Chapter 1

Chapter

One

Lucas Hamilton, MD

Friday April 7, 2023

I never imagined having a child. I rarely even sleep with women, because my bisexual ass has a marked preference for men.

Imagine my surprise when a one-night stand from the distant past tells me that my fifteen-year-old daughter Sophie is on her way to Los Angeles to live with me. She's coming by airplane, not stork.

We did a paternity test, but I didn't need one. Sophie has my hazel eyes and strong chin. Her bone structure makes her look patrician. She's a young Athena with more warfare than wisdom. She's sarcastic and bitter and angry as hell. It's obvious she's mine. She doesn't think much of me. She's not so fond of her mother, either.

I adore her.

I can't say why Neve never told me she was pregnant. She cheated Sophie out of the support I could have—would have—provided, and she cheated me out of the chance to watch my daughter grow up. I missed her birth. I missed watching her first steps and her first day of school. I never had the chance to teach her she could trust me. Right now, she's going through turbulent adolescence. Changing from a girl into a young woman before my eyes. Without trust, how can I set boundaries?

How am I supposed to protect her?

I just finished a long surgery on a teen who had a solo spinout into a tree. I had to let the patient's parents know it's still touch and go, but I'm reservedly optimistic. After I reassure them, I take out my phone to call Sophie. I always check in after she gets home from school. I like to know if she has a preference for dinner.

"What?" She answers her phone on the fourth ring.

"I'm picking up takeout. Do you want anything special?"

"Don't bother getting me food, Lucas." She's never called me Dad. I don't know if she ever will. I can't let her know how much her frosty indifference amuses me. "I'm going to a carnival with friends. Don't wait up."

"Wait. What?" Since I'm calling from a spot in the hospital corridor, nurses and cleaners stare as they move briskly by me. I am, in effect, like a boulder in the center of a river of humans going about their work. I tuck myself tighter against the wall. "We're still on for dinner, aren't we?"

"No, I told you. I'm going to a carnival." She talks slowly so I understand. "You've heard of those, right?"

"Where is it?" It never pays to respond to Sophie's sarcasm.

"On Old Route 66 somewhere. Braden is driving."

Who the hell is Braden? "I'm going to need more information than that. Who else is going besides Braden?"

"I said friends."

This is the first time she mentions she has friends. "I'm not comfortable with this?—"

"Like you're ever comfortable with anything I do." She snorts. "Mom would let me go."

This doesn't have the impact she thinks it will. Neve is the one who failed to mention she had my child, and Neve is the one who married an aristocratic Italian race car driver. Neve is the one who left Sophie behind in the states with me, so forgive me if she's not my parental role model.

"I'll be home in an hour. We'll discuss whether you can go while we eat dinner."

Sophie's gone when I get home. Of course she is.

Instead of eating dinner, I drive old Route 66 like a helicopter parent, looking for a carnival. Even if Sophie weren't my daughter, I wouldn't want her anywhere near a place like that without checking it out first. Not to mention how she's going to get there. Teen drivers—Christ. In LA, it seemed like I performed surgery on teen drivers daily. I'm pretty sure seeing multiple ribs fractured and detached, a flail chest, would make Sophie think twice about getting into a car with friends. I'm exhausted, both mentally and physically. But I'm also determined. I clench my jaw and tighten my fingers on the SUV's leather-wrapped wheel because nothing in my extensive education prepared me to parent a fifteen-year-old girl.

As a calming routine, I make a list. One: I will find Sophie, and we will talk. Two: I will assess the carnival with my own eyes. Three: I will either bring her home directly or chaperone the group until they leave. Four: I will drive my daughter back to our house.

I'm satisfied with my plan. Sophie may have avoided our conversation, but that doesn't mean she gets a pass. I shake my head to clear my mind. Focus.

It's just after sunset and the Santa Fe sky is still the vibrant purple blue gradient that I've grown to love since we moved here, even if it looks like a bruise. There's very little moon to speak of, but the stars sparkle like glitter across the indigo velvet darkness.

I'm heading east because… well, I have a fifty-fifty chance of finding the carnival that way. If that doesn't pan out, I'll drive toward Albuquerque and look there. As long as Sophie is right about the carnival being on old Route 66, my guess is east.

