Together they walked slowly into the long dead circus, taking in their surroundings. They moved with caution and a morbid sense of fascination. There were tents everywhere still standing proudly, long dead games, and concession stands, prizes scattered on the ground. Stuffed animals were ripped apart, probably by wild animals. There were more signs, as decrepit and eerie as the first.
“Check it out,” Fred said, pointing with finger and camera simultaneously.
James moved in that direction. The cotton candy maker was up and running, spinning with tufts of pink cotton breaking off into the air. James reached forward and turned it off. “Maybe it’s them,” he said.
“And maybe it’s him.”
James looked out at the tents, and he remembered his dream. He swallowed nervously and scanned the tent walls for any signs of the shadow puppets. He didn’t see any, and he sighed with relief. Then something caught his eye that made him gasp. He ran over to it. Fred followed him with the camera.
There was a dummy outside a tent. Its arm was extended, gesturing patrons to enter the tent. It was wearing a familiar jacket.
“Sally’s new beau wore this all the time. I don’t think he ever took the damn thing off,” James said.
“Apparently, he did.”
Fred moved forward past the welcoming dummy. With the hand not holding the camera, he pushed the flap open and moved into the tent. James followed behind him.
“Don’t go so fast. We don’t know what’s in there,” he said.
“Good point. Why don’t you go in front?”
James huffed. In a few steps they were able to stand side by side. “I think this was the freakshow.”
“If so, the freaks are gone.”
“But the halls are full of tanks, windowed display cases.” James walked up to one and ran his fingers over the glass. There was a brass plate fixed on it. “Snake man.”
“You think he killed them all too?” Fred asked as he filmed the empty cases.
“If they survived the massacre, they certainly wouldn’t stick around.” James kept walking past the cases that once held human beings with deformities to be ogled by onlookers.
He got to the end and he began to tremble. His knees went weak, and he collapsed. Fred put a supportive hand on his shoulder, but he still filmed the case before him. Sally’s petrified corpse was dressed and positioned like a doll. Her gray mottled flesh was covered with rouge and pink eyeshadow.
“We gotta go,” James mumbled quietly. “We have enough. We gotta go.”
Fred didn’t say anything. He just helped his friend up and walked him outside where he collapsed again and vomited into the dirt.
“I’m sorry,” Fred said, rubbing his back. “I mean, I thought they were dead, but I always hoped it would end differently.”
James looked up at him then, his eyes wet and red. “Fred, this means he’s real.”
Fred sighed and squatted beside him. “No, it doesn’t, buddy. It means that people really die out here, and that someone is killing them, but nothing we have seen so far says that the Puppet Man exists.”
“What about me?” a chipper, cartoony voice said from behind him.
When he turned to look, there was a court jester puppet sticking out of a tent flap. It was wooden and had seen better days, just like the sign. When Fred and James cast their eyes upon the thing its wooden trap door style jaw moved with laughter. Inside the crudely painted mouth were rows of metal teeth, all filed to points and stained with rust or blood or both. As the laughter receded, the puppet pulled back inside, letting the flap fall shut again.
James scrambled to his feet. Fred pointed his camera at the tent, waiting for the thing to reemerge. James tugged his arm once and then again.
“We need to go, now,” he said quietly.
“Not so fast,” said a woman’s firm voice. Another puppet popped out of the tent. It wore a chipped, gold-painted wooden crown. “You’re trespassing in my kingdom.”
The second puppet had the same metal teeth as the first, equally stained.
“Run,” James said.
He took his own advice and Fred hesitated, but then took off behind him.
Behind them, the tent flap flew open and enormous spindly legs shot out, like the world’s biggest spider was hiding within. The legs bent at an awkward angle and a torso popped out, followed by equally long, thin arms that pushed off the ground. The puppets were at the ends of the arms, still laughing.
The tall man’s head came out last, long hay-like black hair spraying out from under a top hat. Once free of the tent, he rose to his full height and the shadow he cast fell over the young men running from him. It seemed to freeze them, as if the darkness actually held weight.
