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unlit and alien forms, as profoundly disturbing as a collection of weirdly shaped grave-stones carved and erected by an inscrutable race on another world. All familiarity fled; every structure, every machine, every article was strange. I felt crowded, closed in, trapped, and for a moment I was afraid to move, certain that, no matter where I turned, I would be walking into open jaws, into the grip of something hostile.
    “Who’s there?” I asked.
    No answer.
    “Where have you taken the body?”
    The dark carnival was a perfect acoustic sponge; it absorbed my voice, and the silence was undisturbed, as if I had never spoken.
    “What do you want from me?” I demanded of the unknown watcher. “Are you friend or enemy?”
    Perhaps he did not know which he was, for he did not answer, though I sensed that a time would come when he would reveal himself and make his intentions clear.
    That was the moment when I knew, with clairvoyant certainty, that I couldn’t have run away from the Sombra Brothers’ midway even if I had tried. It was neither whim nor a fugitive’s desperation that had brought me there. Something important was meant to happen to me in that carnival. Destiny had been my guide, and when I had enacted the role required of me, then and only then would destiny release me to a future of my own choosing.

chapter four
    GOBLIN DREAMS
    Most county fairs feature horse races in addition to livestock shows, carnivals and kootch dancers, so most fairgrounds have locker rooms and showers under their grandstands, for the convenience of jockeys and sulky drivers. This place was no exception. The door was locked, but that could not stop me. I was no longer just an Oregon farm boy, no matter how devoutly I might have wished to regain that lost innocence; I was, instead, a young man with knowledge of the road. I carried a thin, stiff strip of plastic in my wallet, and I used it now to loid the flimsy lock in less than a minute. I went inside, switched on the lights, and relocked the door behind me.
    Green metal toilet stalls were lined up on the left, chipped sinks and age-yellowed mirrors on the right, showers at the far end. A double row of scratched and dented lockers, back to back, ran through the center of the big room, with scarred benches in front of them. Bare cement floor. Concrete block walls. Exposed fluorescent ceiling lights. Vaguely foul odors—sweat, urine, stale liniment, fungus—and a pungent, overriding scent of pine disinfectant gave the air an unsavory richness that made me grimace but was not quite—though almost —disgusting enough to trigger the gag reflex. Not a swell place. Not a place you were likely to meet any of the Kennedys, for instance, or Cary Grant. But there were no windows here, which meant I could safely leave the lights on, and it was much cooler—though no less humid—than the dusty fairgrounds outside.
    First thing, I rinsed the metallic taste of blood out of my mouth and brushed my teeth. In the cloudy mirror above the sink, my eyes were so wild and haunted that I quickly looked away from them.
    My T-shirt was torn. Both my shirt and jeans were bloody. After I showered, washing the stink of the goblin out of my hair, and dried off with a bunch of paper towels, I dressed in another T-shirt and a pair of jeans that I took out of my backpack. At one of the sinks, I washed some of the blood out of the ruined T-shirt, soaked the jeans as well, wrung them, then buried them in a nearly full trash barrel by the door, unwilling to risk being caught with incriminating, bloodstained clothing in my pack. My remaining wardrobe consisted entirely of the new jeans I had put on, the T-shirt I wore, one other T-shirt, three pair of briefs, socks, and a thin corduroy jacket.
    You travel light when you’re wanted for murder. The only heavy things you carry are memories, fear, and loneliness.
    I decided the safest place to spend the last hour of the night was there in the locker room beneath the