A Festival of Murder Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015

  A Kindle Scout selection

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  DEDICATION

  To everyone who ever said, “That’s awesome!” when I told them that I write.

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A Festival of Murder

  1

  “Do you think the aliens will make a special appearance this Christmas, Mr. Trilby?”

  Nicholas twitched a smile at the young waitress, Candy, who stood over his table smacking her gum. “If by ‘special’ you mean ‘evil’ then yes, the likelihood is high that they’ll ruin my holiday and possibly also destroy the Earth.”

  “Would be cool if Santa got hit by a UFO, huh?”

  Nicholas eyed her closely, trying to determine if she was pulling his leg. It was like trying to read the mind of a kewpie doll. “You have a demented opinion of what’s cool.”

  Candy grinned and tapped her order pad against her hip expectantly. But if she was waiting for Nicholas to cough up more information about aliens she was in for disappointment. Nicholas might be an alien abductee, but that didn’t automatically make him a talkative one. He’d learned his lesson. Oh, how he’d learned.

  “So,” he said. “You’re at my table because . . . ?”

  “Too bad Phoebe’s not in today. I’ll tell her you came by if you want me to.”

  Hoping the other tables were far enough away that no one could hear this conversation, Nicholas said hastily, “That’s not necessary.”

  Candy giggled and fiddled with a button on her apron that read “Alien-ated Youth.” “You sure you don’t want me to say anything for you, Mr. Trilby?”

  “I have never been more sure of anything in my life. By the way, did you remember to add extra mushrooms to my omelet?”

  “Oops! Gotta go.”

  The omelet would be a disaster, he knew, just like anything that wasn’t served by Phoebe. She seemed to be the only competent person working here, not that he would ever say as much. Feedback like that from him would likely cause drama of truly epic proportions, and this coming from someone who knew drama.

  Shaking his head, Nicholas turned to gaze out the beveled frosted-glass window toward Main Street. He tried to, anyway. The glass insisted on showing him his reflection first, perhaps trying to instill some introspection. Staring back at him was a man in his mid-forties with the wise brown eyes of an old soul.

  What rubbish. He had the eyes of a man forever looking over his shoulder. Or rather, above his head, because that was where the real danger lies. Maybe he looked a bit crazed around the eyes (it might not be a bad idea to begin wearing sunglasses all the time), and those streaks of gray in his dark hair which had appeared, literally, overnight, still weren’t doing anything to make him look distinguished in either a scholarly or dashing way.

  Thankfully, attractiveness wasn’t a factor in how he viewed himself. He didn’t care what he looked like, only that he didn’t look insane.

  He wasn’t sure, however, that he was completely succeeding.

  With a scowl, he focused beyond the windowpane. The Gingerbear B&B, in whose dining room he sat, perched at the very top of Main Street. It anchored the entire town of Hightop, although “town” was a generous term for a neighborhood consisting of a smattering of cabins tossed at the forest of the Colorado Rockies. Supposedly, there were twenty-two year-round residents, though only a dozen made regular appearances on Main Street to assure everyone that they were still alive; odds weren’t so good on the rest.

  When he had first moved here, drawn to the seclusion and the picturesque lake, he had been all alone. Not including Nicholas’s own shop, there were now six businesses, mostly those catering to a very specific tourist demographic.

  Looking out, he shivered a bit despite the well-stoked fireplace. A growing storm had smothered the pines in snow and was doing its best to erase the other side of the Rockies. Flakes raced past the window like hoodlums on their way to wreak havoc. The wind howled louder than the coyotes ever had.

  The timing of the storm couldn’t have been worse for Hightop’s Annual Alien Fest: the town’s biggest and only annual event, designed for the sole purpose of bringing in fresh tourists and their money. It was a mash-up of paranoia and excitement, desperation and hope. Every year Nicholas was its guest of honor. Every year he considered moving to the desert.

