“If I had known this was going to happen, I think I would have called out today,” Isaac muses, gutting a chainsaw that I hope was a prop this morning, kicking a toolbox for the Monsterland Halloween Event, packed with specialized steampunk tools, over to Ozzy for his rucksack.

  “He would have gone as Rudolph Valentino,” Scud chuckles dryly, getting small laughs and smiles from the group.

  “Is it too late to get my wife a Black Widow costume?” chimes in the parkgoer, whose name I never caught, collecting pirate swords from a bin.

  As the only girl in the room, currently in a revealing costume, I’m a little more offended than amused.

  After collecting Isaac’s tools, Ozzy starts snooping around the makeup chairs, grabbing where someone stashed a cello case with a label that reads "Property of J. Carver."

  I’m staring at a vending machine, trying to figure out how to get into it. Finally, I just kick in the plexiglass with my now Rockette-ish legs until it caves in and start pulling out snack cakes. We’re good on sodas, not that I know how to get into the other machine, but Ozzy might want to load up on water. I’m sure between him, Isaac, and a bayonet, they can get to them.

  This particular prop department services this side of the park, so there’s more Metropolis and Kiddie Carnival than Lost Garden or Astro Adventure, with racing jumpsuits from the steel coaster and more clown costumes than anyone’s comfortable with, along with spare greatcoats for the soldiers and extra steampunk gear. We don’t have a whole lot of bags to go around, either, but as well as his rucksack, Ozzy is dumping the contents out of a black backpack and going through them.

  I bring him the snacks from the machine, him using his tail to hold open the bag. It’s a cheap black school backpack, with a stylized patch on it of a name above a sinister jack o’lantern, Halloween Jack. While his tail is holding up the bag, he’s sorting through the contents, a pair of black jeans, a black t-shirt with the orange eyes and mouth of a jack o’lantern, and black and white striped socks, which he passes to me.

  “He…won’t be…needing them…anymore…”

  The clothes might be a bit snug for me, especially with my newly-enhanced curves, but the sight of the socks alone looks so comfortable I could cry, if it means getting out of these sandals.

  “Thank you,” I tell him, taking the bundle of cloth as he points me to the changing stalls. “Um…Jack…is that your name?”

  He doesn’t answer, his eyes unseen behind the lenses in his mask, his vapor smelling of pumpkin and fall leaves. He’s staked a claim on the cello, throwing the strap over his shoulder to keep it close, but the bag and the clothes are of little notice to him once in my hands.

  I slip into the changing room, feeling the cotton and denim under my hands. There isn’t a place for my snake, not like with my pumpkin skirt, and the t-shirt pins my wings. In case Halloween Jack does decide he wants his shirt back, I’m unwilling to cut it to make room. After being in those stupid sandals for so long, though, the socks feel like the most luxurious Epsom salt bath I’ve ever been in, but my toe-claws slice them open pretty badly.

  It’s also the first time I get near a mirror. A natural blond, the raven hair is a bit startling, but no more so than the golden orange eyes, slitted like a cat’s, or maybe a snake, large and wide, matching the set at the end of my tail. My skin is perfect, flawless, my proportions immaculate, more akin to the fairy cutout that used to be on my shirt.

  Once more presentable, I get back to foraging, until I realize Ozzy is staring at my back pensively, smelling of vanilla. A flash of his scalpel-like claws later, I can flap my wings again.

  “So…you…don’t want the shirt back?” I ask, receiving no reply.

  With everyone sorting through what might be useful now, what might be useful later, and what might be inconvenient to try to carry back, the knock on the door, held shut with Scud’s cane through the handles, comes as a bit of a surprise.

  The man on the other side of the door has a white face, a rictus grin, and a noxious head of acidic green hair, waving benignly with a hand in cutoff leather gloves, holding a ringmaster’s cane. The blue jacket is under the red ringmaster coat, which, it seems, he pulled off of someone to obtain some sense of authority, seeing as I’m pretty sure he wasn’t wearing it when Isaac, Ozzy, and I hid from him earlier.

