“I honestly didn’t notice you.”
He gasped and clutched his heart. “Oh, the pain!”
She laughed at his melodrama and shook her head. “Okay, okay. What’s with the second entrance?”
“That’s where we let people in without any money changing hands. That is, if we like them.” His smile became thinner. Less natural.
“You let them in for free?”
“Oh, I never said that.”
She looked at the skull-painted gate and shot him a raised eyebrow. “See, I’m coming up with options for what the hell you’re talking about, and all of them are dirty. So…I’m going to need more than that.”
The man laughed hard. “No! No. Nothing salacious. Nothing so mundane.” He waved his hand dismissively. “No, we just take a tiny piece of your seity instead.”
“Seity?”
“Individuality, my dear! A little bit of what makes you—well—you.” Now he was launching into a speech he had clearly given a thousand times. Or at least he had practiced it enough to make it sound that way. “Maybe it’s how you brush your hair in the morning. Or the memory of the way the crust on momma’s apple pie crunches. Or what radio station you like to listen to in the morning.”
“You’re saying you’ll steal a piece of my soul?” She snickered. “Come on.”
“Nothing so trite. Souls are cheap. Billions of them out there, right? A personality—now, that is a commodity. Because what is a soul with no individuality? A battery in a car, that’s all.” The man was still smiling. It wasn’t a friendly expression. If he was trying to be creepy, he was nailing it. “Don’t worry, it’s only a tiny piece. Only a smidge. You won’t even notice it’s gone…I promise.”
“You said you only offer it to the ones you like. Why?”
“Why eat a hot dog when you can have a steak? We pick the ones that burn hot. The ones with a lot of personality to go around. And you…” He reached out and picked up a strand of her long dark hair. She yanked her head away from him and shot him a glare. He lifted his palm as if to say he was sorry. “You burn bright. Brightest I’ve seen in a long, long time.”
“I’m nobody interesting.”
“No, I think your life turned you into nobody interesting.” He shrugged. “So, take your pick. Walk through the Dark Path, and we take a tiny piece of you, or pay the normal fee.”
Cora narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re trying to freak me out, and I’m not even sure why. Publicity stunt?”
“Ah, yes. The skeptical type. I love the skeptics. So much fun to watch them break down when everything they thought was a lie is suddenly true.” He took a step back from her. “No, Cora Glass, we take a piece of you for a good cause—to keep our own fires burning.”
“I—What—” she stammered. “Wait. Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met. You’d remember me.” He smiled.
Now she was getting nervous. “Did you, like…find me on Google or something?”
“I have no idea what half of those words mean.” He grinned and climbed back into the booth and flopped down on his stool. “Take your pick! Go inside and spare your wallet—or prove that you might believe me and pay up in hard cash. Y’know. If you’re scared.”
Cora decided she didn’t like this guy. He must be a con artist. They probably had a camera on her, and somebody was using facial recognition software and feeding information to him via an earbud. That had to be it.
There was no other possible explanation.
He was feeding her shit and trying to scare her. She’d go home, talk about it on social media, and people would come see it for themselves. Mentalism was a fun illusion, but it was only that—an illusion.
And so was his stupid selling-a-piece-of-her-personality bunk.
She texted her friends that she was going inside and she’d meet them by the carousel when they arrived. Looking back up at the sleazebag, she smirked at him and got an equally snarky expression in response. “I think you’re full of shit.”
Daring her to do something was basically all a person had to do to guarantee she did it. She hated being afraid of things. She walked toward the skull-faced entrance.
“That I am, pretty lady, that I am,” he called after her. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you can’t remember your favorite color!”
Shaking her head, she muttered “asshole” under her breath and stepped through the weird gate. In an instant, she was plunged into total darkness. She put her hands out in front of her to keep from walking into a wall.
Silence surrounded her like a blanket as overwhelming as the nothingness around her. She couldn’t even hear the sound of the carnival outside. She had followed a few other people through the gate, and there was no sign of them.
There was no sign of anything at all.
Until she heard a laugh.
It sent a shiver down her spine like someone had dumped ice cubes down the back of her shirt. Its laugh was eerie and disturbing; its voice was worse.
“Welcome to Harrow Faire.”
2
Cora ran.
She wasn’t proud of it. It wasn’t like it was the smartest thing to do—running full-tilt through the total darkness.
“Welcome to Harrow Faire.”
The terrifying laugh had been one thing. The voice whispering in her ear was another. But when something touched her, that was the last straw.
Whatever had touched her hadn’t been simply a hand on her shoulder, or a brush against her arm. The touch hadn’t even been dirty. She probably would have preferred it that way. It felt like something had reached a hand into her heart and yanked. Something cold had pulled on a thread inside of her and unraveled a piece.
Like it was…taking something from her.
A piece of her soul. Souls are cheap. A personality…now, that’s a commodity.
No! It was just nerves. This was just her being scared of someone jumping out of the black void and terrorizing her. It had to be. The guy at the ticket booth was full of shit.
So, why was she running?
And why hadn’t she hit anything yet?
She finally had to stop. It hurt too much to keep going. Everything ached. She didn’t run on a treadmill for a reason. Her ankles were too loose, and she’d roll a joint and knock something out of place. Most of her joints were loose, floating in space, and it didn’t take much for them to partially dislocate. And if she stepped wrong, she ran the risk of jamming a bone right onto the concrete.
That was all she needed—more time on crutches. Christ, she hated crutches. That was a chafing in the armpits she’d never get used to, and she dreaded it every time.
She doubled over, panting, resting her hands on her thighs. She reached for her phone to use the flashlight, but she must have lost it while running. “Damn it.”
Her ankles were aching. She rolled her left one and felt the joint struggle to pop back into place. She wasn’t quite sure if she got it back in there or not. She winced. It hurt. It always hurt. It was just a matter of how high the volume knob was set that day. Oh, joy. That was going to make the rest of the night so much fun. She was looking forward to explaining to her friends why she was going to have a limp for the rest of the night. Well, I went in the spooky door, got spooked, and ran like a bitch in the darkness. And because I have super-wacky-fun-time joints, I now have to limp around like a seventy-year-old man for the rest of the week.