Carnival of Souls

by Nancy Holder

  Only, he wasn’t Caligarius any longer.

  He was a wicked-tall demon, maybe not as tall as that other guy who had appeared with the wind, but far more terrifying. He was a brilliant red, with horns on his head, and he looked exactly like the sort of bad guy to be tempting people with sins.

  Brrrr.

  He reached down and plucked Buffy up as if she were featherlight and raised her to his face, which was, like, ten feet across.

  His laugh rumbled and echoed like a genie laugh in a cartoon.

  Wind whipped at her hair. And she heard the calliope music.

  It was coming from his chest.

  “Slayer,” he said, in deep reverb. “I am humbled by your greatness. I have tried numerous times to defeat you.”

  “Well, you get an F in defeatation,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. French is the subject that stumps me.”

  As he laughed again, she ticked her eyes left, right, trying to come up with a strategy. She didn’t have enough clues. But she was willing to bet what she smelled was the Hellmouth, and Big Demon Guy was using its energy. Power user, power source.

  Except she didn’t think she could shut the Hellmouth down.

  “This town has been so good for me,” he said as if he were reading her mind. “It’s so evil here. The Hellmouth has nourished us. The souls here are so ripe.”

  “That’s because we put ourselves in paper bags and sit on the counter for a couple of days.”

  More reverb laughter. “I like you. I don’t want to kill you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Gee, I wish I could say the same. But my mom taught me never to lie.” And speaking of my mom, where is she?

  She wanted to scan her surroundings some more, but as the veteran of many fights against many demons, she knew she’d better stay focused on her adversary.

  “All these people will feed me soon enough,” he said. “And I’ll grow stronger, and I’ll move on to the next town. And the next.” His eyes narrowed. “I understand there’s another hellmouth in Cleveland.”

  “I’ll stop you,” Buffy promised him.

  “I’ve been stopped before,” he replied easily.

  “I will end you.”

  “So proud.” He smiled, revealing more fangs than one demon decently ought to have. “You’re one of the proudest human beings I’ve ever met. You like to go it alone, don’t you?”

  I have to go it alone, Buffy thought silently. I’m the Slayer.

  But even as she thought the words, she knew that they weren’t true. She had friends.

  “I’m like you,” she said. “I’m so proud it’s sinful.”

  “Your soul will be nectar on my tongue,” he said.

  And then he picked her up, dangled her above his mouth, and tossed her in.

  Yes! Vaclav exulted as he traced the mesmerized gazes of the people in the swan boats at the large, ruby heart above his head. They began to activate, as if someone had thrown a switch, falling into each other’s arms and kissing.

  I’ll climb up the balcony, he thought, and…

  …and then he saw Sandra, sitting in a boat by herself. She was staring at the heart. And she was smiling. There was life in her eyes again.

  “Sandra?” he whispered, hurrying toward her.

  She opened her mouth and extended her hand.

  “There he is!” she screamed.

  Faces tightened. The shuffling crowd staring at Van Helsing’s mirror began to grumble about pushing; about it being too hot; about how lame the Chamber of Horrors was.

  When the mirror disappeared, they began to howl with disapproval.

  And the rooms filled up with a strange, purplish glow. It cast them in silhouette.

  The jig’s certain to be up now, if it wasn’t already, Giles thought as he slipped the mirror under his arm and raced out of the tent.

  On the revolving floor of the carousel, Jenny looked from the chariot bench to the mirror ball. She had taken gymnastics in high school, but she doubted she’d be able to vault to so great a height. And if she fell…

  Then she studied the three black stallions in front of the bench. If she climbed the pole and shimmied over…

  Yes. A much better solution.

  The Ferris wheel turned slowly as Le Malfaiteur, still invisible, watched for a chance to sneak onto one of the carriages.

  But none of the passengers wanted to get off. Too tired, they said. Too relaxed.

  Too lazy, Le Malfaiteur thought.

  The people in line began to grumble.

  Then he thought he heard a scream, thin and strangled, from the topmost carriage.

  When it came back down, no one was sitting in it.

  They ’ave been taken, he thought.

  He felt his magickal field shift. As he had explained to the others, the power of the carnival was increasing.

  He considered what he was doing. Perhaps it was too complicated. The girl—Cordelia—was beautiful, and she was attracted to him. She had inadvertently freed him by reciting her Weakening Spell while Ethan Rayne was distracted. But she loved the boy who lay in the coffin, whether she knew it or not. So it was doubtful that she would willingly step into the embrace of Le Malfaiteur. And he was tired of seducing women with magicks.

  These people were not wealthy. They would offer him no financial reward if he helped them further.

  And if Professor Caligari’s minions caught him, he was certain to be sorry.

  He wasn’t sure why he should bother.

  He looked up at the top of the wheel. It was a long way up.

  A lot of effort.

  Buffy was suffocating. She lay on the floor of the room where she’d seen the calliope while the clowns pranced around her, doubled over with hooting laughter.

  Caligarius turned and smiled at her from over his shoulder as he put his hands on the calliope keyboard. He played a dirgelike funeral march she had heard before, then stopped and shook his head.

