Free Hang Wire by Adam Christopher

death.
    And it was hungry. And then had come the murder.
    The victim was a clown, one of a troupe of two dozen. Some had left, reducing the group to numbers too thin for Barnett’s magnificent show. So Barnett showed some of his famous money around and soon the troupe was back up to strength.
    With any newcomers, there are tensions. For circus performers, perhaps it’s worse, because circus life is hard and so are the carnies who live it. One of the new clowns laughed at the warnings not to go into the carnival. One of the mechanics took exception to this. They fought while others looked on, carnies baying for blood, like animals. Joel had been tending his machines at the time.
    The mechanic killed the clown in front of everyone, and had fled, the crowd – suddenly dazed, as though released from some evil spell – allowing him his freedom.
    That was the final straw. The circus was finished. Barnett was packing it up, and everyone, everyone knew that it was because of Joel and his carnival machines.
    Everyone knew.
    Footsteps approached. Joel blinked, his eyes dry. He rolled onto his stomach, and saw a shadow move, ducking between two rides, trying to keep hidden. Not someone from the circus, then. Someone else, sneaking around. A thief, perhaps.
    “Hey!” yelled Joel. The night was silent, the circus performers sleeping in their tents. They wouldn’t hear him. After the fight, after the way they had all fallen under some weird spell that left them spitting and snarling for blood, they’d all gone quiet, everyone keeping to themselves, perhaps ashamed of their blood lust. Perhaps afraid at what had, momentarily, seemed to take them over.
    Joel walked over to the edge of the carnival. Toward the Ferris wheel, one hand inside his jacket, on the handle of his daddy’s gun. The fingers of the other hand played over his daddy’s coin in the pocket of his waistcoat.
    The shadows didn’t move. Joel stepped closer, peering into the gloom. The moon was doing a fine job of illuminating the circus and the carnival machines, but the shadows the rides cast were deep, as black as the sky above.
    Joel pulled the gun, its silver shining in the moonlight. “Come out. You have no business here, my friend. None at all.”
    The shadows moved and resolved into a man. His clothes were rough, tattered, and he wore a kerchief around his neck, his face streaked with grease.
    “Come back to the scene of the crime, then?” asked Joel. At this, the other man smirked. In one hand he held a cloth cap, which he batted impatiently against his leg.
    Alexander Harrison. Mechanic. One of the workshop men Barnett had employed to help Joel with the upkeep of the carnival machines. The man who had picked a fight with a clown and won.
    “There’s evil here, Duvall,” said Harrison, his eyes sharp and bright in the moonlight. “You know it, and I know it.” He nodded toward the carousel, his eyes wide. Joel followed his gaze, saw the red eyes of the monkey glowing.
    Joel smiled and turned back to Harrison. He cocked his head, kept the gun level. “Maybe you’re right. But then so says every man who has stolen the life of another, I suppose.”
    Harrison took a step forward, not apparently inconvenienced by the weapon pointed at him. “That wasn’t me, Joel! I swear it. I was like, I don’t know, like–”
    “Like you was possessed, I suppose you’re going to tell me. Like you weren’t yourself and you couldn’t remember. A moment of insanity that clouded your vision.”
    “It wasn’t like that. You know it wasn’t.”
    “Oh,” said Joel. He lifted the gun, pulled back the hammer. He wasn’t afraid, wasn’t worried. He had the gun, and Harrison was a man on the run.
    But there was something else. The coin buzzed in his pocket like a trapped bee.
    Had Harrison heard the voice? He’d spent as much time among the carnival machines as Joel had. Maybe more. Had the cold dark thing touched his mind as well?
    Harrison snarled and leapt