James and Fred both turned to look at the twig-thin giant that towered over them. Even as they shook with fear, Fred raised the camera and recorded the thing of legend.
“You should not have come here,” the tall man said, his voice booming with deep resonating bass.
“Definitely agree with you there,” James said. “That’s why we’re leaving.”
The tall man’s left arm extended out towards them. The queen on the end of it shouted. “You will do no such thing. You invaded our kingdom, and now you will forfeit your lives.”
The arm lowered and the right arm came up. The jester had swung and jingled as it moved, the rusted silver bells on the ends bouncing around.
“You better listen to the queen. This is her being nice,” the puppet said in its goofy voice, punctuating it with equally silly laughter.
Fred lowered the camera. He lifted his other hand and gave the tall man and his puppets the finger. Then he turned and ran. James ran beside him. Behind them the tall man covered twice the ground with his enormous steps.
“We can’t outrun him,” James said.
“We have no choice.”
The boys ran as hard as they could as the giant man’s spidery legs propelled him after them. Something seized Fred’s shoulder and turned him around. When he looked, he saw the queen puppet with its teeth embedded in his shoulder. He screamed and punched at it. Then the jester puppet was there. It held a tiny silver sword in its miniature wooden hand. The arm moved and that little sword drove right into Fred’s left eye. His screams increased.
James froze. He saw his friend go down, the puppets at the wrists of the tall man chewing ravenously at his face and neck. As James looked on, the tall man opened his own mouth and showed his own teeth, all filed to points just the same as his bizarre puppets.
He moaned and darted forward, his extremely long legs bent and jutting out to the sides. His teeth drove into Fred’s midsection and the sounds were horrible. James knew he needed to move, but he couldn’t. Then his eyes found the camera at Fred’s side.
“Dammit.”
James lunged forward and grabbed the camera. Then he spun on his heel and ran. He pushed off the trees at his sides after passing below the sickly happy sign.
“Get back here, trespasser!” screamed the queen.
“Yeah. What she said,” laughed the jester.
“Come back,” boomed the tall man.
James didn’t know if he was throwing his voice, doing all three, or if the puppets actually were sentient somehow. He needed a weapon, some way of defending himself, but there was nothing but trees, everywhere, just trees. He panicked and looked all around, his eyes darting back and forth as the tall man and his puppets continued to chastise him in their pursuit.
James hoped that the tall man wouldn’t be able to navigate the forest as easily as he did the open space. He was too big, too awkward. It was the only chance he had of surviving. He ran and kept running. His side cramped and his breath seized, but he refused to slow down. He saw what happened to Fred, to Sally. He knew what would happen to him.
He surged with hope when he saw the fence up ahead. He was going to make it, to get out alive, and when he did, he would make sure that there was purpose to this, that the whole world knew the truth
.
James skid to a halt and tossed the camera over the fence. He took his jacket off and threw it over the barbed wire.
“Halt. You go no further,” cried the queen.
James turned his head and saw the giant man emerge from the trees, gangly limbs jutting outwards. He turned back and leaped at the fence. As he grabbed his coat, something grabbed him. He yelped and looked over at the jester puppet, its metal teeth piercing the soft flesh of his triceps.
The pain was intense, but not as intense as his need to survive. He went over the fence, anyway, and let the muscle tear in the thing’s clamped wooden mouth below its rosy cheeks and piercing blue painted on eyes.
He screamed as he went over. The jacket shifted, and he got caught on the barbed wire. It snagged his shirt and the flesh underneath. He was whimpering, his ripped arm bleeding profusely. The queen came for him as he struggled to get free of the fence.
James grabbed the puppet with his good hand and tugged it towards the barbed wire. He tried to use the wire to saw the cursed thing off of the tall man’s arm. The queen’s voice shrieked as if it were in actual pain.
“You let her go!” the jester yelled, brandishing his little sword.
