The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel Read Online Free PDF Page A

sold ice cream and had them make him a cone that nearly
toppled from its height. He licked it, wiped ice cream from his
nose, and followed without meaning to a group of teenagers too busy
pushing and shoving one another to pay attention to the glares
their boisterous behavior provoked. He glared at them himself,
nearly threw his cone at them when they collided with an elderly
couple barely able to move along. The old man said something, but
the teens didn’t stop, only laughed, pushed and shoved, and broke
into a run.
    As he passed the couple, Casey wanted to say
something, but he couldn’t think what and so left it alone.
    Stopping at a tent whose face was painted with
fire, taunting demons in the flames, avenging angels above, a man
in clerical garb on a platform before it all, upraised Bible in one
hand, growling torch in the other, promising miracles of the
prophets for those who entered and believed;
    stopping at a low square building with a painted
skull surrounding the entrance, ghosts in flight, a banshee, an
undersea creature, a man dressed like Frankenstein’s monster
telling all the men that this was the place to get the girls
hopping into their laps, thrills and excitement, a money-back
guarantee if you didn’t first die of fright;
    stopping at a tent painted in warm browns and
tans and comforting gold, palm trees and a cactus and a beautiful
woman in a long-fringed bikini dancing to a flute played by a young
boy sitting cross-legged below her, the barker winking at the men,
suggesting the women move on and give their guys a break from the
old ball-and-chain, the women giggling, the men either blushing or
posing, the flute never pausing, as if the dancer were a cobra that
either swayed or struck;
    stopping at a second intersection, under the
corner rope of another tent, finishing his cone and wiping his
hands on his jeans, the lights brighter, almost a glare that made
him look up to see that the sky had gone dark, the sun gone, though
the heat hadn’t left.
    Idly he watched the crowds move like schools of
tropical fish. Dozens of them, then nothing, then dozens more and
nothing again. Playing in the coral, no sharks to fear and sharks
hiding all over. A pair of lovers kissing fervently while still
walking, his hand burrowed in her hip pocket, her hand tucked in
his waistband. A silently weeping child in a stroller, redfaced and
barely able to stay awake. A clown blowing a balloon for a little
boy in a sailor suit. A cowgirl showing a comically intent man how
to twirl a lasso.
    The music.
    The aromas.
    The voices.
    The noise.
    Adults and kids with someplace to go.
    Suddenly Casey closed his eyes and felt like
crying, didn’t understand why . . . unless it was because they had
someplace to go.
    “Nonsense,” he snapped at himself, cleared his
throat, cleared it again, and not caring where he went followed the
sound of an old song he thought he knew, focusing on it, humming
it, turning a corner and seeing the fair open up into an oval of
several acres that held at least a dozen rides, from tiny clanging
fire engines on circular tracks to the Octopus, whose jointed steel
arms lifted spinning cabs into the dark beyond the reach of the
lights. Shrieks and wails and children pointing and parents
grinning and at the back, barely seen, the pointed circus top of a
carousel.
    He stared at it, frowning, moving sideways
around the oval’s rim as if losing sight of it would vanish it
before he could reach the place where a line had formed.
    It was black. Gleaming, faceted, strung with
hundreds of red and orange bulbs, the glow beneath its canopy
falling a mistlike green upon the animals and their riders, the
mirrors in the center housing rimmed with glittering gold, tall
rectangles that reflected a thousand worlds that lived in their
faces for less than an instant. Halfway there, he spotted Fran on
an ostrich, kicking her legs and leaning over, trying to grab the
tail of a fleeing giant rabbit. A half turn of the base