Galveston had been baptized twice. Once by water in the fall of 1990. Again by magic during Mardi Gras, 2004. Creatures were born of survivors’ joy and sufferers’ pain: scorpions the size of dogs, the Crying Clown, the Widow who ate her victims. And the island of Galveston would forever be divided—between the real city and a Galveston locked in a constant Carnival, an endless Mardi Gras.
Now it is twenty years later. The Mardi Gras continues. The revellers dance on, the singing never stops, a...