  Dispirited by the chilly view, he ducked his head and stared down unhappily at his paper placemat. It was printed with a cartoonified version of his—and Hightop’s—history, drawn by what must have been a sadistic artist. In it, Nicholas’s attempt to build a quiet life away from the outside world had been warped into a quest to commune with the aliens that had abducted him. Nicholas picked up the saltshaker and placed it firmly on top of the caricature of himself which was suspended in a tractor beam leading to a UFO from which two smiling aliens waved like retirees in a Winnebago. He nodded with satisfaction at the new version. It was more amusing without his participation.

  “Well, if it isn’t the town hero.”

  Nicholas mentally groaned, and then began an immediate and desperate attempt to disassociate himself from his current reality. Artichoke. Beansprouts. Cucumber . . .

  “Oh, lighten up, Mr. Trilby. I’m only doing my job.”

  Rocky Johnson snagged an empty chair from a nearby table and seated himself at Nicholas’s table. The reporter, who had arrived in Hightop the previous morning and had been an annoyance ever since, laid his crossed forearms on the table, giving Nicholas a glimpse of a sleek Movado watch cradled within thick blond arm hair. Nicholas felt like challenging the man to tell time on the minimalist device.

  “Besides, I don’t need to make up any copy,” Johnson said. “You gave me plenty of material to work with yesterday.”

  The pulse in Nicholas’s temple began to throb. Jackfruit. Kale. Lima beans. Mango . . .

  “I’m looking forward to writing it,” Johnson said.

  Rutabaga. Star fruit. Turnip . . .

  “Might even be optioned for a movie,” Johnson said. “I’m thinking Adam Sandler in the starring role.”

  “Adam—” Nicholas nearly choked on his tongue. He couldn’t stand Adam Sandler. Taking a deep breath, he attempted a civil tone. “Did you study your craft at the National Enquirer School of Creative Journalism, Rocky?”

  Johnson was all smiles. “First names, eh? As a matter of fact I graduated from Northwestern, Nicholas.”

  “Then why are you writing about alien encounters? Shouldn’t you be covering politics? Or better yet, giving a first-hand account of overseas conflict? Preferably in a war zone?”

  The reporter’s smile was an oil slick, spreading slowly across his face. “Hightop is a town which exists entirely because of you, Nicholas. This is a worthwhil
e story. It’s an exposé about deception and group hypnosis. About human frailties like greed, insecurity, and demagoguery.”

  Nicholas raised his eyebrows, trying to appear impressed, when in truth he had no idea what that last word meant.

  “Your story reminds me a lot of Urandir Oliveira’s. Striking similarities, in fact.”

  “Never heard of him.” Please let him not be a mass murderer.

  “He leads a UFO sect in Brazil. A Jim-Jones type of camp. He claimed that in 2002 he’d been abducted from his bed, the same as you. He even had the burned sheets to prove it. Darndest thing. Looked just like the burned outline of his body. Only problem was whenever he showed the sheets to reporters and investigators the scorch marks were in different places. He couldn’t keep his sheets—or his story—straight. That’s why he reminds me of you. Kind of convenient that you threw away your bedding, isn’t it?”

  “If an alien had slimed your bed sheets, I think you would throw them away, too.”

  Johnson shook his head. “How do you sleep at night knowing you allowed these people to build a life around a fabrication?”

  Nicholas said, “No one is holding a ray gun to their heads.”

  But sometimes he wondered. Hightop wasn’t an easy place to live. Cell phone and Internet reception, if you were into those things, were dodgy at best. There was no “running out to grab a quick bite”—you either ate at the Gingerbear or you went into Estes Park, a thirty-minute one-way drive during good weather, or up to an hour if it had snowed. The power went out regularly during storms, and coyote tracks had been found around every home. Someday, Nicholas continually warned himself, the entire town would be buried beneath an avalanche.

  No reasonable person should want to live there. But dozens of people did, and more were coming this weekend. Because of him.

