Dark Moon (Nightmare Hall) (14 page)

Boomer thought for a minute, his lips pursed, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I knew everyone in the crowd. The ones near the back were on your carnival committee, pretty much. Well, except for one guy—the guy from the camera shop? He kind of waved a little, but I didn’t think he was waving at me.”

Garth? Eve thought as she walked down the quiet hallway toward the elevator. No wonder he’d appeared on the scene right away, warning her not to remove the dart. He’d been right there the whole time. If she hadn’t gone around to the back of the booth, she’d have seen him.

She stabbed the down button, waited for the elevator to arrive. It wasn’t as if Garth had been the only person watching Tony throw. There’d been a huge crowd.

Garth wouldn’t hurt anyone, Eve thought vehemently as she stepped into the elevator.

How do
you
know? a little voice asked her. You just met him. Don’t forget, he has good reason to be mad at the administration. Reason enough to get back at the dean and the board of trustees by ruining the Founders’ Day celebration. True, he didn’t seem angry, but that could all be just an act. You don’t know what’s going on in his head.

Boomer had thought Garth was waving at him. Why would Garth have been waving at him?

Eve’s head began to ache again.

G
ARTH WAS WAITING FOR
Eve near the Ferris wheel. He looked angry. His mouth was a thin line, and his thick, dark eyebrows met in a scowl. “I can’t believe you’re out here,” he said, moving toward Eve. She saw Serena at the cotton candy booth, Kevin near the Ferris wheel, and Alfred was waving to her from the dart booth. Checking the darts again, no doubt. Good thinking.

“Why wouldn’t I be out here?” she said flippantly, glancing around her, trying to make the glance look casual. Everything seemed … normal. The carnival had been open for a couple of hours now, and there was a large crowd. If she concentrated really hard, she could pretend that everything
was
normal. “I’m cochairperson of an event. This,” waving her hands to encompass her surroundings, “is the event. So where else should I be?”

“In your room, in your bed!” he barked, taking her elbow and leading her into the shelter of the Ferris wheel. “After last night, and then what happened this morning … Serena filled me in … I was sure you’d resign. Or sign yourself into the infirmary. This whole damn thing should have been canceled. Your administration is out to lunch, if you ask me. And you, what are
you
trying to prove? You’re smart enough to know you could have been killed on that ride last night.”

“Well, thank you so much for reminding me. Just the thing to brighten my day. Have you ever thought of writing greeting cards for a living?” The little men hammering inside her skull stepped up their pace. “And speaking of earning a living, why aren’t you at work? You sure take a lot of time off.” If he went back to town, she wouldn’t have to see him, wouldn’t have to look at him and wonder.

His scowl deepened. “What’s the matter with you? I’m here because I was worried. I went back to your room, and you weren’t there. Came here, found Andie, and she said she’d bet anything you were out here somewhere. She was right, wasn’t she? I can’t believe it; Call me crazy, but it seems to me that someone tried to stop your clock last night. Generous of you to give them a second chance. You like being a target, is that it?”

She had never seen him so angry. He seemed like a completely different person.

“I am
not
hiding in my room like a fugitive,” she said hotly. “My mistake was in coming here alone last night.” She waved her hands at the crowd. “I’m not alone now, am I? And I won’t be for the rest of the day. So what’s the big deal?”

Behind them, the Ferris wheel began revolving slowly, its music a loud, perky tune. Eve glanced up at it, thinking how tiny they must look to the people in the car at the very top. It was swaying gently, and she could see arms waving. “You thought the administration would close down the carnival just because I had a wild ride on The Snake last night? They don’t even know about it. I don’t know how it happened, or why, so what would I tell the dean?” Her eyes returned to Garth’s face. “Is that what you wanted? For the carnival to be shut down?”

He hadn’t been expecting that. “What? Why would I want that?”

Eve shrugged.

“Don’t
do
that!” he yelled, startling her. “Don’t say a stupid thing like that and then shrug when I ask you why you said it. Why
did
you say it? Why would I want the carnival closed down?”

