Looking for something scary to read this fall. Here is an excerpt from my full length novel, Karnevel, available on Amazon.
A whole week went by and another Sunday was upon the boys. Their father didn’t have a route to drive that weekend, and their mother didn’t drink the night before, so the boys were ready and downstairs with plenty of time to spare.
The meteorologist on the radio said, it was a record breaking 92°, which was unusual for spring in Charlestowne. So hot, Pastor Liam kept dapping away sweat from his silver-white hair with a handkerchief. By the time he was done with his sermon, the cloth left wet streaks on the pulpit.
After church, the boys had the rest of the afternoon to themselves, and they spent it outside. They kept mostly to the front of the house, where Jake sat cross-legged on the lawn watching with moderate interest as Johnny made daring figure eights on his bike in the middle of the street.
Next to Jake, Will Cole laid on the grass with his arms behind his head, popping and chewing gum loudly. Will was supposedly too tired to do anything, but still found his way over to the Patterson house when Johnny called around to see who was available to play.
“It’s really hot.” Jake said.
“I know, Jake.” Johnny replied with beads of sweat across his shirt. He pedaled faster to create more wind in his face.
Moments later, “It’s really, really hot.”
“You said that already,” Johnny said dismissively.
“It’s like I’m suffocating.”
After screeching to a stop, Johnny sighed heavily, “I get it, but inside isn’t any better.”
Jake shielded his eyes from the sun and said, “I really don’t like that feeling though.”
“Would you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“Acting like Ma’.” A jagged pulse beat in Johnny when he saw the confusion on Jake’s face. Before Johnny opened his mouth, he knew he was going to sound just like their father. “You gotta’ understand that someday, someone will pound you into the ground if you keep acting helpless. You’re ten. You’re not a baby anymore. You’re a big boy now in a big world. You can’t keep thinking small. And stop being such a friggin’ weirdo.”
He often called Jake some teasing label or another. His favorite: weirdo, because it summed up everything about his baby brother perfectly.
“If either of you keep whining like babies,” Will said with a mouthful of gum. “I swear to god, Im’ma punch someone’s lights out.”
When Will Cole threatened to do something, he acted upon it without a second thought. He could belch the alphabet anywhere in public and not care. He regularly stole candy from the corner store right from under a cashier’s nose. He fought a high schooler and sported a black eye around for a week with pride. So Johnny took heed and resumed biking.
Ricky Tan came barreling down the street on his bike. He was impossible to miss. He was a small boy with bronzed skin and long dark hair that flew behind him as he biked. Underneath the bangs were almond-shaped eyes.
Ricky was unlike anyone else in Charlestowne. His family moved into town from Cambodia, and they made Charlestowne history for being the first outsiders to buy a home and open a business.
It was common for problems to arise between local residents and outsiders. For his boys, Jayson Wyatt Patterson drew upon the example of a fight that broke out at the local pub – The Bar Maiden – as proof why it was important to keep the order of things.
White customers were so furious at a new bartender who served a couple of Black men before them they rioted in the streets and smashed the windows of the first car they saw. The outrage and the rumblings of a boycott and lawsuit that ensued afterward were quelled quickly by the Mayor and the media. The bartender was fired, and it took The Bar Maiden a while to get its reputation and customers back. Jay believed if people only kept to their roles nothing would’ve happened.
Ricky popped up the curb and hopped off his bike.
“Hi Ricky!” Jake jumped spiritedly to his feet.
“I was wondering when you would show up,” Johnny welcomed him. “I called your house the moment I got back.”
Ricky said. “My parents wouldn’t let me go until my homework was finished.”
“God, you’re such a dork!” Will laughed, “Do you always do your homework?”
“It needs to be done,” Ricky said tensely.
“It needs to be done,” Will mocked in a high pitched voice, “My name is Ricardo, and I sound like a damn girl!”
“That joke is getting old.” Ricky sighed.
“What’d you gonna do about it sissy?” Will sat up on the grass.
“I hope you swallow that gum and choke on it.” Ricky suggested.
“Blah! Blah! Blah!” Will dismissed in a sing-song voice, “The sissy’s talking.”
Ricky’s eyebrows wrinkled in frustration, and Johnny frowned.
Will didn’t come fixed with an off button, and Ricky wasn’t the type of person to react violently no matter how upset he was. Rather than fight, Ricky got even by withholding homework and test answers. And one of the things Johnny liked about Ricky was his answers.
“Ricky, when you’re done screwing around with Will, I need to see your work for tomorrow.” Johnny tactfully redirected everyone’s attentions by throwing his arms around Ricky in a big motion.
“Dammit!” Will exclaimed and then collapsed back to the grass, “Wake me when you two start talking about something interesting.”
“Thanks, Johnny,” Ricky said with an appreciative smile. “You could persuade the sun not to shine if you wanted to.”
“Only if the sun was standing in my way,” Johnny replied, “and if it had the answers to my homework.”
As Will laughed, Jake held back a smile and began a game of catch. When the baseball circled back to Jake, he suddenly dropped his hands and the ball went rolling out into the street.
“You missed,” Ricky said as he went after the ball.
A deep concentration painted Jake’s face. His eyes narrowed as he cocked his head curiously up to the air.
“Jake,” Johnny spoke into his fist as if it were a microphone, “This is NASA to Jake. Jake, please join us back on planet Earth. Over.”
