She saw Trent walking away from the rest of the group, and Cora rushed up to meet him. “Trent!”
“There you are! Em said you weren’t feeling good. Are you okay?” Trent put his hands on her shoulders. “You look fine. And you smell like alcohol.” He cracked a grin. “If you wanted to go get drunk and skip the puppet show, why didn’t you say something? I would’ve joined you.” He stole the glass bottle from her hand and sniffed it. “Woof.” He took a sip and coughed. “You always liked the strong shit. Is that straight gin?”
“I—there’s some weird shit going on. I don’t know how to explain. I think I need to leave.”
“That’s fine. I’m surprised you’ve been up and walking around as much as you have been, what with your Raggedy Ann joints and all. You must be a wreck.” Trent took another sip of the gin, wheezed, and handed it back to her. “I prefer margaritas.”
“I—”
Trent wasn’t listening. “I’m gonna go meet Ludwig. He’s such a teddy bear. Maybe tomorrow I can introduce you two.” He pulled out his phone, turned on the front-facing camera, and started fixing his hair. Because it was apparently the wrong kind of messy. Cora never understood and had stopped trying.
“Trent, I think this place is dangerous.”
“M’kay.” Trent was seriously not listening. There wouldn’t be any getting through to him. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?” He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I have a date, after all. Ta!”
Cora reached out to grab his arm and shake him and scream I think this Faire is murdering people, but stopped. She had no proof. What, because she had some weird-ass dream with some weird-ass guy in it? And some bizarre conversations with a sideshow freak and the carnival Barker?
None of this made sense.
She found Emily, Lisa, and Robert when they finally were far enough away from the tent that she felt comfortable going up to them. Numbly, she told them all she didn’t feel well, and that her pain was flaring up. It wasn’t true—not really—but it was so common that nobody questioned it.
She hugged Jane and Tom and waved goodbye to them. As she walked past the entrance of the tent, she saw Simon standing there, leaning against the wood frame of the painted façade, watching her with a faint smile.
He blew her a kiss.
Stomach churning, she rushed to her car and went home. Somewhere she felt safe. Somewhere she felt like he couldn’t find her. Too bad it wasn’t quite true.
As she crawled into bed, sleep found her.
And so did Simon.
7
It was such a strange thing. Nightmares were supposed to be set against terrifying backdrops. Spooky castles, hellscapes, graveyards, or, more recently appropriate, a freaky circus. Monsters should appear in places suited to them.
Not inside her condo.
It was a mundane, if incredibly vivid and lucid, dream. Something so utterly boring, she didn’t quite understand why her mind had summoned it. Instead of running away from monsters, or pulling from her stress from the day, it was—at least on the surface—utterly benign.
She was standing in the kitchen of her condo, cooking pasta sauce. Just standing and stirring the red liquid, watching it simmer. Steam curled up from the ingredients in delicate curls only to vanish quickly in the warm air.
Everything seemed fine.
She should have known better.
Not all monsters needed a scary backdrop to be terrifying. In fact, some were more frightening without one.
A shadow crept up the wall next to her. She looked up in confusion, her brow furrowed, and instantly recoiled in fear as though a giant spider had appeared on cabinet doors. It wasn’t a spider. It was worse.
The shadow had a face. Misshapen and mismatched eyes that were spirals of light cut through the darkness of whatever cast it. And a large, toothy, fiendish grin that would have made the Cheshire Cat ask him to tone it down. She recognized him—she had seen something like this before. It took her a second in the fuzziness of the dream to remember.
The Soothsayer’s tarot card. The one with the Puppeteer on it.
The shadow was also alive. He grinned wider, opening its jaws, and silently cackled. Long, dangerously clawed, shadowy hands reached for her, like they were projected along the surface of the cabinets.
She staggered backward, bumping into her kitchen island, and gaped at the silently laughing thing. He waved at her. He was only vaguely recognizable as the outline of a human.
“Nice place.”
She screamed. Whirling, she realized that in order to see who had spoken, she had to expose her back to the shadow. She quickly retreated to somewhere she could see both, running around to the end of the island. She grabbed a knife from the block on the way and held it aloft, pressing her back to her kitchen wall.
Somebody laughed.
Simon. The Puppeteer. He was standing in the middle of her living room, looking freakishly out of place in his bright cardinal suit with black pinstripes and bizarre mismatched sunglasses.
“Really? A knife? For me? Aw, I’m touched.” He smiled, as if it were the most adorable thing in the world to him. As if she were a child who came up to him with a drawing that was ostensibly trash, but that was to be highly valued because of her innocence. “One, we’re dreaming. Two, it wouldn’t work.” He pulled in a breath and, on the exhale, let all his words out in a fast rush, everything streaming together. “Trust-me-better-people-than-you-have-given-it-a-go.” His grin twisted into that toothy, overly hungry smile that reeked of insanity and malice. He was a lunatic. And he was in her dreams. Again.
“Go away. Leave me alone!”
“No-pe.” He let out the last half of the word as an audible pop. And with that…he made himself at home. He began to stroll around her living room. He picked up her lamp and turned it over thoughtfully, flicking the switch on and off a few times. “Huh. What’s that?”
“A—a lamp…” Weren’t monsters supposed to be chasing her around? He wasn’t torturing her. He didn’t even walk up to her. He was messing with her stuff.
“I know that.” He shot her a glare over the top of his glasses. She could see his bizarre and unsettling colored eyes over the top silver rim. “I’m not stupid. I mean the bulb. It doesn’t have a filament.”
“It…it’s an LED bulb.” She still kept the knife pointed at him, even if she was extremely confused.
“What’s that?”
“I think—I think it stands for light-emitting…diode? It’s electronic!” She glanced at the shadow, who was still looming up against the wall near her, grinning. Not doing anything terrible, at least. Just blinking occasionally. Watching her.
Shadows shouldn’t blink.
Shadows should also be cast by something. Not just…free-range.
“Well, of course, it is.” He wiggled the wire. “What else would it be?” He put the lamp back down and continued his exploration of the apartment. “Are you a little slow in the head, Cora dear?”
“Get out of my home! Or my dream. Or both. Or whatever the fuck is going on.” She tried to sound firm. But it was hard to do anything of the sort when she was pressed against the wall and brandishing a knife with both shaking hands.