Because you’re still mad at the university and you have some kind of weird, insane notion that the full moon is helping you get revenge, Eve thought. But if it really
was
Garth, it would be very dangerous to accuse him. Aloud, she said, “Sorry. I guess I am still a little upset about last night. Forget it. Listen,” turning to move away, “I’ve got to get busy. See you, okay?”

“Eve!”

She hurried away. She could feel his eyes boring into her back, but she didn’t stop until she reached the cotton candy booth.

She didn’t see Garth again the rest of that day.

The sky stayed a bright blue until late evening, no rain fell, and although the ground was muddy, no one seemed to mind. The crowd increased steadily.

At dinner in the food tent, Andie, Serena, Kevin, and Alfred all urged Eve to call it a day and go back to the dorm. “You look terrible,” Andie said, “and everything’s fine here.”

“I’m not going until everyone else leaves,” Eve said staunchly, slathering butter on a cob of fresh corn. She wasn’t going to eat it. The thought of food made her ill. But she needed something to do, so she buttered the corn.

“You’ve done enough,” Kevin said. “You deserve a rest. I’ll take over here.”

To her dismay, Serena suddenly began telling everyone about the defaced children’s book. Why did she have to bring that up now? Eve wanted desperately to forget about it.

“Alfred has that book,” Kevin said when Andie had finished. “Don’t you, Alfred?”

Eve stopped buttering, let the cob of corn fall to her paper plate. It rolled to the edge and then lay still. “Alfred? You have a copy of
Moonchild?
What was Alfred doing with a kids’ book?

“Not anymore,” he answered, stirring the pinto beans on his plate into a muddy mess. “I did have one. I’m doing my English term paper on children’s lit, and Professor Mellon recommended that book. But someone stole it. While I was at the library, I think. At least, that was the last time I saw it.”

Eve wondered if Alfred was telling the truth. Nothing in his perfectly angled face gave her a clue. He didn’t look innocent, he didn’t look guilty. He just looked like Alfred.

“You know, Eve,” Andie said suddenly, “I actually wondered, just for a little bit, if maybe you were doing all of this stuff yourself.”

Eve looked up abruptly.

A confused silence descended upon their table.

Eve sat perfectly still, her eyes moving from Alfred’s face to Andie’s. Her voice, when she spoke, was dangerously low. “Excuse me?”

Andie smiled lazily. “Well, after all, you
told
me you were sorry you’d ever agreed to cochair the committee, remember? No one actually
saw
anyone in the Mirror Maze, and no one actually saw anyone out here last night on the grounds, not even security.”

Eve sat frozen on her bench. “What’s your point?” she asked testily.

“Well, this afternoon when you were sleeping, the committee got together and talked about letting you resign. For your own sake. And it just crossed my mind that maybe that was what you wanted all along. I mean, we all know you’d never just quit. You’re not like that.”

No one said a word.

Eve was in shock. The committee had met behind her back? They had discussed asking her to quit? How
could
they? “You think I staged that stuff so it would look like I was in danger and I’d have a really good excuse to throw in the towel?”

“Andie,” Kevin said sharply, “we decided
not
to ask her to resign. You didn’t need to tell her.”

“And I’m glad we decided that,” Andie said earnestly. “I
said
I just thought about it for a minute or two. I even thought that maybe Eve was doing it without
knowing
she was doing it. You read about things like that sometimes. Never mind. You’re not mad at me, are you, Eve?”

Eve was speechless. Whether Andie still thought it or not didn’t matter. The whole insane idea was out there now, lying right smack on the table where anyone who wanted to could pick it up and toss it around, examine it, see if it was worth thinking about further. Alfred looked pensive, Serena looked confused, and Kevin looked embarrassed. It seemed clear to Eve that not one of them had immediately dismissed the idea as ludicrous.

Andie was her best friend! If
she
could think something so awful …

How many other people had thought it?

How many at the table were thinking it now?

Tears of anger and humiliation stung Eve’s eyelids.

She got up and, without a word, left the tent.

The full moon, so bright in the cloudless sky that it cast a silvery glow over the carnival grounds, shone down upon her when she emerged from the food tent.