  “‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’is far more appropriate,” he said.

  He played on as Buffy clutched her neck, fighting for air.

  Then the calliope notes went sour, and faint, and she figured she was dying.

  But the clowns stopped laughing and looked at Caligarius. He frowned and squinted, staring hard at Buffy; then he cleared his throat, and resumed.

  The calliope screeched. The sound was fainter still.

  “What are you doing?” he blurted.

  And although Buffy knew that what she was doing was nothing, she smiled.

  That flustered him. He rose from the calliope and advanced on her, his image doubling and blurring. Buffy was on the verge of passing out and trying hard not to show it. Something was going wrong, and Caligarius was freaking out. From her point of view, that could only be good.

  The room flickered.

  Two of the clowns disappeared.

  Then the side of the room vanished.

  The clowns came back. The side of room reappeared, but a part of the ceiling winked out. There was blackness above it, and twinkling stars.

  “What’s going on?” he said, grabbing her arm.

  Big mistake. Maybe this was an illusion, maybe she was really in the demon’s stomach, but it seemed to hurt Caligarius when she grabbed his throat and squeezed as hard as she could.

  He gagged and tried to pull away.

  But Buffy held on.

  The evil carousel of doom flickered. Lights on, lights off, lights on again. Drums banging, drums…silent. The hunters were people…they were animated figures. The fiery steeds rose up.

  Froze.

  Descended.

  Xander traded glances with the girl beside him. They both looked at the guy on the other black horse. He swallowed hard and nodded at them. They had a plan: When Xander gave the word, they would flank him as they broke the chains of as many riders as they could. Then they would fight their jailers. Xander didn’t have much of a plan past that, but at least it was better than waiting for another round of torture.
/>   The guy licked his lips and said to Xander, “Your call, man.”

  The carousel slowed down. Principal Snyder looked over his shoulder and said, “If I’m not the first person you free, you are having detention for the rest of eternity.”

  Maybe he’s just plain nuts, Xander thought. That would explain a lot.

  “Okay, this is it,” Xander announced. To the girl, “Get ready. On my count.”

  But before he could even say “one,” the carousel went completely dark. His horse bucked, and then it stiffened.

  Cheers and screams mingled in the darkness.

  “Three!” he shouted.

  The carousel vanished, and he tumbled to the ground.

  He began to run.

  Le Malfaiteur shifted his weight and yawned.

  I’m being affected, he realized. I just don’t have the energy for this. We have the perfect word in French: ennui.

  This is not my battle. I wish them well, all of them.

  He ambled away from the Ferris wheel, preparing to leave. He had no idea where Ethan and his little girlfriend had gone. He didn’t care, as long as their paths never crossed. Revenge was too much work to even ponder.

  He looked down and saw that he could see the vague outline of his hand. His spell of invisibility was wearing off.

  He hurried his pace. It was easier to leave quickly than it would be to fight his way out of the carnival.

  “Adieu,” he said, thinking of Cordelia. He kissed his fingers and blew her a kiss.

  Xander landed in the midway, or what passed for it in hell, the food stalls and games all lit up. But there was no one playing. There were no customers. Except two: Carl Palmer was flinging coins at stacks and stacks of glassware. He was chained to the booth, and he had been severely beaten.

  And was that…Cordelia?

  Xander ducked around a concession stand to stare at her. He caught his reflection in the shiny surface of a glass platter, and he was stunned. He looked worse than Carl.

  Then everything flickered, as it had on the carousel.

  Cordelia cried out and Xander ran to her, throwing his arms around her; they passed through her but she turned around and screamed, “Xander!’

  “Cordelia!” He lunged for her again.

  Missed again.

  “It’s a prism!” She darted forward and grabbed a purple basket made of glass.

  Then she disappeared. And like the carousel, the midway went dark.

  “Cordy!” Xander shouted. “Carl!”

  “Who’s that?” Carl shouted back through the darkness. “Where are you?”

  Xander ran to his voice.

  Willow stood in front of the fun house, which was glowing with a silvery light. She did not want to go inside. But she mustered up her courage and took one step in; then another, twisting and turning in the metallic glow.

  I hope I’m not being exposed to radiation, she thought anxiously.

  She thought she felt someone behind her. She cried out and whirled around.

  Above her head, a skull wearing a pirate hat shouted, “Arr!” Laughter echoed down the corridor.

  Willow stumbled left, right; she got twisted around more times than she could count.

  She was trembling from head to toe. She was so scared that tears began streaming down her face.

  But she kept on going.

  Buffy told us the layout, pretty much. Shouldn’t I be coming to the mirror maze soon?

  As she turned another corner, she caught her breath.

  A clown statue smiled from the end of the corridor.

  She raised a hand, wondering if it could see her. Waved back and forth to see if it reacted. It didn’t move, didn’t blink.

  Didn’t try to kill her.

  Maybe I’m still invisible. If I could find the mirrors, I’d know.

  She crept forward.

  The clown remained motionless.

  She tiptoed along the left wall, trying to keep as much distance between herself and the clown.

  She dodged around it.