  “Um…should I let him in?” Isaac asks, taking stock of the clown’s relatively calm, non-homicidal demeanor.

  “WAIT!” I shout, practically throwing myself over a table. “Prions!”

  I can still feel the clown’s flesh against my fangs. Am I…am I contaminated? Am I going to turn into a clown, too?

  “Patient Clown has no communicable disease,” Scud announces sagely.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Can you…even tell if he has prions?” Isaac asks, coming to the same conclusions I am.

  “There are no prions in Patient Clown,” Scud replies.

  “Okay, but can you tell? Without, like, a blood test, or whatever.”

  Prions are kind of like a germ, and they spread things like mad cow, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or in this case, Clownsfeldt-Joker. The last thing we need are haunt sliders, steamborg soldiers, and mutants turning into psycho clowns, and I’m not taking my chances.

  “The I See You has recently received inoculation for the most common influenza strains, as well as tetanus…had appendix removed at eight years, seven months, and nineteen days. Patient Gunsight had tonsils removed at seven years, nine months, and fifteen days. Patient Snake Charmer was never inoculated for chickenpox or measles, mumps, and rubella, which deviates from standard in her age group.”

  “…Okay,” Isaac groans, glancing from named person to named person, checking for confirmation. “Show of hands, am I letting the clown in or not?”

  “S-see w-what-t h-he wants,” Lance tells him, head drooping to his bad side, jerked back up in a way that doesn’t seem like he knew he did it. “D-do n-not o-pen…”

  “Got it,” Isaac replies, cutting the injured soldier off and sliding the walking stick just enough to crack open the double-doors. “Hi, Reggie, how’s it goin’?”

  “Isaac! Most excellent to see you. You doin’ okay?”

  “Can’t complain,” the taller man shrugs. “Sherene, this is Reggie. He works with me in Guest Services.”

  “Vacuum girl!” the clown chirps with an easy smile and a long, slow drawl. “Glad to see you’re okay. Listen, thanks for straightening him out on that wig stand. It was most uncomfortable.”

  “Any time,” I grin nervously, vaguely remembering finding a wig improperly placed so the edges were curled up inside the cap.

  “Listen, so…he has a full house out here that we think you can…probably sympathize with,” the clown continues, turning his attention back to Isaac. “And he’s thinking…you guys don’t need all of that stuff, do you?”

  Isaac winces, rubbing the spots where his eyes should be.

  “I don’t know, Reggie, we just ran into some of your stagemates, and I’m not sure we wanna do that again.”

  “Oh, yeah, them,” the clown laughs. “Yeah, we’ve been trying to avoid them, too. But you got a tent set up somewhere? Some roustabouts? He’s just looking to get these people somewhere safe.”

  “Show of hands?” Isaac asks wearily.

  “C-could u-use e-extra-a units,” Lance points out.

  “They show no hostility,” adds Scud.

  Ozzy’s smoke smells like vanilla and pumpkin spice.

  “You’re sure they’re not going to spread clownism?” I ask the vulture-faced slider.

  “Absolutely,” he assures me. “He can feel the microbes on your hands, name their strains, the crawling things in your blood and mucous. He knows what prions should feel like. He is certain.”

  “Then…it stands to reason they got…regular people, too,” I shrug. “Like us…they can’t all have lost it.”

  “Alright, Reggie, one at a time, hands where we can see ‘em,” Isaac sighs, the parkgoer noticeably picking up a baseball bat.

  “Please, call us Barnum,” the clown smiles as Isaac opens the door.

  “Of course,” Isaac states, with a kind of finality that says he should have expected that.

  There’s eight clowns, four parkgoers, and a black, four-horned sheep or goat thing, filing in one by one. Ozzy’s smoke takes a bleach smell at the sight of them, but some silent prompting from Scud gets him to hand over some sodas as a show of hospitality.

