In front of Dave was a dark hallway. He swept it with his flashlight. Nobody ahead. But his blood seemed to freeze when he saw barred windowlike openings along the walls.
Trolls in the walls.
He saw no trolls, though.
He flinched as something nudged him. Just Joan. Pressing against his back.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered.
He started forward, shining his light from wall to wall. Faces rose behind the bars. The dirty, leering faces of men and women. A small whimper came from Joan.
All along the corridor ahead, arms reached out, flopping and waving like the tentacles of a beast that lived in the walls.
Dave rushed forward, Joan at his back.
The trolls in the walls laughed and jeered, begged for coins, tittered, snapped obscenities and threats. Fingertips brushed Dave’s arms, plucked at his sleeves. Someone yelped, but it was the outcry of an injured man, and Dave guessed that Joan had struck one of the reaching hands.
At least she’s not blowing the bastards away, he thought.
He was tempted, himself, but he kept his finger off the trigger.
He batted a hand away with the barrel of his flashlight.
As the beam of his flashlight skittered through the dark, it lit a door in front of him.
Robin knelt on the seat of the gondola, clutching its back. She gazed down through the maze of wires, unlighted bulbs, struts, and spokes at the three trolls who were slowly climbing the Ferris wheel.
“Pritty, pritty,” called the nearest one. He was about twenty feet away, climbing a spoke that would lead him to the highest gondola. Once there, he would be able to come at her along the outer wheel, which had only a gradual slant before it met the side of Robin’s carriage.
He was lean, gray-faced, bald except for a fringe of hair around his ears. He wore a dark suit coat and slacks that looked as if they’d been made to fit a much larger man. The wind fluttered his clothes, and he was near enough for Robin to hear their quiet flapping. “Gonna getcha!” he squealed. “Yessir. Don’ go nowhere, pritty!” He wheezed out a laugh, as if he thought that was a great joke.
“I get her first, you piece of shit,” snapped the man below him. The one with the patch on his eye.
His voice was strong. He didn’t sound crazy or loaded.
The third troll was lower than the other two, apparently climbing with more caution. He seemed like a distant threat.
These creeps will get to me long before he does, Robin thought.
The one in the oversize suit grabbed the side of the uppermost gondola. He turned his face to her and grinned. “Ooooo, yer all mi—”
He shrieked as the one-eyed troll tugged a cuff of his trousers, yanking him downward. He kicked and squirmed for a moment, then lost his hold and tumbled away. Robin caught her own breath as she watched him fall, twisting through the moonlight. He landed headfirst on the platform. The Ferris wheel shook with his impact.
The one-eyed troll climbed to the side of the upper gondola. Instead of getting into it, he pulled himself onto the narrow steel beam of the outer wheel. Straddling the beam, he began to work his way toward Robin.
On the floor at the foot of the slide, Jeremy found another candle. He supposed Samson had dropped it. He used his candle to ignite its wick. The light seemed to double around him. He spotted the meat cleaver. It must’ve flown off the end of the slide, for it lay in the middle of the hallway.
Holding both candles in his left hand, he squatted and snatched up the cleaver and hurried back to the slide.
He watched Tanya crawl out. She pulled herself forward, walking her hands over the floor. Her sweatpants hung around her knees. Her bare rump and the backs of her legs looked wonderful in the soft glow of the candles.
She dropped onto the floor, rolled onto her back, and lay there gasping.
Jeremy felt as if his breath were being sucked out.
“Looky there,” someone whispered.
“Yummmmy, yum yum yum.”
“Poke her, young fella,” urged the raspy voice of a woman.
Jeremy’s stomach clenched. Tanya gasped, jerked the sweatpants to her waist, and bolted up.
“Awww.”
“Havin’ fun yet, kiddies?”
Raising his candles high, Jeremy looked up.
Grates on the ceiling. Faces pressed to the strips of metal.
“Fucking trolls!” Tanya snapped.
A string of drool spilled onto her forehead. She wiped it off with a bloody sleeve, grabbed Jeremy’s arm, and pulled him close to the wall so they no longer