The Carnival That Came at Midnight

For three nights the field at the edge of Hollow Creek had been empty. Lena knew, because she walked past it every evening on her way home from her shift at the gas station. By day the field was nothing but dry grass, a broken fence, and a single dead oak tree. There had never been anything there worth a second look.

But on the fourth night, she heard the music.

It came through her open bedroom window a little after eleven, thin and bright, like a song played on an old toy piano. She sat up in bed and listened. Calliope music. Carnival music. It rose and fell on the wind, and under it she could hear something else — the slow creak of machinery, the murmur of a crowd, the distant ring of a bell.