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Blood rushed to the surface of the cut beneath my blade, a shock of bright red against pink flesh. About the time I registered what I was seeing, pain shot up my hand, radiating from the sliced skin and throbbing with each beat of my heart.

“Fuck,”

I spat, throwing down the knife and pivoting away from the butcher’s block. I rushed to the sink to stick my bleeding finger beneath cool water, though it didn’t do much to dull the pain. My hands had been numb for the past two hours but the careless accident had reawakened the nerves from the cold and they were pissed .

That’s what I got for zoning out. If Clyde were there, he’d shake his head and lecture me on knife safety, as if I hadn’t been handling sharp objects professionally for the past seven years.

The realization hit me like a sucker punch.

Is that what I was now? A butcher? A professional butcher? Is that where my measly twenty-three-year-old life had taken me? To be a butcher for the rest of my life in the middle of Bum Fuck, Illinois? God, I hoped not.

Much to my mother’s never-ending disappointment, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I sure as shit didn’t want to be the “meat manager”

of a boutique grocery store. Yet, there I was, seven years into a “career”

I never wanted. I told myself it was the lack of options that had done me in, sealed my fate. Deep down, there was an even more insidious reason—indecision. Perpetually stuck in my own head, unsure of anything, uninspired by the possibilities, my life ground to a halt until I felt as useless as the slabs of meat under my knife.

In the front of the shop, bells jingled. Someone had come in through the door, which meant the idiot cashier had left the place unlocked on her way out, too excited for the weekend to care about anything else like responsibilities.

“We’re closed!”

I called out from the back, turning off the tap and grabbing a paper towel to press over my screaming gash.

No one answered.

I swore under my breath and headed toward the front.

Howden’s Market was a relatively small space compared to major grocery chains, but there were still a few rows of shelves, stocked with specialty items, which meant I didn’t have a clear line of sight of the whole place.

I wove through the aisles, looking for the wayward customer. “Hello?”

No answer.

“Kylie, is that you?”

I asked, turning the corner where the register was, fully expecting to either ream out the sixteen-year-old or confront some other juvenile moron who came in looking for quick cash.

To my relief—and confusion—no one was there. I knew I’d heard those damn bells. Hadn’t I?

I marched over to the front door and engaged the locks, flipping off the neon “Open”

sign humming in the window.

Spinning on the ball of my foot, I turned and slammed into something warm and solid. A person. I yelped and scurried backward, nearly toppling the display of pumpkin- and apple-flavored baked goods.

Malcolm and Taylor busted out laughing, clinging to each other and trying not to fall over themselves.

“Assholes!”

I huffed, clamping a hand over my racing heart.

They kept laughing even as Taylor produced a wrinkled piece of paper and shoved it in my face. “Quit your bitching and let’s go already! This place closed a half hour ago! What have you been doing?”

“Getting a jumpstart on shit for tomorrow,”

I grumbled, snatching the yellowed flyer out of his hand and holding it at a distance I could actually read.

In creepy black letters that looked hand-drawn, it said One Night Only across the top, featuring a silhouette of a circus tent in black and white.

Once every seven years,

When the moon is full

And the fog is thick,

The Carnival of the Lost

makes its appearance.

Join us if you dare.

A crudely drawn map at the bottom provided the location. I tilted my head, trying to place it on the edge of town. “State and Hillcrest? There’s nothing out there.”

“Just that old gas station,”

Malcolm said.

“Sounds like a scam.”

I handed the crinkled paper back to Taylor, shaking my head. “I’ll pass.”

“Bro, come on!”

Taylor smacked the flyer with the tips of his fingers. “This looks fucking awesome! I drove by to scope it out. It’s legit. You can’t see much because of the woods and the corn and shit, but there’s tents and lights and this creepy ass music right behind the gas station in that big field.”

