to be spared the sight. But Liz and Heather were on their knees, having drawn the long johns down his legs, and they stayed there, inspecting him, whispering to each other, giggling. The guy obviously wanted to cover himself, but Karen and Shiner had his arms. So he just whimpered.
Heather reached up.
The troll’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.
“What’re you, desperate?” Liz muttered.
“I just wanta see if—”
“That’s enough,” Nate snapped.
“Let’s get on with it,” Tanya said. “We didn’t post a guard, so we’d better finish up and get out of here.” She reached out toward Randy. He dug into a pocket, took out something that clicked and rattled, and gave it to her.
Jeremy saw that it was a pair of handcuffs.
“I’ll get the thing going,” Nate said, and ducked away.
The troll was guided to the Ferris wheel and forced down. The gondola started to swing backward when his rump hit the footrest, but the platform stopped it.
As if he suddenly realized that the pain of the beating and the humiliation of being stripped were mere preliminaries to the main event, the troll shrieked and went wild. He kicked, squirmed, flung his arms at the kids trying to hold him down.
Tanya kicked him in the belly. His breath blasted out and he slumped against the front edge of the gondola’s seat, whinnying as he struggled for air.
She swung the metal safety bar down and clamped it.
A motor rumbled to life. Jeremy felt the platform begin to vibrate under his shoes.
Astonished, he muttered, “It’ll go?”
“Nate’s folks own the thing,” Liz said.
Tanya finished with the troll and stepped aside. He was still sitting on the footrest, sprawled backward against the seat, fat hairy legs sticking out.
His hands hung beneath the safety bar, suspended there by the chain of the cuffs.
“Watch it,” Tanya warned. Jeremy and the others stepped out of the way. “Okay, Nate,” she said.
Nate, over at the side, worked a lever forward.
The Ferris wheel lurched, and slowly started to turn. As the gondola moved backward, rising, it rocked away beneath the weight of the troll. He slipped off the footrest and cried out as the bracelets tugged at his wrists.
“No!” he yelled. “Please!”
A second later, he was hanging straight down—all his weight borne by the handcuffs, by the connecting links, by the safety bar.
The Ferris wheel lifted him higher, then squeaked and stopped with a slight jerk that made him yelp. He swayed up there, six or eight feet above the ground.
“Take him higher,” Tanya said.
“That’s high enough,” Nate told her. “He’s an awfully big guy. Something could give out.”
“Let me down. Please? I’ll get out of town. I’ll do anything. Please!”
“Give him one spin over the top,” Tanya said.
“Christ, yeah!” Heather blurted.
“Make him ride it!” Liz said.
“I don’t think we—”
“Shit!” Tanya snapped. “Give it to him! He’s a fucking troll!”
Nate shook his head.
He kept shaking it as Tanya strode toward him. “I’ll do it, then—shit.”
“Tanya…” he said. But he didn’t try to stop her.
She rammed the long lever forward. With a quick lurch that dragged a shriek out of the troll, the wheel started turning.
The naked, kicking troll flew upward as if being sucked into the fog. He screamed all the way up. He kept on screaming after Jeremy couldn’t see him anymore.
Tanya tugged the lever backward.
The Ferris wheel stopped.
The screams of the troll came down through the fog.
“God,” Shiner muttered, “he must be right near the top.”
“A good place for him to spend the night,” Tanya said.
“Let’s bring him down,” Nate told her. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Fine,” Tanya said. “In the morning. Go ahead and shut it off.”
“We can’t…”
The troll had never stopped screaming, but the pitch suddenly jagged high. It made Jeremy’s teeth ache. Goose bumps prickled his skin.
He heard a thump.
The screaming stopped.
Another thump.
“Oh, Jesus,” Nate murmured.
And down through the fog came the troll, striking spokes and braces, bouncing off them, cartwheeling, flipping, tumbling like a mad acrobat.
Twenty
The platform shook when he crashed against it.
Nobody said a word. There was silence except for the rumble of the Ferris wheel’s motor.
Jeremy stared at the body. It lay only a couple of yards from him, faceup on the floor between two of the gondolas. The shadows weren’t dark enough to shroud it. The face looked black with what was surely blood. The nose was mashed flat. One leg stuck out sideways, as if it had been wrenched from its socket. The other stood straight up from the knee. The hands, still cuffed, rested on the hill of