Chapter One
Human souls are worthless.
If souls are the currency of hell, then the devil himself has become the victim of inflation.
Souls carry no value. It isn’t the fabric of the animation in which a person is borne. A soul is merely the gangue around the valuable ore in the rock. It is that personality that the soul carries like a basket of eggs to the market, trudged there by a vessel of flesh.
Seity.
That is where power is to be found. In memories, in choices, in the uniqueness to which the soul bears witness. The smell of grandmother’s cookies. The order in which one puts on one’s socks in the morning. The memory of exchanged vows at an altar. These are what carry true value.
It’s a shame people are too foolish to value these things. Is it not the tragedy of the elderly when they can no longer remember who they once were? Do we heed these warnings of loss?
No.
Humanity is too eager to toss away that which they deem ordinary without ever realizing what it was that they had. Surrounded by ourselves, we think such things are commonplace. Worse yet, we think of our memories as monotonous. Not simply abundant, but boring.
It makes the job of taking it all away so much easier.
Welcome to my Faire.
The fee won’t be too high for you, I promise.
You won’t even notice when it’s gone.
-M. L. Harrow
* * *
Harrow Faire sat neglected and abandoned.
The dilapidated towers of wood scaffolding stabbed at the sky like bony fingers reaching out of the dirt. Broken and burnt bulbs sat in rusted sockets and had not illuminated the night sky in decades. Rafters and structures were tilted and bent, collapsing under age, and rot, and time.
It was the skeletal remainder of a carnival—a reminder of the laughter and joy that once was. Carriages with flaking paint that once bore colorful swirls, smiles, or terrifying faces had not budged in decades. No music had come from the abandoned hurdy gurdy machines. No air had pumped through the pipe organs.
Harrow Faire sat neglected and abandoned.
Right up until the moment that it didn’t.
Sitting on the edge of a large lake in New Hampshire, it had been called the Coney Island of the North. Which was kind of insulting, seeing as it had been there first. But for a long time, located on the old railways that ran up to the mountains and through into Canada, it had been just as popular as the boardwalk attractions of New York City.
But the bizarre combination of the traveling circus and a permanent fairground attraction had long since lost the war with time.
Cora had been driving past Harrow Faire for as long as she could remember. She grew up in the area, and now she passed it every day on the way to work and back. Before that, as a teenager, she prowled the skeletal remains with her friends. She had even come with her father from time to time to explore the urban ruins. He was always encouraging her to get into “safe trouble.” Whatever that meant.
But those days of adventure had long since passed. Her life was far more mundane now. Nine to five, she sat at the counter at the local bank. She was a teller. A standard, boring job in a standard, boring town. The most interesting thing that had happened in the past few years was a sinkhole in the center of town that had eaten half a hardware store.
That’s what passed for entertainment in Glendale, New Hampshire.
A freaking sinkhole.
Working at the bank wasn’t a fun gig, it wasn’t an interesting gig, but it paid the mortgage on her little condo. There were two kinds of homes one could find dotted around the lake that bordered the town. The multi-million-dollar summer mansions owned by the rich, and the crappy places where everybody else lived. She was firmly in the latter category.
She had driven past the Faire a thousand times. Because of that, she made it a clear mile down the road before she realized something was out of place. It was a solid two minutes before her mind processed what she had seen.
Wait.
What the fiddly-fuck did I just see?
She pulled over to the side of the road. Checking the clock, she had half an hour before she had to be at the bank. She was always early, and she figured she could skate in a little closer to nine, just this once.
Cora used the front of someone’s driveway to turn around and head back toward the Faire. Sure enough, when she approached, the Faire was no longer the one she recognized. Her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her.
Not that she understood what she was looking at, however.
The gate to the parking lot, with its three wooden swords stabbing upward, holding the sign that declared its name in scrolling hand-painted text, had always been locked. A sign dangling from the doors had always boldly professed that trespassers would be prosecuted.
Not that it had ever kept the teenagers out. There wasn’t much else for the local kids to do, except drink, get high, or bum around abandoned places. Or all three. It was generally both. Cora never really partook of the drugs or alcohol, but she loved the abandoned places. And since the nearby mills had all been shut down in the early part of the twentieth century, there were plenty to explore. She would take her dad’s camera and head out into the darkness or early morning hours and come back with some amazing photos to show for it.
“Locks only keep out the honest” was a motto her dad always used to say to her, usually while he was cutting the padlock on some abandoned building so he could take her in to look around. Poking around old places made for a weird father-daughter hobby, but it was still bonding time.