“I’m tired,”

I sighed, suddenly feeling twice my age. I always did when it came to my friends. It wasn’t their fault, it’s just how life shook out for us. While Taylor was in line to take over his father’s booming car dealership one day, Malcolm had secured himself some ritzy corporate job out east. I, meanwhile, labored day in and day out, slicing and dicing carcasses for people like them to feast on, pretending I was satisfied with the direction my life was going. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do something different, that I didn’t yearn for something more , I simply had no idea what that was or where to even find it.

“You’re always tired!”

Taylor shot back.

“I had to wake up at four thirty this morning to unload a fucking meat truck! What time did you roll into the dealership today? Hmm?”

“Please, Griffin? Pwease?”

Taylor put his hands together in prayer, pushed out his lower lip, and gave me his best puppy dog eyes.

“You know he’s going to get more annoying,”

Malcolm said, clearly resigned to being dragged along on this latest adventure, like the time we cajoled him into going to the old, haunted prison in Joliet or any number of slasher films over the years.

“You hate this shit,”

I pointed out, raising my brows at Malcolm and doing my best to ignore Taylor, who’d started whining in earnest.

Malcolm shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Can’t be any worse than that Basement of the Dead thing last year, right?”

“Come on!”

Taylor said again, louder and even more dramatic. He grabbed either side of my leather apron and shook me like a rag doll, as if giving me brain damage would get me to agree. “You love Halloween! You love horror movies! This spooky shit is right up your alley! And it’s only one night! Live a little, man!”

“Alright, alright! Jesus.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed him off. “But if it’s lame, I’m going home.”

“Deal.”

There were so many cars parked near the old gas station that we ended up parking half a mile down the road in front of the cornfield, practically in the ditch.

“I didn’t even hear about this thing coming to town,”

I said as we joined the crowd, funneling into the decrepit building in a line.

Someone had nailed a dirty white banner over the front door, “Enter”

scrawled across it in red paint. A few of the letters dripped.

“Me either,”

Taylor said, ducking under the edge of the ripped sign. “If it wasn’t for the flyer, I wouldn’t have known.”

“Lucky us,”

Malcolm said, turning his nose up at the musty aroma inside the store. It smelled like fifty years of neglect, dirt, and rot, with an underpinning of gasoline. It looked like it too.

The windows might not have had boards on them anymore, but they weren’t very clean, either. Everything had a thick layer of dirt and grime. Old-fashioned light bulbs flickered overhead, buzzing loudly, threatening to go out at any moment.

“They could have swept or something,”

Malcolm said, trying to sidestep a pile of leaves and random garbage.

“Adds to the ambiance,”

I replied with a chuckle.

“Look at this creepy motherfucker,”

Taylor said, elbowing me and gesturing behind us. “Who’s he trying to be? Bane?”

I half-turned to look. When I saw who Taylor was talking about, I turned around all the way, eyes widening.

Outside of the gas station, a man stood wearing ripped black jeans and little else. Black Celtic knots ran from his left shoulder down to his wrist in what looked like an impressive sleeve. The lower half of his face, from his nose downward and along his jaw, was covered with a black mask. Short dark hair swept up from his forehead and back, like he’d run his fingers through it recently—or intentionally styled it that way. What the fuck did Malcolm call that? A quiff?

It was the guy’s eyes that made me forget my entire train of thought, though. Until that moment, I thought the concept of a “smoldering gaze”

was horseshit, something that Hollywood came up with. Bane, or whatever his character was, proved me wrong. In the distance, his eyes looked black—and they were staring right at me. Heat spread along the back of my neck, down my spine, twisting through my insides like a serpent. His body alone would have been enough to make me hard, even if I had no idea what his face looked like. Throw in the way he was staring at me? Goddamn…

Before I could commit Bane to memory for later fantasies, my view was rudely blocked.

Another scare actor darted in front of my walking wet dream, completely killing the illusion. The other guy’s entire head was stark white, devoid of any hair or fur, like he was bald—or a skeleton of some sort. Long, jagged gray teeth jutted out the front of his mouth like a mutant rat. Tilting his head as he looked at us through the window, his teeth chittered. His spindly fingers wound around themselves in obvious excitement. Once again, it felt like all eyes were on me and not in a good way.