The Evoque's tires thud over the poorly paved road. I barely feel it. The SUV is luxurious enough that even when the highway is full of potholes, it feels like I'm driving a couch. I've got Rufus Wainwright crooning to me as scrub oak, fir, juniper, and pinyon are silhouetted briefly by my headlights. Then they melt back into the shadows.

Though I love New Mexico, I still second-guess moving out of LA. It's beautiful country here—wild, wide, and empty—but maybe Sophie and I weren't prepared for such vast natural landscapes. It makes me feel smaller, less significant. Maybe that's why Sophie, who grew up in Manhattan, hates it so much.

I don't blame Sophie for wanting the familiar. I understand how lost she feels here because I feel lost too, sometimes. I have no right to expect anything from Sophie, but I need to know where she is. I need to know she's safe, that she will call me if her friends get high and she needs a ride home. But we're too new to expect trust between us. She's still afraid of what I'll do if she screws up.

It seems like I've been driving for hours. The carnival can't be this far out of town. I give up and make a call. I hoped I wouldn't have ask him for help, but if I know one person who keeps tabs on the local social scene, it's an OR nurse named Damian. I hesitate with my finger over his contact. I've never called him. There's a reason for that.

"Dr. Hamilton," he answers before I hear a ringtone. "Dare I hope this is a booty call at last?"

"Nope." I blame the show Grey's Anatomy . Only on television are hospitals full of fornicating doctors. "Have you heard anything about a carnival in the area?"

"Like a traveling thing?"

"I have no clue. Sophie went out without my permission, and now I have to retrieve her and chain her up in my basement until she's thirty."

He gasps audibly. "You have a basement?"

I wince. "Not entirely the point."

"I would be your very bad boy if you had a sex dungeon. You could discipline me."

Oh my God. Here we go.. "Cool! We could get a rep from HR on the line and see if they want to come too."

"Oh, You're such a Zaddy?—"

Oh hell, no. "You did not just call me that."

"I said what I said." Damian heaves a put-upon sigh.

"Damian, it's so inappropriate?—"

"Okay, I know. You're determined to treat me like a valued colleague, you bastard. I haven't heard anyone talking about a carnival. Did you try calling Sophie?"

As if that wasn't the first thing I did. "She's not answering. Earlier today, she said it was on old Route 66."

"Did you try Googling it?"

"What a great idea." Shit, I sound like Sophie. "Yes, there's nothing."

"You could look in town for posters or see if the organizers leafleted cars. It sounds like fun, actually. I haven't been to a carnival in years."

I picture teens lashed into substandard thrill rides. "It sounds horrible to me."

"I want to go. Come pick me up. We can search together."

"No." Hell, no.

"But I love a road trip. Ooh. We could get snacks. Cold cokes and beef jerky and Fritos and bean dip?—"

"Will you be wanting a quadruple bypass with that?"

"Are we talking in your basement sex?—"

"Don't finish that sentence."

"Fine." He huffs.

"Bye for now." I disconnect the call and pull over. There's nothing out here. It wouldn't make sense; no one would come this far. Naturally, given a fifty-fifty chance of heading in the right direction, I choose the wrong one. Am I even doing the right thing by looking for her like this?

Parenting is instinctual, they say.

Just remember being a child, they say.

Disgusted, I turn around at the next pullout. Rufus Wainwright gives way to Rickie Lee Jones on my playlist. She tees up Joni Mitchell. I scan the horizon and see only shadows until I'm about three miles outside of town and—wait.

There's a glow in the sky. An unnatural aurora borealis. How did I miss that going the other way? A narrow dirt track leads off the main road. Almost immediately, I spot gaily painted arrows pointing to a large clearing, where I find a parking lot and a gated entrance, beyond which it looks like they've been pumping out dance club fog.

I get out, anticipating the glycerin-and-funk smell of smoke machines, but the crisp spring air is redolent with the pleasant scents of pine, fir, and juniper. Beneath that, I smell creosote and a hint of something sulfurous. It's awful, like lightning striking a portable toilet. Hydrogen sulphide, I think. It's probably food waste, but I can't help shivering.

Sulphur is also known as Brimstone..

A red and white painted sign reads, "Welcome Traveler."

