either.” She stepped back along the hall, out of his reach.
“Argh!” The big green hands retracted into the window. She waited for him to come out. And waited. He’d been working the haunted house for a couple of weeks, on top of general work as a roustabout. It had been his idea to add the movie monster Frankenstein to the exhibit of gross jars.
“Sebastian?” she asked. The haunted house had gone quiet, including the hidden phonographs. Filip was shutting down for the night, like everyone else, which meant the last paying customer was gone.
She heard footsteps, but they were from the wrong direction, back toward the front door.
“Filip?” she asked. “Is that you?”
Nobody answered. The footsteps came closer, approaching through the dim, twisting hallway.
She thought of the large man with the fedora and the wild beard. If he’d seen her, he might have followed her inside, slipping past Filip while he was busy closing up shop, or maybe knifing Filip to get him out of the way. He seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t think twice about killing someone.
She returned to the window and looked into the laboratory, but Sebastian was gone. A pickled pig fetus stared back at her from its jar.
“Sebastian?” she whispered as loud as she dared, and then someone grabbed her from behind and hauled her back off her feet. She could feel the brushy beard against the back of her neck. He smelled like mothballs.
She screamed as she twisted herself back and forth, trying to wriggle and kick her way free, but his arms were strong and clutched her tight.
“Unhand me!” she shouted, letting the pox boil up to her skin. She clawed her nails across his leathery face and ripped out a fistful of his beard, but he only laughed.
“Unhand me?” He laughed harder, releasing her as he doubled over. “That’s what you said! ‘Unhand me!’ Yes, right away, Your Majesty! I shall unhand thou!”
Juliana scowled. She’d known it was Sebastian the instant she’d heard his voice. He’d changed into a hairy werewolf mask, which she’d mistaken for a beard. She grabbed the mask off his head.
“Yow! You pulled my hair.” He clapped an oversized hand to his head and looked pained. He still wore his green Frankenstein makeup, complete with fake stitches on his forehead.
“I think you will survive the injury,” she said.
“Oh, sure. I can already feel the hairs growing back.”
“Braggart.” She looked around and saw that he’d pulled her back through a hidden door into the room with the devils and bats. “You’ve dragged me into Hell. What do you intend to do here?”
“We’ll punish your sins.” He pulled off the big green Frankenstein gloves and walked towards the biggest fireplace in the cave.
“I avoid sinning,” she told him.
“Up the chimney you go. Victims first.” He gestured inside the fake fire.
She leaned her head inside and looked up. The inner structure of the haunted house was bare here, the wooden beams and columns roped together where the different chunks of the house had been assembled after they were unloaded from the train. Exposed wooden rungs formed a ladder to the roof.
“We’re climbing up?” she asked.
“Yes, Your Majesty, now that I’ve unhanded you, you may climb.”
“You first.” Juliana smiled. She watched him climb up through the dark space, then opened a trap door at the top, revealing a square of starry sky.
“Come on up,” he called down to her. “The roof ghosts are in a friendly mood tonight.”
“So long as the roof ghosts don’t mind.” Juliana climbed up after him.
They stood on a narrow wooden platform behind the plywood dormer windows, painted to look like cracked shingles and boards. The roof ghosts were just balls of rag cloth mounted on sticks, with sheets tied over them to flap and billow in the wind. From here, she could see the darkened midway spread out below.
“This carnival has everything backwards,” he told her. “They put the freaky girls in the model show, and the pretty girls in the freak show. It makes no sense.”
“You’re dangerously close to being charming.”
“I know. There’s always danger in the air when I’m around.”
“Are you going to kiss me or not?”
“That’s an easy choice.” He drew her close and gave her a long kiss, while her hands clasped behind his neck. The feeling of his body pressed against her made her shiver. Since joining the carnival, he’d slept in a cot in the crowded roustabout tent, but she was often tempted to invite him back to her