I peeled off from the group and went to the food truck and grabbed his plate.
“Everyone ate again?” Keene asked.
“Everyone but the sisters and Melinda,” I answered as I handed off his plate.
“Melinda?” he asked. “What?”
I felt something inside of me seize up at his tone.
“What?” I asked.
“Melinda and Simi weren’t part of the show.” He placed his food on the trailer’s lip. “They should’ve been here over an hour ago. Has she been checking in?”
I pulled out my phone and noted the last check-in.
“Over an hour ago,” I answered.
Keene cursed. “There’s no one else out there but us, man.”
Then he was running.
I was running, too, and quickly overcame him in a matter of seconds as we made our way to the Fun House.
The pounding of footsteps behind me let me know that my urgency and panic didn’t go unnoticed by my friends, either.
CHAPTER 20
Bitch, I will put you in a trunk and help people look for you. Stop playing with me.
-Simi to Val
SIMI
The panic that coursed through me every time I got near the Fun House was unnerving.
But maybe it was time to push past the panic and stop being quite so…wienerish.
Was that even a word? Wienerish?
Likely not, but it fits the situation perfectly.
Sure, having your mother brutally murdered inside a fun house and being the one to find her body would be quite terrifying.
And yes, not knowing who killed her was also quite unnerving.
I mean, there’d been seventeen years for me to come to terms with my mother’s murder.
Yet, it was still just as fresh in my mind as it had been the day it’d happened.
“Hey, hun,” Melinda called. “You’re done. Why don’t we walk you toward the food trailer? Then we can eat. I’m starving.”
Just as she announced that a little toddler came running up toward us, looking lost and afraid.
“Oh, you poor thing.” Melinda dropped down to her haunches. “What’s wrong, buddy?”
Melinda scooped up the toddler and started to look around.
“There’s one at every show,” she sighed.
“Tabor!” a panicked woman’s voice sounded from beyond us. “Tabor, where are you?”
Melinda sighed. “Guess you’re Tabor. Let’s go get you back to your mama.”
Then Melinda was moving toward the panicked voice.
I watched her disappear from sight and wondered if I was supposed to follow.
I didn’t in the end. The smell of fajitas was too much for me.
Lifting my head up, I took a deep breath of the food that I could smell wafting our way and took a few steps toward it, not realizing I’d somehow gotten close to the Fun House without realizing it.
My stomach dropped at the sight of it—it was dark now that the circus was on its way to closing. Melinda had turned the lights off herself, leaving only the harsh overhead lights inside—I moved around it with a wide berth.
I’d just made it to the very edge that funnels you into a smaller line to get you through the separated tents when someone stepped in my path.
I was lost in thought, thinking about the food I was about to have and not paying attention to my surroundings.
Had I been doing that, I probably would’ve seen the sheriff before he’d appeared right in front of me.
“Fuck,” I breathed when it finally dawned on me who he was and what this situation meant for me.
I should’ve stayed closer to Melinda.
My gaze followed down to his hand, and that’s when I saw the emergency fire axe that usually hung out at the fire department stand that we kept on hand in case of emergencies.
Usually, Kristoff was the one who handled that stand, but today, it’d sat empty because his daughter had started running a high temperature that’d kept him with her. Since Kristoff was actually trained as a firefighter as a profession, we felt he should be there, but he also moonlighted as a “strong man” when we needed him to.
“You’re a hard one to get alone,” he said to me. “Thought I’d never get you by yourself.”
I felt some bile start to creep up my throat.
I took a step backward, and he took one step forward.
“Had to steal a kid to get her gone,” Bright continued, his hand clenching and unclenching on the axe.
I studied his face.
In the harsh floodlights above him, it was a complete surprise that this man could see out of his eyes, let alone drive hours toward me.
Dangerous seemed like an understatement.
The wreck hadn’t been kind to him like it had been to me.
On every single available surface of his face, he had a bruise, a scab, or a cut.
Even what I could see of his arms and his hands were covered in bruises and scrapes.
Good.
He deserved to be hurting after what he’d done.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” I said as I took another step back.
He smirked, his attention going to my feet before he took another step toward me.
“I think you know what I’m talking about,” he commented. “But it really doesn’t matter to me. What matters right now is how you thought you could run from me and get away with it, Margaret.”
“Margaret?” I asked, confused now.
The name, of course, should’ve sounded familiar. It was my mother’s name, after all, but I was so hyped up on the adrenaline coursing through my veins that I didn’t give much thought to why he would call me that until he said what he said next.
Though, by that point, I’d already started running.
It was only when I’d reluctantly turned the corner into the Fun House that he spoke.
“You look just like her, you know,” he called out the moment he breached the entrance.
The overhead lights that Melinda left on until we closed down the Fun House were bright and harsh, making the glare and the mirrors seem even more severe than the last time I’d come in here.
I froze when I heard him speak, my eyes wide.
I saw my eyes widen eighteen other times in eighteen separate mirrors that bounced off the other.
“W-what are you talking about?” I called out almost worriedly.
“You. Your mother,” he replied coldly.
I swallowed hard as I watched him move closer.
Unlike my sisters, I didn’t know this maze back to front. I couldn’t walk through it with my eyes closed and maneuver myself through it with the ease of overuse. The maze had been changed several years ago, and I wasn’t willing to go in to learn the new pattern.
“My mother?” I asked, feeling behind me for a wall and not finding one.
Feeling relieved I’d finally hit a break in the mirrors—and hoping that that break wasn’t one of the dead ends that were specifically placed to make you think you’d found a way out—I moved backward, only to find a wall each place I tried to move next.
“Your mother,” Bright said. “She was my first.”
I felt vomit rising up the length of my esophagus.
“Your first what?” I whimpered.
He grinned, and I saw on his ugly face that he was happy that he was scaring the shit out of me.