  “I’ve been doing some research, Nicholas. Trying to figure things out. I’m giving you the opportunity now to come clean.”

  “If you’re capable of writing an article about me without my participation, why should I waste my breath?”

  Johnson’s sharklike eyes glittered. “Tell me if I’ve got this right: you realized your life was one failure after another, and you were tired of being a nobody. So you made up the story about the abduction and told every newspaper in Colorado. Presto. Instant celebrity.”

  Nicholas stared at him, his blood pressure rising. Someone must have stoked the fire in the hearth again. He could feel sweat sliding down his rib cage.

  “You’re leading these people on,” Johnson continued. “Why? Am I wrong about the celebrity part? Is your buddy Ben in on it again? I bet that’s it. What’s the angle this time?”

  Despite the warmth of the café, Nicholas’s blood went cold.

  Johnson sat up straighter, seeing he’d touched a nerve. “That’s right, Nicholas, I know about the game you and your buddy pulled on those poor folks in Tampa.”

  “You know nothing,” Nicholas said, but he couldn’t quite keep his voice steady.

  Everyone had secrets. Of course they did. Unfortunately, his happened to be the kind that would make people instantly mistrust him, not that he thought he came off as particularly reliable to begin with. He was grudgingly willing to broach the subject of aliens when a sale at his gift shop was at stake; outside of that, though, he’d just as soon pretend it had never happened. Was he a hypocrite? Certainly. Was he mercenary? Only when it came to making a living.

  “Does anyone here know who you are?” Johnson asked. “Nah. I bet no one does. That’s why they all worship you. How do you think they’ll react to the news that their Golden Boy is a liar, a thief, and probably a murderer?”

  The punch was instinctive, and, surprisingly, well aimed. The skin covering Nicholas’s knuckles split against Johnson’s teeth as the reporter’s head rocked to the side. Nicholas grunted and cradled his injured hand against his chest, shocked that punching someone actually hurt.

  Bowled sideways in his chair, Johnson shook his head once before tonguing his bleeding lip. The dining room was utterly silent. No one was more shocked by what he’d done than Nicholas. I am about to be sued into oblivion.

  Johnson stood slowly. His grin was bloody. “Nice talking to you, Nicholas. I’ll send you a copy of the article when it’s printed. It should be suitable for framing.”

  The absence of sound in the dining room after the reporter left reminded Nicholas of a vacuum, the vacuum of space to be precise, which was the last thing someone like him wanted to think about. He surged to his feet, nearly knocking his chair over, and hurried with as much dignity as he could across the room.

  Candy stood in the doorway of the kitchen, wide-eyed. In a voice that shook, Nicholas said to her, “Wrap mine up, please, Candy.”

  Her head bobbed quickly. “Sure, Mr. Trilby. Anything for you.”

  He stood by the inn’s door, as far away from the other diners as possible, while he waited for his food. He studied his cut hand and how it trembled. He hardly felt manly for having done what he’d done. More like a thug. Listening to the excited murmurs buzzing in the dining room made him feel sick. He had never hit anyone before. Had Johnson’s prodding unearthed previously buried violent tendencies? Or were Nicholas’s actions the result of some inner change perpetrated by the aliens, strands of his DNA recombined to create a more aggressive version of him? Killer Trilby 2.0?

  “Here you go.” Candy came out with two bags. “I packed up some vegetable scraps for Winchester.”

  Distracted, he snatched the extra bag and turned away.

