“Jesus, I’m awfully sorry,” said the newcomer, who was still having trouble standing up. “I really don’t — oh, jeez! God, I’m really sorry.”

The man in gray had fallen. A noise like a blast of whiteness came from behind me, and I realized it was a truck horn. Then the truck was between me and the man in gray, and the other one, who’d been having trouble standing, was half dragging me across the street.

I was beginning to feel like a snatched purse. The Snake was tapering off a bit, and I could almost conceive of events outside my mind that might be urgent, so I pulled against his grip.

“Stop that,” said my new companion, in such an ordinary voice that I did. He hurried me up four steps and pushed me down into a hard seat. Just before a pair of doors flew open before me onto darkness, I realized I was m a car for the haunted house ride, I tried to bolt over the side, but the stranger pulled me back. Don’t worry, said his voice, unaccountably pleased, near my ear. “There’s nothing here that’s not dead.”

2.1: You have to invite them in

A skeleton dropped, phosphorescent with grave mold, in front of us, and was snatched away just before its toes brushed my face. The man next to me said, as if he hadn’t noticed, “You don’t want to go back out there yet, anyway. Those two’ll be right behind us.”

The corridor ahead was misty white with webbing; a hundred little movements, of things the size of my fist, scuttled in the haze. I ducked just as the car plunged sharply about four feet. It put my stomach directly under my tonsils, but we passed untouched under the things. I was reasonably sure they weren’t real, anyway.

The car flung around a corner, where a woman in white rotated at the end of a rope. Her face was swollen, purple, and authentic. My self-control was feeling gnawed at. “What is this?” I said.

“It’s a rescue. We kinda slow tonight? Here comes our stop.”

The tunnel in front of us was an illusion, painted on another door that swung open and pitched us into a hall of mirrors. The stranger yanked me out of the car as it took a ninety-degree turn, and I fell full-length on the floor. I could hear the next car hurtling through the doors, so I scrambled. A mirror yielded before us; I caught a glimpse of us before it folded back, our faces strange and wild in the dim light. Then we passed through stuffy blackness and out into the sharp-edged gloom of the Night Fair.

We ran for perhaps six blocks. I had no choice; his hold on my wrist was adamant, though not painful. We stopped when I stumbled for the third time, my breath sore in my windpipe. We’d reached the chainlink border of the Fair. He let the wire stop him and rolled until his back was against it, propped up on the fence. He was panting, too, and clutching his left side. His eyes were closed, his face set in concentration. I dropped onto the curb and took inventory of him. Not every stranger rescues me from the pink-haired, bug-eyed monsters. Or whatever he’d just done.