  And around the next corner, she reached her destination: the mirror maze.

  Willow stared in amazement. Every single mirror was smashed. Every one.

  Is this really bad, or kind of bad? she wondered. Or was Giles wrong? She didn’t know what to do now. He had said for each of them to bring the prism back if they could.

  She went past panel after panel, shattered into pieces that were strewn across the floor.

  Where they had stood, silvery rectangles glowed and vibrated; and she heard faint shouting emanating from them. It sounded like human voices, like a big, intense, angry crowd.

  Is it the souls being tortured in the hell dimension?

  She tried to make herself call Xander’s name. But her throat was dry as dust.

  Then she looked down, and saw a blur of her hand.

  The spell is losing power, she thought. I’d better get back to the others.

  Sparing one more look at the glowing rectangles, she gathered up as many fragments of the mirrors as she could and made her way back out of the fun house.

  “Anyone here?” Giles asked as he carried the mirror into the freak show and laid it beside the crystal ball, alongside Xander’s coffin, as had been agreed. Once he let go of it, it was visible again.

  Then he saw his hands, and his shoes. He was visible again.

  At that moment Willow ran into the room with large jagged pieces of mirrors in her hands. He saw her clearly.

  “Giles, oh my God!” she cried. “I went into the maze and all the mirrors were broken!”

  “Let me help you,” he said. “You’re about to cut yourself.” He rushed to her and carefully took the shards, putting them beside the crystal ball. What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you notice anyone about? Did you see Buffy?”

  She shook her head. “No. A clown, but it didn’t move. Maybe it broke the mirrors.”

  “Perhaps Buffy broke them.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The entire fun house was glowing, Giles. Everything was silver. And on the way here, I saw the carousel. It was glowing all yellow!”

  “The Chamber of Horrors was bathed in a sort of black light,” Giles said. “Perhaps when we remove the prisms, their absence causes some kind of refraction of light.” He looked down at the fragments. “I don’t know what this means. But we’ll proceed on our course and see where it leads, yes?”

  “Yes,” Willow murmured. She felt somehow responsible for the broken mirror, although she’d done nothing to cause it. She was becoming more afraid. Things weren’t going as planned.

  We’ve always pulled it off before, she reminded herself. But Buffy’s the Slayer because some other girl didn’t pull it off.

  Buffy won’t fail. But we might.

  At that moment the room they stood in seemed to…flicker. Fairyland lost its distinct edges; then it returned.

  “What’s happening?” Willow asked, moving in a circle.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps more of the same effect.” Giles examined the mirror he had brought, experimentally shining it against the walls.

  There were footsteps, light and quick.

  It was Ms. Calendar, also fully materialized, carrying the mirror ball. “Rupert, the carousel is giving off this golden light! And the Tunnel of Love is shimmering with some kind of scarlet energy.”

  “Then perhaps Vaclav managed to steal the red heart,” Giles said. “Did you see him?”

  “No,” Ms. Calendar replied, looking worried.

  “I hope nothing happened to him,” Willow murmured.

  The freak show winked out again, longer this time.

  “What’s that?” Ms. Calendar cried, her dark eyes flashing. “What’s happening?”

  “I think the carnival is beginning to break apart,” Giles told them.

  “That’s great!” Willow said. “Right?”

  “Yes, if it happens fast enough, and if it’s a complete job,” G
iles replied. “However, they’ll certainly trace the source here. We have to think about leaving.”

  “What about the destruction spell?” Willow asked. “Should we do it now?”

  Giles considered. “Perhaps we can wait a little while longer for Cordelia and Le Malfaiteur. But if they don’t show soon, it might be prudent to go ahead and try to do as much damage as we can.”

  “We’re missing two prisms,” Willow said. “All the mirrors in the fun house were broken, which was probably a good thing. I’m not sure I would have been able to break the glass.”

  “Buffy didn’t mention anything about that when she told us about the fun house.” Giles picked up a shard. “I wonder if she did this.”

  “Or someone or something else,” Ms. Calendar ventured.

  “Gulp,” Willow said.

  Ms. Calendar nodded. “Yes. Bringing the pieces of the mirror was good, Willow.” She took a breath. “I have the printout of the incantation,” she said, reaching in the pocket of her skirt and unfolding it.

  “We’ll start arranging the objects in a circle.” Giles gestured for Willow to help him.

  They were almost finished making the circle when Cordelia rushed in. The purple basket was cradled in her arms. “It was so weird! I got, like, stuck, and I thought I saw Xander, but…I’m so confused. I think I was hypnotized again and ooh, this basket is pretty.” She held it in her outstretched hands, smiling with a dazed expression on her face.

  “Put it down in our circle,” Giles told her. “It’s tempting you.”

  She groaned.

  “Cordelia.”

  She set it next to the mirror.

  “All right. I guess this is it,” Ms. Calendar said.

  “Help me!” It was Vaclav. “Help!”

  He came barreling toward them with the ruby heart against his chest. In close pursuit, horned demons and humans raced after him. The girl who had been in the coffin was one of them, a bright smile stretched across her face, although her eyes were vacant and unfocused.