  “Say hi to him for me,” she said as he shoved open the door. “And nice punch, by the way. I didn’t think an old guy like you had it in you.”

  ~~~~~

  Bags in hand, Nicholas slogged his way down the street, chin tucked deep into his scarf in the hopes he wouldn’t be recognized. He passed banners attached to stakes in the snow. They billowed like the sails of a clipper ship, drawing attention to their colorful depictions of UFOs and aliens who cheerily welcomed visitors to the Alien Fest (“Your Best Chance to be Abducted!”). A dozen or more four-wheel drive vehicles were buried beneath snowdrifts, and helpfully blocked some of the wind as he made his way past two small wooden buildings to the last one. He groaned under his breath when he arrived at his gift shop, Alien Artifacts, and found Charles Mayweather shifting from foot to foot on the doorstep. Charles was the marshmallow-girthed, pink-cheeked owner of the Gingerbear.

  Nicholas braced himself.

  “The roads have been closed,” Charles blurted once Nicholas joined him at the shop’s door. The whites of Charles’s eyes were bright against the gloomy day. “No one has been able to get through since nine last night. This is a disaster, Nicholas! They’re going to call a state of emergency soon— I just know it.”

  Nicholas felt himself sliding into Charles’s paranoia, though for a different reason. “Did you say no one can get out?”

  “We’re bottled in!”

  Resisting the urge to slant his eyes upward toward the thickening clouds and check for lights, Nicholas asked, “What about Estes Park?”

  “They’re not quite so bad off, no. Most of Highway 7 is being plowed. But it’s us we need to worry about. The snowplows won’t touch our turn-off. And you can just forget about Ascension Road. Just forget it!”

  Nicholas took a breath deep enough for both of them. “But the plow never clears those roads, Charles.”

  “But—but usually an SUV can still make it through. Now it’s like trying to drive up the side of Mt. Everest. We’re doomed! The only way in or out is by snowmobile.”

  It was dire news, though Nicholas found himself secretly relieved that an avenue of escape did still exist. He squeezed past Charles, commenting as he did so, “Things could always be worse, Charles. The government could declare this a no-fly zone, and then where would we be? Without aliens, that’s where. Let’s pretend the storm will blow over eventually, like all storms do, and we’ll all still be zapped and prodded and inte
rnally reorganized by curious aliens.” He unlocked his shop and pushed the door in, the bell ringing tinnily above the door. Darkness reached for him. He reared back far enough to give Charles a semipleading smile. “Er, care to come inside?”

  “There has to be something we can do about this.”

  “Worrying won’t solve anything,” Nicholas said, even though worrying was one of his favorite activities, and he had plenty of fodder stored up in his head to keep the embers burning. “If it turns out no one else is able to make it through we’ll just have to impress the visitors who are already here, make sure they spread the word that Hightop is the place to be when you want to be molested by xenomorphs.” His grin was only half-grimace.

  Charles gave him the uncertain, hopeful look of a man who wanted to be lied to. “You think that will be enough, Nicholas?”

  “We’ve weathered worse than a storm. Well, I have, anyway. I’ve got an alpaca in my backyard, for crying out loud, and it’s not even mine.” His laugh was a bit unhinged, as it often became when he spoke about the creature, Winchester, that had taken up residence behind his cabin. “What if I’m feeding it the wrong food? What if it’s meant to be kept indoors? What if it’s not an alpaca at all?!” Nicholas had to stop, his breath puffing quickly in front of him. He willed down his racing pulse. “The End is not yet here, even though at times it may feel that way.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Charles. He wrung his hands. “Otherwise, this might be our worst festival ever.”

  And possibly our last, Nicholas thought to himself while his insides churned with dread.

  “Everything is setting me off lately,” Charles said, his eyes soft with apology. “Mr. Johnson worked me up, I’m afraid.”

  Nicholas’s left eye twitched. “Johnson.”

  “You’d think, being from Roswell, that he would be eager to promote another first contact. But after hearing about the interviews he conducted yesterday, I almost think he’s out to sabotage us.”

  “He’s a reporter, but not a very good one,” Nicholas muttered. He rubbed his forehead where a headache was building. He hadn’t thought any misery on Earth could rival his abduction by aliens, but speaking with the Roswell reporter had come close. “He’s made it clear what angle he’s taking with his story. It won’t be pretty.”