The hairs on my arms prickle. The back of my neck feels extra exposed. There's a crackle of something I can't define in the air. I think about finding her and maybe shadowing the group to make sure there's no trouble. I don't want to embarrass her more than necessary. I get in line behind a bunch of college-age kids. They're dressed like elves and renaissance faire refugees and the Addams family. My heart softens a little. I understand why Sophie wanted to come, and the thing is, if she'd said something earlier, I would have been happy for her. She has friends. The carnival is in her wheelhouse. This is exactly the kind of thing she likes.

Still, something about this whole setup seems sketchy to me. Carnivals are transient and the people who work them make their own laws. This one feels a century old or more. Its vintage air must be part of the attraction.

The guy who takes my ticket also grips my shoulder in a firm, strong hand. His smile is mesmerizing.

"Good evening, Doctor. You're all alone?"

"Yes." I breathe the word. I am alone. Am I lonely? Wait. Did he just call me Doctor?

"How do you know I'm a doctor?"

"Some men carry who they are wherever they go. Some, what they do."

What the hell does that mean? "My daughter came earlier with friends. I should catch up to them."

"Daughters are a handful, aren't they?" His eyes…there's something odd about his eyes. They're fathomless. Infinitely deep. Looking into his eyes is like soaring through space toward the beginning of time. Between his hand on my shoulder and his gaze on me, I feel like an insect specimen, flayed open and exposed. "I hope you find everything you're looking for. You might even leave us a changed man."

"Thank you?" I mumble.

"Go on." When he lets go of me, I laugh uneasily. I turn to see what the people behind me make of that, but I can no longer see them. I turn and go through the gate. Jesus Christ. I'm ten feet in before the fog thins out. It's a nice touch because it keeps people from seeing the show before they get inside but damn. The carnival is way larger than I thought it would be. From where I stand, the midway seems to go on forever. It's packed with families, couples, and packs of excited teens.

How will I ever find Sophie in a place like this?

I make my way along the edge of the crowd. The noise is almost painful. Generators rumble loudly. There's the mechanical clack and whirr of various rides. Barkers schilling sideshows shout over the chatter of excited onlookers. Calliope music pipes merrily from a carousel somewhere. There must be food, too. Over the scent of humans and canvas and brimstone, I smell frying grease, smoked meat, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla.

If I want to find Sophie, I'm going to need a plan. Maybe I should start on one side of the midway and ask if anyone has seen her. I take out my phone and open her Insta, so I have an endless parade of selfies from which to choose. In the ones from New York, she's surrounded by an ever-evolving group of sophisticated teens in front of trendy coffee shops and restaurants. They goof around in Central Park, eat hot dogs on the steps of the Met, pose on stoops of brownstones, and even on the subway. Since moving, Sophie's style—her brand—has gone from Sex and the City chic to urchin from Oliver Twist—all black with heavily lined woe-begone eyes and a perpetual aura of disappointment. That's odd. She hasn't posted anything tonight.

Her new look upsets her mother, which is no doubt Sophie's intent. Her bleak new style is not an indictment of me, my parenting skills, the home we live in, or the life we share. I don't take it personally. I want her to know I like her just as she is. I want her to see I'm on her side. And despite stalking her to a carnival to lay down the law, I want her to trust me.

I step aside for a minute to choose a good likeness. Going out with a group of new friends is a good thing, right? Am I overreacting? Should I have simply let her have her fun? I should have trusted her judgement. Gods. Here comes the point at which I second-guess every parenting decision I've made. Why am I trying to screw things up for her? Is it because she defied me? Is my pride so injured I can't wait until she gets home to talk to her?

Then I remember the man in the ticket booth.

Good evening, Doctor.

I hope you find everything you're looking for.

The words feel like a veiled curse, but I'm a scientist. I understand statistics. Sophie faces more danger in our bathtub than she does here. Sophie is fine. I worry too much.

Still…some worries come from instinct, don't they?

And instincts aren't inherently irrational. Some are evolutionary, designed to protect us. Some come from poorly understood physical processes, and some from forgotten experience.

You might even leave us a changed man.

I shiver, and not because it's cold. Nope, no. Better to be safe than sorry.