James wriggled back and forth. The skin of his back tore on the barbed wire but did not come free. Somehow it seemed to wedge its way in deeper.
The tall man was bigger than the fence and he leaned forward over it, his sharpened teeth grabbing hold of James’ pants. He yanked backwards, arching his long back and ripped James and the attached barbed wire back over to his side. James screamed as the queen tore free from his grip. She drew her own sword from somewhere in her gown and stabbed through his cheek.
He was dropped onto the ground where the queen grabbed one arm and the jester the other. Then the tall man’s great legs took them all back to the circus in a few simple strides. James tried to struggle, but he couldn’t stop it. His fingers dug into the grass and dirt as he was dragged away.
He screamed with everything he had, begged for help, just like so many before him, and knew it wouldn’t be heard. He wept as he was taken farther and farther away from the camera and the evidence it held. He was so close.
Then James stopped being pulled. He was flipped over. When he looked up, all three sets of razor-sharp teeth were darting in towards him. James released his final scream. Then the furious sounds of chewing meat were all that could be heard through the woods of old JoJo McCurdy’s land. Ravenous chewing and the exaggerated laughter of a court jester.
8
The Johnson Family Funhouse by Miranda Dahlin
“Tickets here! Step right up and get your tickets! Are you ready to see dark like you’ve never seen it before? Are you ready to be frightened beyond belief!? Are you ready to see things that make you wish you were no longer living!?” The announcer’s eyes scanned the crowd and landed on a translucent couple holding hands as they wavered and shimmered in the moonlight. He cleared his throat.
“Um, well for those of you that are, of course,” he added.
His eyes widened as he awkwardly spun around in the ticket booth and began rummaging behind him, mumbling under his breath. When he turned around, he had a fistful of tickets that he began to shake over his head.
“Come and get ‘em! The funhouse of your dreams, filled with the freaks of your nightmares!”
The group bustled about excitedly and began to chat amongst themselves as they pressed closer to the ticket booth. Ochre, the little lightbulb boy, began to emit a bright incandescent glow in excitement. Bobby Bones, the motorcycle rider with the partially external skeleton, revved his engine as he idled on the street, waiting for the crowd to die down a bit before he joined the line. Lady Macaw, the bird woman, let out a piercing screech of happiness. Turin and Celeste, the ghost couple, wavered in and out of vision as they watched their friends line up in front of them.
Leona, the young lion rider who often led the motley bunch with her bravery, was first in line, followed by Ochre. Orphaned at a young age after a fierce inferno tore through their neighborhood, lighting their tents on fire and killing both of their parents, Leona and Ochre had grown up together, two little lifeboats hitched together in rough seas.
Leona had tried her best to protect the little lightbulb boy and was always worried about how vulnerable he appeared to others—inadvertently glowing and fading with each passing emotion. He was now approaching his preteen years, and she had noticed that his usual luminescence had started to dim. She was determined to help him enjoy any last shreds of childish fun they could dredge up.
Ochre had always found such pleasure in the scary and macabre, had always loved things that spooked him and made his glassy skin sweat, and so when Leona saw the sign for the funhouse coming through their town, she knew immediately that she had to take him. Carnivals and funhouses never passed through their area, but they had dreamed of them often, yearning for a taste of the freakish and frightening things they conjured up in their minds.
Leona and Ochre bought their tickets and lingered around the booth while the others finished. Finally, a short, stocky man emerged from the gate next to the ticket booth. The man wore a grubby t-shirt, old blue jeans, and a baseball cap with a tear in it.
“What a strange outfit,” Celeste whispered quietly to Turin.
Turin nodded, glimmering in and out of vision. “Very unsettling,” he responded.
The short, stocky man introduced himself as Joe, passed out programs, and motioned to the crowd to follow him to the entrance of the funhouse. He opened the gate and shuffled half-heartedly across the gravel lot, his shoulders slumped in indifference. Bobby Bones looked sideways at Ochre and elbowed the little boy.