Besides, he was a famous photographer—well, as famous as a photojournalist could be, anyway—and she had always planned to follow in his footsteps. People knew her father’s photos, even if they didn’t know his name, and she wanted to make him proud. He had taken her into the abandoned Faire many, many times, teaching her how to shoot in low light and how to frame the shot just so.
And how to dodge the local police.
Sadly, she grew out of the age where it was acceptable to get chased out of some long-empty church or institutional building by the cops. Not to mention, she wasn’t as bouncy as she used to be. She always used to sprain her ankles, twist things, or what-have-you. But as a child, it didn’t lead to days or weeks of pain, physical therapy, or time on crutches.
She hated crutches.
But as she aged, even just into her twenties, the idea of climbing through a window was far more daunting than it had been before.
Since her chronic illness issues had started, she had to give up most of her hobbies and her job as a photographer. Oh, she could still wander around a park and take photos of flowers, or architecture, or things like that. But her real passion and her specialty had been covering more dynamic things. Live events. Concerts, weddings, or even better—news. Most people never would have suspected that photographers had to do a lot of running and ducking and crouching to get into the right spot at the right time. But it was part of the gig.
Now she sat a desk all day instead. She missed picking up gigs for the local newspaper or heading down to Boston and Portsmouth to cover big events or parades as a freelance stringer.
But the fond memories of ducking behind old tents or hiding in the bones of a ride, laughing and giggling alongside her father, played through her head as she pulled into the large parking lot of the Faire. She stopped close to its open gate. She could see well enough from there, and something made her nervous to go any closer.
She knew this park.
And it had never scared her before.
Now, she wasn’t staring at a weathered sign with faded and peeling paint. She wasn’t staring at the locked gate and rusty chain. The notice declaring legal woe upon any who set foot inside the fairgrounds was gone.
The metal was no longer rusted. The paint was no longer peeling. It was all…brand new. It looked like it had just been installed. She parked her car, stopped the engine, and climbed out.
“Grand Reopening! Tonight!” read the painted drop cloth that hung from the brand-new entry sign. But it wasn’t just the sign that looked new. Looking past the gate to the ticket booth and beyond, she stared in shocked silence. She turned off her car and opened the door, standing there like she was gaping at Godzilla.
Harrow Faire wasn’t abandoned anymore.
The tilted, dilapidated structures had been straightened. The paint was fresh. The light sockets that had been missing most of their bulbs had been fixed and replaced. The signs were bright and legible. All the rot and wear had simply…been erased.
But nothing looked modern, either. It all looked vintage, like a careful restoration of the original park. It was a style that just wasn’t done anymore.
Who had done it? When? And how? And…why? It wasn’t like there was a lot of business up in bumble-fuck-nowhere New Hampshire.
How did I miss this? How the hell did I drive past this every day and not see people working on it? I know my mind wanders when I drive, but this is a new level of oblivious.
There was no other explanation for the restored park. She must simply be that dense.
“Hello, there!”
Cora shrieked and jumped a foot in the air, whirling to face the sudden voice. She hadn’t seen the man on the ladder behind the entrance sign over the parking lot gate. He looked like he had just finished hanging up the banner.
He was climbing down and waved at her with a friendly smile. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled warily back at him. The man seemed perfectly fine, but something about him seemed… somehow odd. He was handsome. There was nothing obviously unusual about him. But he was dressed in clothing that looked like it dated from the forties. He had a white shirt and wore black suspenders over it that held up a pair of trousers stained with paint. He was broad at the shoulders and had an easy, casual flair about him. Even with the weird dated outfit. “When did all this happen?” She gestured at the Faire.
“Huh?”
“I swear this place was still abandoned yesterday.”
“Oh!” He laughed. “Eh, time flies, doesn’t it?” He shrugged. When he walked up to her car, he took a moment to look it over with a broad smile on his face. She wasn’t sure why. It was a beat-up old Ford Focus. “Nice car.”
“Thanks?” She chuckled. What a weird man. Maybe he was hitting on her. That was the only reason anybody would complement her ugly-ass car.
“I’m Jack.” He reached out to shake her hand and realized his own was covered in paint. He wiped it off, looked at his palm, then, seeing that it was all still there because it was dry, shrugged and held it out again.
“Cora.” She smiled and shook his hand. She wasn’t surprised at how firm the gesture was, what with the muscles the guy was sporting. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too! You should come to the Faire tonight. See the shows. Ride the rides. Eat the terrible fried food. I mean—well, the food’s honestly great, but it’s terrible for you.” Jack scratched the back of his neck.
