It all happened very quickly. The black man stepped behind the chair, cocked himself, then brought down more than a yard of metal pipe. The impact drove the man’s head between his shoulders. His skull crunched lopsidedly. Brains flew. Blood sprayed. And his right eyeball popped out of its socket and dangled on his cheek.
Along with everyone else, Ryan let out a gasp.
From the cratering wound twinkling points of light streamed upward, circling mebbe five feet above the body, building in volume and turbulence. The light continued to stream until the corpse heaved its last jerk. Then the pinpoints drifted farther and farther apart, until they finally disappeared.
Ryan the passenger was stunned by the detail and realism. Had it been a hallucination? Or had he witnessed the spirit flowing out of the dying body, the soul freed?
After dumping the corpse in the cart, the two men left squabbled and struggled over who would take the seat next. The guy who won was strapped down by the guy who lost. The lucky winner glanced over his shoulder at the waiting black man, a gleeful expression on his face. Then he turned back and shut his eyes as if he was in store for a pleasant surprise.
The black man swung the pipe down again. At the impact Ryan was jolted to the core, as if he had been the one who had been struck. And again, from the devastating wound, he witnessed the streaming of nonsubstance, of ectoplasm, of soul.
“This is the real carny,” Trader whispered into his ear.
THE MAGNIFICENT CRECCA grabbed the bloody end of the pipe with one hand and gave Azimuth a hard shove in the chest with the other. “Give it to me,” he said. “I want a turn swinging the pipe.”
The black man refused to let go of the weapon.
“In case you forgot, you work for me, Azimuth,” Crecca said, giving him another hard push. “Me and the Magus.” He put a heavy emphasis on the last two words.
“I used to work for you, mon,” the carny scout said. “No more. Now I do just what ol’ Marley says.”
Crecca glared at Baron Kerr, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. Then, without warning, he ducked forward and head-butted Azimuth. The black man’s nose crunched under the blow, and bright blood gushed from his nostrils. As the carny master tried to wrench the pipe away, his scout fought back. Azimuth landed a hard right to the side of Crecca’s head, then jammed the end of the pipe into his solar plexus.
Crecca doubled over and went down, but he pulled the off-balance Azimuth along with him. The two big men crashed to the ground and began rolling around in the dirt. Over the next thirty seconds, they each had their moments. Crecca hammered the black man’s face with consecutive rights and lefts. Azimuth got his big hands around the carny master’s throat and squeezed until his face turned purple. It was the baron who finally broke up the scuffle. He picked up the pipe that Azimuth had dropped and gave each of the men a solid whack in the legs with it.
Crecca got to his feet first. “I want to take my turn on the last guy,” he said to Kerr, holding out his hand. “Azimuth has already done two.”
The baron stared at him hard for a few seconds, then half smiled in a strange, sad way. “I like how he handles the pipe,” Baron Kerr said. “A sweet swing.”
With that, to Crecca’s fury, he handed the weapon back to the black man. The carny master was then forced to watch with the others as Azimuth wound up and hit another long ball. When the shuddering from the chair had stopped, he shouldered in beside the black man to help him load the last body into the cart.
“You’re dead meat,” he warned his former scout.
“We’re all dead meat, mon,” Azimuth said with a laugh.
The baron threw a couple of axes and machetes and a tree-limb saw on top of the corpses. Then he set off across the square, gesturing for the crowd to push the cart after him.