I choose a picture of Sophie and start asking roustabouts and barkers if they've seen my daughter. Over and over, they shrug and look at me like I'm insane. I'm halfway down the midway before I find anyone who offers me hope. A man outside of a blue tent featuring some kind of strongman says he's seen a girl who looked like Sophie with a group of rowdy teens. I ask him if he remembers which way they were heading, and he points me toward a massive wooden tower with a loop-de-loop slide.

Perfect. I'm a cardio thoracic surgeon, and now I wish I'd rounded up the rest of the trauma docs to come with me. That slide does not look safe. Not at all. I ask the man at the base if he's seen Sophie.

"He'll help you find what you're looking for." He directs me toward a man in the center of the midway wearing a ringmaster costume complete with a top hat. The man he points out needs no microphone to get everyone's attention.

"See the Amazing Mephistopheles as he performs illusions and feats of magic that will transform everything you know about very existence of the universe!"

"Thanks," I nod to the slide man.

He grins like a jack-o-lantern. "Just hope you're looking for what you find, Doc."

"Right. Thanks." What the actual fuck was in that mystic fog. Aerosolized LSD? My ears are still ringing from the loud announcement.

"Can I help you, sir? Are you lost?" The ringmaster has lowered his voice, thank heavens, when he asks.

I show him a picture of Sophie, "This is my daughter, Sophie. I'm trying to catch up with her group to make sure they all get home safely. Have you seen her?"

He squints at me for a few seconds longer than I expect before looking at my phone.

"Hard to say," he answers. "Lots of girls here tonight. Many dressed in black, equally defiant and afraid."

"I never said?—"

"Girls like Sophie often find their way to Madame Persephone's tent. It's purple. You can't miss it. Her tent is at the very end of the midway."

"Madame Persephone?"

He nods. "Fortune teller. Lost girls gravitate toward her."

I frown. "Sophie's isn't lost, per se."

"Isn't she?" His brows rise.

"I didn't lose her." Why am I defending myself? "I just don't know where she is right now."

Our gazes lock. He gives me another cheerful smile. It's as if he sees lost children as the price of doing business. "If that's all, I have a magic act to announce."

I want to scream, but my manners are bone deep, "Thank you."

Madame Persephone. She can't be more bizarre than anyone else here. I continue showing Sophie's picture to the oblivious carnival workers. There's a fantasy vibe here. Not only did I see the elf ears in line, but people of every color and size work the tents and game booths. They wear unusual facial hair and have body modifications like horns and in one case, a set of realistic antlers.

I don't give myself time to ponder what it means that the comic con types are out in force at a carnival at the edge of nowhere. I only grow anxious. I'll never find Sophie at this rate. I check the time on my phone. It's nearly midnight. What time does the carnival close? I try Sophie's number again. No answer.

Sophie's phone probably needs charging, that's all. Sophie could already be home in bed, safe and sound. What if she's not? No, no, no. Anxiety and exhaustion have made me paranoid. Sophie is fine. She's fine. Will I go through this every time she walks out the door with friends? Parenting 101. Welcome to the super-accelerated course.

I'm ready to turn around when I see Madame Persephone's plush purple tent. It's set a small distance apart from the rest of the tents in the row. As I get closer, I smell incense and tobacco and fragrant herbs wafting my way. The air around it is as spicy as the souks in Marrakesh, the Boqueria in Barcelona, or the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

I hear a scream, and I freeze.

The gauzy tent flaps fly open, and Sophie barrels out, followed by a beautiful woman in purple robes.

"Wait—!" she calls as I follow my daughter. "Wait, Sophie! I have more to tell you!"

I barely hear the woman's words because I've finally got Sophie in my sights. I will catch up. I don't know when she realizes I'm chasing her, but when she sees me, she shrieks and starts running faster.

"Sophie!" I call out to her. "You're not in trouble."

Did she even hear me? I'm a runner by choice. She can't outrun me. But I need to know why she's running in the first place. What did that woman say to her?

"Sophie!" She doesn't stop. In fact, she seems to know exactly where she's going. I'm only a few feet behind her when she dives into the Fun House. Shit. I skid to a stop. Precious seconds go by. I see the entrance to the Fun House, but not the exit.