“I love pretty much any food whose method of delivery’s a stick.” Cora shook her head with a smile and looked out at the park. The signage had all been redone in careful hand-painted curling letters. She could see the Ferris wheel rotating slowly. “Who paid for all this?”
“Oh? Mr. Harrow, of course.” She looked back at the guy like he had grown a second head. He looked confused at best. “What?”
“Mr. Harrow? The guy who used to own the park?”
“Who else?”
“I’m assuming he’s been dead for, like, a hundred years.”
“Well, yes, but his estate still exists.” Jack smiled helpfully. Now she felt like the moron. “Things got hung up in legal battles when the last of his kids died. But now the funds got freed up, and here we are.”
It must have taken millions of dollars to restore the park. She honestly couldn’t believe what she was looking at. She swore it had been abandoned just yesterday. This kind of work would take months, if not years, and there would have been articles in the paper about it.
Not just poof.
Maybe she had simply missed it. She ran her hand over her face. That must be it. That was the only option. Seriously, the only option.
She looked back over to Jack. He seemed like a nice guy. She was surprised she didn’t recognize him—Glendale was a small-ass town. But he probably was brought in from elsewhere to do the work. It wasn’t like there was a cadre of restoration specialists hanging out in Nowhere, New Hampshire. Maybe he was a theatre guy from New York or something.
“Are you coming tonight?” He smiled hopefully.
Nothing interesting happened in Nowhere, New Hampshire. So, how could she resist? “Yeah. I think that sounds like fun.”
“Bring some friends! I’ll be working in the big top all night, but if I see you, I’ll wave at you from the rigging. I run the lines.” He scratched at his short dark hair with stubby fingernails. He clearly worked with his hands all day. “Nice to meet you, Cora.”
“You too, Jack. Have a good one.”
He walked away with another casual wave. She climbed back into her car. Shutting the door, she winced in pain. She had woken up with a dislocated wrist, and it was still sore. Such was the joy of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, she supposed. Her muscles and tendons were hypermobile.
Sure, she was super bendy, but it wasn’t as fun as it sounded. It meant that some days she felt like a ragdoll whose stitching was coming undone.
After putting the joint back where it belonged that morning, she had just taken some Naproxen and gone about her day. It happened more often than not. Nothing ruined a day like waking up to play the new game of “that was fine last night…”
All the way to work, she was lost in thought and cruised along on autopilot. She got her coffee from the breakroom, and nearly missed saying hello to half her coworkers. She couldn’t stop thinking about Harrow Faire.
Weird. This whole thing is just so weird.
Luckily, her job was mind-numbingly routine. It always was. She could just phone it in, coast through, and do just fine. Overqualified, her boss called her. But there wasn’t much else to do in the small town. No promotions were available in the tiny branch, and there weren’t many other prospects.
So, she was happy to pay her mortgage and go on with her life. Just like most people, she supposed. She had wanted to move to Boston or New York, or even settle for Portland, before she had to give up photography.
But with her chronic pain, she couldn’t lug the equipment anymore. Not even for weddings. It had just become too much.
She couldn’t do a lot of things anymore.
At lunch, she searched for news articles about Harrow Faire reopening. She came back empty-handed. Just Wikipedia pages and old photographs. She asked her coworkers—who were lovely people, but all had thirty-plus years on her and were all just as boring as the job itself—and came up just as empty. None of them had even noticed it had been restored.
The Faire didn’t even have a damn website. Everybody has a website. Everybody’s dog has its own website at this point. Not even a Facebook page. Weird.
She texted her friends who still lived in town. Trent, Lisa, and Emily. The four of them had grown up together, and they were all too stupid to leave. Trent had landed a job as the event coordinator for Castle in the Clouds on the north side of the lake, so he was pretty much set. Lisa was a housewife now with two kids and working on more. Emily was still pining after Trent, working alongside him at the historic mansion, seemingly unable to accept the fact that Trent was not into her. Or ladies in general.
When Cora told them in text about Harrow Faire reopening, Lisa didn’t believe her, and neither did Trent. But Emily—always being the pragmatic one—had gone to investigate since she had the morning off. She texted back with a photo twenty minutes later of the same restored gate and grand reopening sign Cora had seen.
It was quickly settled. They were going right after they all got out of work. Trent worked until seven, but they’d be clear after that.
Cora smiled. She was excited.
She couldn’t remember the last time she went out on the town with all her friends. Especially anything as weird and silly as going to a carnival. It wasn’t the biggest park in New England, but it was still going to be fun. She’d have to get a bag of cotton candy and leave it out to let it get stale. It was always better stale. She didn’t care what people said.