As she stood motionless, looking up, it seemed to her that the silvery beams radiating outward from the moon became long, grasping fingers, reaching down for her like the hands of a hungry predator, coming closer and closer …

E
VE SHOOK HER HEAD
to clear her thoughts. Then she decided to do what everyone had urged. She went back to her room, burrowed beneath the covers, and slept until Thursday morning.

“It’s like you were dead, if you’ll pardon the expression,” Andie said as they dressed for class. “I talked to you when I came in last night, told you everything went okay, that the food tent didn’t burn down and no one was poisoned or shot and we made money, but you didn’t answer me. You must have been really wiped out. Feel better?”

Eve did feel better. She felt rested, and when she glanced out the window and saw nothing but bright sunshine, she made up her mind that that day would be better than the day before. Maybe Andie was right. Maybe her tormentor had crawled off to lick his wounds after she’d got away from him on The Snake. Maybe he’d given up.

“I think,” she said as she fastened the barrette around her hair, “that tonight we should have some fun. We’ve all been working our little buns off this week, and we haven’t had a chance to play. It’s supposed to be a celebration, right? And that
is
a carnival, after all. We can let the townspeople on the committee do their bit, and the rest of us can go off and have a few laughs. What about it?”

Andie looked at her warily. “You’re not still mad at me?”

Eve had forgotten. But now, in the bright light of a new day, it didn’t seem important. “Well, I agree with you,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yeah. You said you were crazy, and you’re right.”

Andie laughed.

There was nothing under Eve’s pillow that morning, and nothing in her backpack that shouldn’t have been there.

It’s going to be okay, she told herself as they left the room, it
is.

But she was wrong.

At first they did have fun. They ate hot dogs and cotton candy and Belgian waffles. They went on the merry-go-round with the little kids and made fun of themselves for doing so. Some of them rode the Devil’s Elbow, some rode Hell on Wheels, and a few of them tried out The Snake. Eve wasn’t among them. She couldn’t even bring herself to go near it, and went with Andie and Serena to the fortune-telling booth instead.

Eve was careful not to show any scorn for the old woman in the tiny tent. Andie and Serena were fascinated, even though Andie’s fortune told of a “dark past” and Serena’s said that she would never marry, but would become very successful.

“If I’m that successful,” she quipped as they left the tent, “I’ll just
buy
a husband.”

“So, what’s your dark past, Andie?” Eve asked as they walked along the carnival grounds. It was dark out, but the area was well lit. Not that they needed much light, with the moon so bright overhead. “Murder? Arson? Insider trading?”

“Hmm. Have to think about that one. Probably the book I never took back to the library. Or Madama Siska, who knows all, sees all, hears all, could have meant the time I creamed Tommy Larson. He was teasing me and calling me carrot-top, so I punched his lights out.” Andie shrugged. “I guess that’s it for my dark past. Why didn’t you have your fortune told, Eve?”

“The last thing in the world I want to know,” Eve said dryly, “is what’s in the future. I’m having enough trouble hacking the present.”

“You look fine to me,” Serena said blithely.

“Yeah, well last night, before I fell asleep, I actually found myself wondering if Andie didn’t have a point. If I actually
could
have been doing those things myself. I don’t know much about stuff like that, but I’ve heard about people who do things and don’t even know they’re doing them.”

“Not you, Eve,” Serena said as Garth, Alfred, and Kevin joined them at the Ferris wheel. “You’re not the type.”

Five minutes later, they were all sitting in the brightly colored cars suspended from the huge yellow wheel. Andie and Alfred were in the car above Eve and Serena. Kevin and Garth were in the car below them.

The night was warm, the darkness alleviated now by the bright-yellow lights encircling the Ferris wheel, and by the silvery moon overhead. There was a mild breeze, tossing Serena’s long, blonde hair behind her as they rode up, up, up.

Eve had expected the wheel to stop when they reached the top. That was the most fun, stopping so high up and looking down upon the tiny ant-creatures scooting along the ground far below. Then making the car sway back and forth, harder and harder, until it seemed it would swing up over the top and do a somersault, spilling you out into the air.

But this Ferris wheel didn’t stop when they were at the top.

It didn’t even slow down.

In fact, it seemed to gain speed. The giant yellow wheel was already revolving faster than any Ferris wheel Eve had ever been on, and it showed no sign of slowing down.