“Shhh, Johnny!” Jake shouted. “I can’t hear it.”
The boys looked from each other in surprise.
“The weirdo’s talking back,” Will said impressed.
Ricky was concerned. “Hear what, Jake?”
“You don’t hear it?” Jake walked out into the middle of the street.
The boys turned their heads up to the air and listened intently for anything out-of-the-ordinary Sunday afternoon noise. Water jetted from nearby sprinklers. A dog started barking further down the street.
“Either I’m going deaf or you’re pulling my leg,” Will gave up first. “Whatever it is, you’re getting a shot in the arm for wasting my time.”
“I hear something!” Jake threw up his hands to stop him.
“But we don’t hear anything,” Ricky said.
Jake heard it again and looked up and down the street to see where it was coming from. He wrote off the others’ deafness as their inability to really listen to what was around them. With all their talking, they didn’t know how to listen like he did, and the noise was louder than anything he had ever heard before. It rang in his ears like church bells.
Something large was coming. Its massive vibrations shook deep in his bones. Each time he blinked he saw glimpses of his vivid dream a week before.
The change he dreamed about was here.
“Trumpets,” Jake said distantly. “I hear trumpets.”
“Jake, stop it.” Johnny demanded. “You’re being weird again.”
Will pulled his fist far behind his shoulders and aimed at Jake’s arm.
“No wait!” Ricky caught Will in mid swing-fall. “I hear it now.”
“Are you both losing it?” Johnny was baffled by what was happening.
“Listen.” Ricky instructed him.
There was an obscenity on the tip of Johnny’s tongue, until he heard something under the sounds of sprinklers and a barking dog. It was faint, but grew louder by the second. Bursts of animalistic sounds blared from some horn. It was not by any means music, but contained its own melody within the chaos.
“Whoa…” Will said. “What is that?”
“Do you feel that?” Ricky added in a panic, “The ground’s shaking.”
On cue, a mighty roar echoed through the streets. One by one, doors opened, and people stepped outside their homes to see what the commotion was about.
“A lion?” Ricky barely completed his question, “Do you hear a lion too?”
“Johnny…” Jake trembled with bottled excitement.
“It sounds like it’s coming from the square.” Johnny smiled as an idea formed in his head.
Will broke out grinning from ear to ear.
“Let’s do it,” Will whispered darkly as Johnny hopped on his bike and began pedaling as fast as he could to the town square. Will quickly followed behind him on a bike of his own.
“Wait up!” Ricky yelled and grabbed his bike to follow them. He helped Jake onto his bicycle’s handlebar and advised him to hold on tight.
When Ricky caught up to Johnny, he wondered, “What’s a lion doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Johnny shrugged, “but we’re going to find out.”
People walked, some ran, down the street and around corners, to converge on the noises in the town square.
The boys were not the first to arrive, but they were among the few that saw the beginning of a colorful parade down Main Street. It began with a monstrous elephant leading a caravan of trucks and wagons. Directed by a little man who sat atop it, the elephant raised its mighty trunk and blew. Jake immediately recognized the trumpet he heard back at his house.
A truck pulled a pair of caged lions roaring at the crowd. Stacked high on the bed of another truck were chickens in coops and pigs and goats tied to each other. Large steel contraptions were hauled on a string of flatbed trucks.
The crowd doubled. Both sides of the street were full with spectators that poured out of their stores and homes. Men, women, and children cheered as the procession continued.
Clowns flipped, cart wheeled, and juggled along the caravan as it made its crawling journey down the street. Wooden wagons decorated with colorful posters announced exotic acts: the Strongman, the Psychic, the Wolfman, the Freak, and the Birdman.
Johnny was mesmerized by the bizarre poster of an all-dark creature called the Monster. It reminded him of the wild creatures he only saw in science fiction matinees and comic books.
Dressed in black, The Monster hid its face underneath a wide hood. Johnny wondered what the monster was hiding, and whether it was going to jump out of the closed wagon and scare everyone.
Bringing up the end of the caravan, two large horses pulled a carriage at a cantered pace. A tall man with a curling mustache sat at the helm coaching the horses. A red stovepipe hat exaggerated his height by a few extra inches and contrasted brightly with the flamboyant colors of his dress jacket. He kept his head forward oblivious to the cheering audience around him. His profile was a prestigious as Abraham Lincoln on the penny.
Then he turned to Johnny and Jake, brought his finger to his lips, as if to keep a secret, and winked. Quickly, he went right back to ignoring them.
Johnny’s face lit up as the caravan continued down the street. It got smaller the further it went, but the crowd didn’t disperse.
“Wow!” Jake exclaimed.
“Damn!” Will seconded the emotion.
Jake asked, “What was that?”
“A caravan?” Ricky attempted a guess.
“Like in Westerns?” Johnny said skeptically. “It looks more like a circus.”
“A circus?” Jake nearly jumped in his skin. “Here?”
“Where did it come from?” Ricky said.
Johnny answered him pensively, “It came from outside the town.”
“Where’s it going?” Ricky continued.
Though they could barely make out the caravan, they saw it turn into the forested section of the town called Calvary Forest.
“What would they want there? Why are they even here?” Ricky spoke frantically.
The boys stood on watching the last of the trucks and wagons disappear into the trees.