The Black Carousel

If you want a ride to another town cursed by an immemorial evil, Grant (In the Fog) is again at the ticket booth, in this atmospheric tale of a mysterious curse visited upon the inhabitants of Oxrun Station. Whenever the itinerant Pilgrim's Travelers carnival comes to town, strange events occur. People disappear; ghosts roam the streets. Or do they? The ``tales'' of townspeople who have come under the carny spell frame this narrative, related by an Oxrun writer at a dinner party in his home. He tells of a garden that is inexplicably poisoned; of Casey Bethune, who takes a final ride on the black carousel and is never heard from again; and of Drake Saxton, who hallucinates a hellish horror show about relatives his mother hates. Their bodies died in a car crash, didn't they? Grant works dark magic in the lurid, orange-red lighting of the ominous black merry-go-round. He doesn't, however, anatomize the horror or spell it out clearly. It is the cold whisper of the monstrous and the desperation of those caught in the terror of an inscrutable evil that he conveys with mesmerizing effect. (Jan.)