Fun Houses are awful. I can't go in there. I don't want to be shaken and rolled and thrown this way and that. I don't want my perceptions challenged. I hate that. I look again for the exit. There's nothing to indicate there is an exit, and this dovetails with my experience. This is exactly the kind of weird, ominous place where there wouldn't be one.

The debate I have with myself is brief, but it feels like forever. In truth, Sophie is only a few steps ahead of me when I decide I need to get over my phobia. I'm a grown man. I'm a scientist. I'm far nimbler on my feet than I was as a child barely tall enough to be allowed inside. I've been in war zones. I've managed an outbreak of Yersina Pestis.

Surely I can follow my daughter into a carnival attraction. I can do this.

I can do this.

There are moving plates on the steps up to the door. From inside, I hear clown noises—honk and whizz and ding-ding-ding —and screaming. It isn't happy screaming. I know that. It may sound like the noises of people having fun, but it isn't. It couldn't be. It's the uncertain bursts of nervous laughter people make when they fear saying what they actually feel.

I'm covered in flop sweat, but I get on the first step, knees bent slightly to handle the violent back and forth motion. The doors open and I enter. It's just as I thought. It's noisy and the lights strobe. The atmosphere contributes to my disorientation. Plates on the floor shake and spin, and I dance over them into a hall of mirrors. I think there's a trick to finding my way through this, but I don't know what it is. My image is everywhere, me but not me. I'm tall, I'm short, I'm skinny, I'm fat. In one, I look like a stone gargoyle. I can't imagine how that's done.

I can't hear anyone else's voice anymore. It's too loud. To go farther, I have to get through barrel that rolls like a concrete mixer. It's like my first surfing lesson, and I'm tumbled and rolled and scraped up until I crawl out. Next comes a set of moving stairs, It's like an elevator except that occasionally, whimsically the stairs disappear. I make it up that on the fourth try.

The air here seems cleaner somehow. Maybe there are windows? I need to walk through the mouth of a giant devil next, and the room it spills into is…my worst nightmare. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls are covered with moving pinwheels. I can't tell which way is up. There's a woman strapped on one of the pinwheels, and she's spinning, spinning, spinning. Someone throws a knife at her—a common enough act—except I feel the air as the knife brushes past my right ear, then my shoulder, then my left cheek. They fly by one after another, each embedding itself in its place the wheel. I know it's an illusion, but I'm terrified to move, because my lizard brain tells me if I do, I'm going to be struck by one of those knives. But the spinning pinwheels are making me dizzy. I hastily wipe away the beads of sweat on my forehead. I don't know how long I can last before I run, or I fall, or I'm impaled by a knife.

I clench my jaw to keep from screaming. I don't need to be afraid. If this were real, this attraction would have been condemned long before now. I make a break for the wall and feel my way to a spring-loaded door. I dive through it gratefully. It leads into kind of metal loading dock that takes me up, and up, and up. Another illusion. This isn't the Tardis. The Fun House isn't tall enough to have more than two stories. When it stops, I find myself in utter darkness. There's not a speck of light. Not a hint of sound. The room feels like a vast, empty corner of space. I'm certain I'm supposed to feel my way into the darkness except maybe a hole will open beneath me. Maybe I will smash into a wall. That's why it's called a fun house, after all. Fuck.

No, wait. There is a tiny red light, no bigger than the spark from a lighter. When I get closer, I discover it's on a sign that reads Emergency Exit. THIS WAY OUT.

My heart brightens with hope. Out is where I want to go. Out sounds wonderful, thank you. I should never have come inside in the first place. Give me the earth below and the sky above. Give me gravity, and floors that don't move, and hallways that don't roll me around like rogue waves, and for god's sake, don't try to tell me something so sadistic is fun.

I no sooner hit the button than a door opens and I'm flung—there's no other word for it—into the air. I gasp and spend a microsecond trying to claw my way back to safety. Aw, shit. The ground is twenty feet below, and it's sloped. I can't see where the bottom is. Ow, Christ, the ground is covered in trees. And there are rocks. Of course I hit just about every hard or sharp object in my way down. Mercifully I come to a stop at the bottom.

Fucking fun houses. Even the exits are awful.

I don't see Sophie.

I don't see the Fun House.

I don't see the carnival, anywhere.

I should have known. I really should have known. Nothing good ever happens in a Fun House.