“If this is any preview of what’s coming next, it’s gonna be pretty spooky. You think you’ll be okay?”
Ochre smiled and shone brighter.
“Okay, but listen, if you get too scared, you just come and knock on me and I’ll take ya out, understand?”
The little lightbulb boy blinked his light.
The group followed Joe in between two fences plastered with posters for the event, and when they turned a corner, they gasped in amazement.
A stucco-covered bungalow loomed in front of them, the likes of which they had only ever heard about in the rumors swirling around these traveling freak shows. Seeing the building in real life sent shivers through all of them. There was something simultaneously foreboding and magical about it already, and they hadn’t even stepped foot inside yet. They slowly walked up to the front door, paying careful attention to the details around them, soaking it all in.
“Wow, this grass is so straight that it actually has lines right across it. You see that, Lady M? It’s like someone must have spent so much time fixing it like that. Not natural at all, no sir. That’s a twisted soul, right there. I’m spooked, and it hasn’t even started.”
Lady Macaw screeched in response and ruffled her head of cascading feathers, clearly pleased that Bobby was talking to her. She looked at him from the side of her eye and let out a low whistle.
Leona was the first to make it to the front door and she stood there impatiently, waiting for Joe to open it and let them in. Joe’s hands, however, were busy rustling around in a small box attached to the front of the house. The group could hear his knuckles hit the thin metal walls as he mumbled to himself.
Ochre looked uneasy, and Leona bent down to him. “I know, the mumbling is kind of off-putting, but it’s okay. If you get too scared, just remember, they’re just circus freaks and it’s all kind of pretend.”
Ochre blinked his light. As old as he liked to think he was getting, he was still grateful to have Leona there with him just in case things got to be too much to bear. She smelled sometimes—a pungent odor of cat urine and sweat, tinged with the metallic bite of blood—but he found the scent comforting. It was the smell of strength and ferocity and escape, if need be. He knew if anything went horribly wrong, they could return to the parking lot and ride away on her
lions, escaping the clutches of the terrifying circus freaks. His wattage increased again.
“Goddamn bills, it’s always goddamn bills,” Joe grumbled. Then he turned around to face the crowd and mustered an inauthentic smile.
“Friends and foes! Welcome to The Johnson Family Funhouse! Prepare to be shocked and horrified! Enter at your own risk! And, uh, if possible, use the backdoor on your way out, because if you turn around and come back through the front door then we have people going two ways and things get confused, and sometimes the vases get knocked over, and Barbara hates that because people track glass all over the place, and—”
“Can we go in now, or do we have to stand out here talking forever?” Leona interrupted.
“Ah, right,” Joe cleared his throat and turned back around to insert his key in the lock. “Yes, yes, of course, ENTER!”
There was a click as the deadbolt slid back, a creak as he pushed the door open. A dark entryway unfolded before the group. Leona stepped forward into the darkness and held out her hand for Ochre. Instead of grabbing her hand, Ochre pushed past her, his glow lighting the way for the others. He turned back and smiled. Leona felt her spirits lift, her steps emboldened by a deep sense of pride.
The group went through the entryway and turned into a larger room that was illuminated by a blue, flickering glow. A wooden sign proclaiming ‘Live Laugh Love’ in handwritten letters hung above a fake fireplace. Leona shivered.
Strange woolen sculptures knotted with beads were hanging near a window and had seemingly ensnared plants in their scratchy grasp. The group looked around uneasily at the frightening setting.
A man who looked an awful lot like Joe was lying on a couch, watching a screen that seemed to be repeating short scenes of rows upon rows of cars stuck together on a road, then people with fake smiles and strange clothing like Joe’s, sitting at tables and talking to each other. An incessant stream of bad news scrolled over and over again at the bottom of the screen. Every now and then, the image switched to quick, buzzing scenes of odd-looking food and bottles of pills with an endless stream of the ailments the pills could inflict on you.
Dark Carnival (A Horror Anthology) Page 13