She dazed her way through the rest of the day—not like anybody noticed—and was eager to pack it up and go home. Standing from her desk, she held back a cringe again. Sitting at a desk all day sucked, but everything else sucked worse.
Living with constant pain was a gradient. Either it hurt, or it hurt worse. Physical therapy helped, insomuch as it kept her joints from randomly dislocating. Less frequently, anyway.
Heading home, she showered, fed her fish, and made herself a salad to tide her over until she got to the Faire with her friends. She was probably going to eat her weight in funnel cake and other fried bullshit, so she should take it easy.
Hopefully, they sold alcohol. She knew she drank too much. She wasn’t an alcoholic, not by any means, but a drink a night was probably not a great way to live. But that, coupled with the medical marijuana she was allowed to smoke, kept the pain, and her life, vaguely tolerable.
Six thirty, and she climbed into her car to head to the Faire. To her surprise, the parking lot was packed. For a company with seemingly zero marketing budget, they seemed to be doing just fine for themselves. She parked in the first spot she could find and headed to the ticket booth. Not seeing anyone she recognized, she texted her friends.
The smell of popcorn and spun sugar filled the air. She could hear laughter and the sound of rides clanking. The hurdy gurdy and pipe organs of all the rides made for a cacophony that joined the other perfectly archetypical sounds of a circus.
It brought back every memory of every fair she had ever been to. This place had been abandoned even when she was little, but all fairs more or less sounded and smelled the same. She remembered holding on to her dad’s hand as he led her through the rows of games designed to con people out of a dollar. The giant toys she always wanted to win but knew she never would. She remembered screaming on all the old rides, getting lost in the rickety funhouse, and staring at her distorted reflection in mirrors.
She wondered if everybody had all the same memories of places like this. But Harrow Faire seemed like a lot more than just the standard carnival—they had circus tents. The ads on the fencing of the ticket booth, painted like old sideshow posters, promised tightrope acts, flying trapeze, monsters and animals, a bearded lady, and more. It was dizzying. It was like a traveling circus had humped a theme park and Harrow Faire was its bizarre, mutant offspring.
Oddly, it looked like there were two entrances. One normal one—a series of turnstiles that ka-chunked as people passed through them—and a second one that was a giant painted face of a skull, with a gaping jaw for a door. Over it, the sign read “The Dark Path Awaits,” but nothing else. No explanation as to why there was a second way in. The second entrance wasn’t nearly as busy, but she saw a few people trail into it, chuckling and shaking their heads as if unsure about what they were getting themselves into.
Her phone buzzed. Looking down at the screen, she sighed. Trent and Emily were late because an event ran over. Lisa was stuck with a sick kid and couldn’t make it.
Typical.
This was why they never went out anymore.
“Hello there, pretty lady, want to come inside? Or do you just like lingering in the parking lot?”
She looked up at the sound of the voice. A man stood in the ticket booth, leaning on the counter, grinning at her.
The booth was painted in gold and crimson stripes. Flashing lightbulbs overhead that were meant to draw the eye and became dizzying after too long.
The man who had spoken, like his set dressing, was old-fashioned. He looked…there was no nice way of putting it. He looked like a sleazebag from the 1920s. His brown hair was slicked back, carefully combed and gelled into a pomaded dome. He even had a narrow mustache that would have been fashionable a hundred years ago. He’d be attractive, if she thought she could trust the fucker as far as she could throw him.
He had his chin on his hand and his elbow on the counter, and he was smiling at her like there wasn’t anybody else in line. There were other people running the rest of the counter, and he seemed content to ignore the pileup of humans and talk to her where she stood off to the side.
“I’m just waiting for my friends.”
“You might as well go in without them. No sense waiting out here where there’s nothing but my handsome face to look at.” He waggled a finger toward her phone. “You have one of those thingamajigs, don’t you? Makes it very easy to find people nowadays. Go on in and tell them where you are when they get here.”
He even talked like someone from an old movie. What was that accent called? Transatlantic. That was it. A fake accent that people put on to make themselves sound posh on the silver screen or on the radio. It went with the scenery; she’d give him that. Along with his insistence that he didn’t know what a phone was called.
The park must have hired interactive actors. She tried not to snicker. “I gotta give you props for sticking with the theme.” She smirked. “I’m betting five dollars you own one of these.” She held up her phone toward him.
“I love a quick buck. That’s a deal!” He cackled and slapped his hand on the counter. “Not sure when you’ll pay up or how I’ll prove it, but I like a bargain where I see one. And I’ll tell you what, pretty lady—I’ll make you an offer. See, there are two ways to get into Harrow Faire.” He gestured at the two gates, the normal one to his right and the morbid one to his left.