I took a step back, away from the revulsion churning in the pit of my stomach and away from the gnarled teeth and wringing hands causing it. Even with a pane of glass separating us, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing.

Then, the creepy rodent-looking guy smiled. Charging forward, he ran full-tilt toward the window, black-clawed fingers outstretched.

At the last second, he was jerked backward, his horrible face twisted into a snarl.

Bane had seized him by the collar of his tattered black shirt and yanked him away from the building. Rat-guy struggled, hands swinging wildly to reach the man behind him, but Bane held on, raising a rusty old knife. No, not a knife. A machete.

Looking right at me as he did it, Bane dragged the blade across Rat-guy’s throat. Slowly . Drawing out the moment, like a tease. Dark red liquid poured down the front of his victim’s chest as he twitched and shook, his craggy teeth gnashing at the air, until finally, he went limp.

Bane dropped his “dead”

cohort to the ground unceremoniously and stepped over the crumpled body. He walked forward, one measured step at a time, his gaze fixated on me like a cat stalking a mouse. Throat tightening, my heart rate picked up again, caught between primal fear and the thrill of being noticed, of being singled out in a crowd.

The closer he came, the more I could make out the blood on his body. It dripped from his pecs, running down the sculpted grooves of his abdomen, like someone had flung red paint at him. I watched one bead as it snaked downward, disappearing into the dark denim slung low on his hips.

Lifting a blood-covered hand, Bane slapped it against the window. The people closest to the glass jumped, oblivious to his sudden appearance. Unlike me. I was very aware of him.

He didn’t take his eyes off me, nor I him, even as he dragged his hand down the dirty glass, leaving a bloody streak in the wake of his palm print.

“I think he likes you,”

Malcolm said beside me with a chuckle.

“Uh-huh.”

I shook my head to snap out of the reverie and forced myself to turn away from the window before I did something embarrassing, like pop a boner over a scare actor. As hot as he was, I wasn’t thirteen anymore, fantasizing about what Billy and Stu got up to between murdering their high school classmates. Although, I was grateful for the little adrenaline rush Bane’s performance provided since it meant I was a smidgen less tired than before. And I’d have plenty of “material”

to work with later.

Glancing over my shoulder as the line shuffled forward, I was surprised to see Bane was still there, staring at me through the glass. It wasn’t just the staring that got to me, it was the intensity with which he did it. The heat returned to my skin, spreading from the back of my neck across my cheeks, crawling over my skin like a fog—or his bloody fingertips.

“Stop flirting with the carnies,”

Taylor said, shoving my shoulder.

I whirled around as I stumbled, giving the zombie nurse behind the counter an apologetic smile.

“Sign this,”

the nurse barked at me, shoving a ratty old ledger across the countertop. A centipede scuttled down her hand and dashed over the yellowed pages, disappearing over the edge of the peeling counter.

“What is that?”

Malcolm asked beside me.

“Probably a waiver or something,”

I replied, scribbling my name as quickly as I could before any more bugs showed up.

“Oh, this is probably one of those interactive places!”

Taylor smacked my bicep, his eyes alight. “They can grab you and shit!”

“Is there a way to opt out?”

Malcolm asked the zombie nurse.

She simply stared in return, the white film over her eyes making her even more unsettling to look at. Mold dotted her face in a few areas, eating away at her gaunt cheek. Props to the makeup artist, for real. It didn’t look like paint, or whatever. There was actually a fuzzy texture when she turned her head under the light.

“Just sign it so we can go!”

Taylor slapped the pen in Malcolm’s hand.

“You’ll be fine,”

I said with a little more sympathy. “We’ll keep you between us.”

Malcolm added his name on the page a second before Taylor snatched the pen out of his hand and tossed it on the book.

As soon as we were signed in, we hurried through the dented backdoor of the gas station and out into the night.

“Wait, did you guys pay?”

Malcolm asked, patting his back pocket, presumably for his wallet.