  “Your parents didn’t vaccinate you?” Isaac asks, looking down at me.

  I shrug helplessly.

  I’d like to say it was because my mother was an antivaxxer, afraid that getting me proper medical care would also give me brain damage, but the truth is…she probably wasn’t sober enough to get me to the appointment.

  I really shouldn’t have been here tonight. I should have been in my place, at home, celebrating Halloween quietly, modestly, and cheaply. This entire evening might even be karmic revenge for me trying to get above myself.

  We’re able to grab more than we planned with the extra help, although it’s obvious everyone is as hesitant to arm the clowns as their group is about seeing the soldiers and sliders carrying weapons. The goat keeps staring at my tail with a profoundly disturbed expression, as though I stapled a live exotic animal onto myself on purpose just to look pretty.

  At least this gives us an opportunity to check out what’s going on in the rest of the park. It’s more of the same, except the rides outside of Metropolis are more prop-heavy. The staff in Lost Garden have become some kind of dragon-worshiping cult, lacking much of a Halloween overlay on its own in favor spooky medieval atmosphere it carries year-round.

  “Dragons?” the parkgoer asks incredulously. “Dragons are real?”

  “Look around, mate,” Barnum chuckles. “Everything’s real.”

  The man goes pale, and I suppose I can’t really blame him for not seeing the gravity of the situation. He wasn’t wearing a costume or stylized mask, didn’t sit up on the roof and take in the lay of the land. He’s a bit more distant from everything, all things considered.

  Once everything has been picked through, sorted, and gathered, I look up and ask what next.

  “R-return to b-base,” Lance replies, twitching, right hand reflexively gripping at nothing.

  “We…could hit a gift shop on the way back,” I tell him quietly, a little more comfortable in my own skin now that so much of it isn’t on display. “We still need food, blankets, maybe clothes.”

  “We can help,” Barnum agrees.

  Lance, in his dark blue greatcoat, stands before a rack of cone-shaped orange flashlights from Full Throttle, trying to pick them up. His right eye sparking, he grabs at one, picks it up, drops it on the floor, and then grabs the next, only to repeat the process. His good eye is unfocused, and it doesn’t seem like he realizes he’s doing this.

  The two haunt sliders glance at one another and begin making low noises, like a secret language, Scud in birdlike chirps and whistles and Ozzy in reptilian clicks and hissing. After a moment, Ozzy nods and moves between me and Isaac, back turned to Lance, as Scud moves onto the soldier’s blind side.

  “Play…along…” comes the hoarse whisper from the slider.

  “Patient Gunsight, as a physician, he is most concerned about the effect this excitement and stress will have upon the Snake Charmer and the I See You,” Scud declares authoritatively, seeming to examine the range of awareness on Lance’s bad side. “Such stress is not good for a young lady and I fear for her psyche if exposure continues. Patient I See You’s heart is sensitive and delicate at the most relaxed of circumstances. Would you be so kind as to escort us back to the…base, so that he may monitor them?”

  Lance looks up, turning away from his bad side and Scud, evidently looking for the sound of the voice, settling on myself and Isaac.

  “Um…yeah,” I mutter, taking a more comfortable seat on the table, looking down shyly and biting my lip, arms supporting my chest, ears drooping slightly. “I’d feel…much safer…if you came with us.”

  Wisdom my mother taught me: you don’t actually have to put out, but if a man thinks you will, he’ll at least buy you dinner.

  I play up the big eyes and soft ears, angling my snake out of the way to look less threatening, hands tucked into my elbows to hide the scales and claws.

  Isaac winces and rubs his left shoulder, flexing his fingers, his breath quickening to a subtle, but impressive degree. If it was biologically possible, I’d swear he’d start sweating on command.

  I’m actually impressed. I’d have expected, if someone was going to feign having heart problems, there’d be a lot of dramatic chest-grabbing and flailing.

  “A-a-lright-t,” Lance stammers, leaning on his rifle. “I-I’ll t-t-t-take y-you.”