a palm to his chest. “I’m insulted.” He stepped out from behind the booth, swinging the little door open and letting it latch behind him. He was wearing a striped suit that matched the ticket booth’s gold and red stripes. He walked up to her with a grin. He was smooth—too smooth. Like an old…hah. Like an old carnival barker. And that was exactly what he was, she realized.