“I noticed.”
“And you didn’t ask me why?” He put a palm to his chest. “I’m insulted.” He stepped out from behind the booth, swinging the little door open and letting it latch behind him. He was wearing a striped suit that matched the ticket booth’s gold and red stripes. He walked up to her with a grin. He was smooth—too smooth. Like an old…hah. Like an old carnival barker. And that was exactly what he was, she realized.
“I honestly didn’t notice you.”
He gasped and clutched his heart. “Oh, the pain!”
She laughed at his melodrama and shook her head. “Okay, okay. What’s with the second entrance?”
“That’s where we let people in without any money changing hands. That is, if we like them.” His smile became thinner. Less natural.
“You let them in for free?”
“Oh, I never said that.”
She looked at the skull-painted gate and shot him a raised eyebrow. “See, I’m coming up with options for what the hell you’re talking about, and all of them are dirty. So…I’m going to need more than that.”
The man laughed hard. “No! No. Nothing salacious. Nothing so mundane.” He waved his hand dismissively. “No, we just take a tiny piece of your seity instead.”
“Seity?”
“Individuality, my dear! A little bit of what makes you—well—you.” Now he was launching into a speech he had clearly given a thousand times. Or at least he had practiced it enough to make it sound that way. “Maybe it’s how you brush your hair in the morning. Or the memory of the way the crust on momma’s apple pie crunches. Or what radio station you like to listen to in the morning.”
“You’re saying you’ll steal a piece of my soul?” She snickered. “Come on.”
“Nothing so trite. Souls are cheap. Billions of them out there, right? A personality—now, that is a commodity. Because what is a soul with no individuality? A battery in a car, that’s all.” The man was still smiling. It wasn’t a friendly expression. If he was trying to be creepy, he was nailing it. “Don’t worry, it’s only a tiny piece. Only a smidge. You won’t even notice it’s gone…I promise.”
“You said you only offer it to the ones you like. Why?”
“Why eat a hot dog when you can have a steak? We pick the ones that burn hot. The ones with a lot of personality to go around. And you…” He reached out and picked up a strand of her long dark hair. She yanked her head away from him and shot him a glare. He lifted his palm as if to say he was sorry. “You burn bright. Brightest I’ve seen in a long, long time.”
“I’m nobody interesting.”
“No, I think your life turned you into nobody interesting.” He shrugged. “So, take your pick. Walk through the Dark Path, and we take a tiny piece of you, or pay the normal fee.”
Cora narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re trying to freak me out, and I’m not even sure why. Publicity stunt?”
“Ah, yes. The skeptical type. I love the skeptics. So much fun to watch them break down when everything they thought was a lie is suddenly true.” He took a step back from her. “No, Cora Glass, we take a piece of you for a good cause—to keep our own fires burning.”
“I—What—” she stammered. “Wait. Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met. You’d remember me.” He smiled.
Now she was getting nervous. “Did you, like…find me on Google or something?”
“I have no idea what half of those words mean.” He grinned and climbed back into the booth and flopped down on his stool. “Take your pick! Go inside and spare your wallet—or prove that you might believe me and pay up in hard cash. Y’know. If you’re scared.”
Cora decided she didn’t like this guy. He must be a con artist. They probably had a camera on her, and somebody was using facial recognition software and feeding information to him via an earbud. That had to be it.
There was no other possible explanation.
He was feeding her shit and trying to scare her. She’d go home, talk about it on social media, and people would come see it for themselves. Mentalism was a fun illusion, but it was only that—an illusion.
And so was his stupid selling-a-piece-of-her-personality bunk.
She texted her friends that she was going inside and she’d meet them by the carousel when they arrived. Looking back up at the sleazebag, she smirked at him and got an equally snarky expression in response. “I think you’re full of shit.”
Daring her to do something was basically all a person had to do to guarantee she did it. She hated being afraid of things. She walked toward the skull-faced entrance.
“That I am, pretty lady, that I am,” he called after her. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you can’t remember your favorite color!”
Shaking her head, she muttered “asshole” under her breath and stepped through the weird gate. In an instant, she was plunged into total darkness. She put her hands out in front of her to keep from walking into a wall.
Silence surrounded her like a blanket as overwhelming as the nothingness around her. She couldn’t even hear the sound of the carnival outside. She had followed a few other people through the gate, and there was no sign of them.
There was no sign of anything at all.
Until she heard a laugh.
It sent a shiver down her spine like someone had dumped ice cubes down the back of her shirt. Its laugh was eerie and disturbing; its voice was worse.
“Welcome to Harrow Faire.”