“No, you can’t!” Stacy yanked on Jessie’s hand, but she wouldn’t move.
Leaving her to her fate, Stacy weaved through the carnage. Part of a ride smashed into the ground and Stacy dived inside the maze of mirrors to avoid it.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Stacy said from the mirrors, shocking Jessie back to reality. “Trev made it look that way, but I thought we were poking fun at the badly dressed ringmaster and his ridiculous thrones.”
Disoriented, Jessie scanned the maze. Stacy existed in every reflection, but not in the physical space. “You’re not real, neither was Trev. This is all some kind of hallucination, my brain trying to make sense of my memories.”
Stacy startled and looked over her shoulder at something beyond the mirror’s frame. “You shouldn’t be here, Jess.”
“Why are you here? Isn’t there an afterlife or something?”
Stacy glanced again at something unseen. “You need to leave, now!” All eyes in the mirrors shifted to look at Jessie. Many faces overlaid Stacy’s, deforming and speaking with a multi-voiced hiss. “You were never meant to leave, Jess.”
Like a punch to the diaphragm, the wind was slammed from Jessie’s lungs. Falling to her knees, she crawled to the entrance over broken glass, not daring to look at the figures in the mirrors observing her every movement. Her lungs reopened the second she made it onto the field, and she gasped in air until she felt lightheaded.
A wave of relief washed over her when she saw Noah sitting on the steps of the waltzers opposite.
His shoulders slumped, and he wiped a sleeve across his cheek. As Jessie got closer, he sniffed and straightened, looking more like the confident officer from earlier.
“I can’t forget what I saw that night, but now?” Noah sighed and lifted his flashlight, making space for Jessie. “I wish I never came back. Wish I didn’t need answers so badly.”
“Tell me what you remember,” Jessie said, taking a seat on the step next to him. “If we know what happened back then, maybe we’ll figure out how to leave.”
Noah took a deep breath. “A lot of calls came in from worried parents about teenagers missing their curfews. They’d all been coming to the carnival, so I came to check it out. Thought I’d find them here loitering and move them along.”
Jessie had met those parents. Some screamed she would burn in Hell, others begged to know what had happened to their kids. She couldn’t answer them, and over time, especially after the trial, they became more threatening and bitter.
“I saw things,” Noah continued. “People crushed inside the rides, like the metal had imploded into them, scattered bodies on the ground, some in pieces, others with no apparent marks on them.” He lifted his head and turned to Jessie. “And then there you were, standing in the middle of it all, your hair as red as fire, blowing in the wind. You had this vacant look in your eyes. As I got closer, I heard you whispering over and over, ‘Jess, my name’s Jess.’”
Augustine’s last words crept into Jessie’s thoughts. “Your name, your name.”
“You saw me here? Why didn’t you give a statement? Tell them I had nothing to do with this?”
Noah smiled weakly and handed her his flashlight. “There’s something stuck to your boot.”
“What?” Jessie peeled the newspaper page off her sole, read the headline, “First Responder On Scene Found Dead,” and wiping mud off the image below it, trembled.
“Officer Noah Lyburn radioed in at 12 p.m. notifying dispatch that he was en route to the carnival. When his colleagues arrived…” Only the odd word after that was legible.
“Noah,” Jessie whispered. Caressing his mud blemished portrait, she turned to find the spot next to her empty.
You can’t be dead. I shook your hand. You held my arm to steady me.
The more she examined those moments, the more she questioned whether she had felt his touch or just imagined what she expected to feel. His grasp on her elbow hadn’t steadied her, merely jolted her into steadying herself. She’d pulled her hand back when she shook his.
Because I distrusted him, she thought, but a little voice whispered over it, because there was nothing there.
The flashlight vanished, the weight, the cold of the casing in her grasp, gone. It reappeared before the maze of mirrors. “Noah, wait!”
Noah looked back at her before re-entering the haunted mirror maze.
“Please, Noah!” Jessie raced over the field, tripping and landing hard. The now familiar haze shifted her into a memory.
“Jess, my name’s Jess.”
“Ok, Jess, I’m Officer Lyburn… Jess? Can you hear me?” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Noah, I’m Noah.”
Jessie’s blank stare focused on him. “Noah?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m a police officer. Can you tell me what happened here?”
“Trev stood me up. I took a selfie and went home.”
“You’re not home. This is the carnival. I need you to tell me what happened to everyone.” Noah waved his hand in front of her eyes.
Jessie pointed past him to something, and Noah swung his flashlight around to face it. A tendril of black smoke snaked under the marquee, and slithered towards them, melting the debris in its path, dissolving a trench in a corpse.
“The smoke kills,” Jessie said.
“Yeah, no shit.” Noah grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the advancing smoke.
Sparks streamed from the grinding gears in the pendulum ride to their left. The arm creaked, being pushed past its operational speed.
“Run!” Noah started full pelt, but Jessie couldn’t keep up and stumbled. The pendulum arm snapped and crashed to the ground.
Noah threw Jessie down. The second after the arm landed, Noah was up, racing toward it.
“There could be people!” He threw a panel off and stared at an empty seat. “No one on it.”
“There was,” Jessie said and pointed to the mangled, scattered bodies. “I saw them fly.”
Noah bent down next to one of them. They had a fresh dusting of snow and a safety bar clutched in their rigid hands. He felt for a pulse but found only cold stiffened flesh. “How long ago did this happen?”
“No one’s screamed in a long while. I don’t think anyone’s left.”
“Damn it.” Noah clicked the button on his radio, then shook it and pressed his ear to the speaker. “My radio’s down. Let’s get you out of here and I’ll call for backup on the—move, Jess!”
Noah yanked her out of the path of the snaking smoke. It split in two, herding them through the wreckage. It kept coming, striking out at their shoes.
“In here!” Noah dragged her into the maze of mirrors. The smoke paused at the doorway and swelled into a curtain, obscuring their way back. “I guess we go through.”
The beam of light bounced off the mirrors. Jessie clung to Noah’s side, something instinctual told her to, though in this state of disassociation, she had no fear of walking through the dark spaces and around the bodies. Even the smoke, knowing it meant death, didn’t inspire the strong reaction it deserved.
Noah stepped over the body of a young blonde and bent down. “There’s not a mark on her.”
“That’s Stacy,” Jessie said, stuck somewhere between her dream state and lucidity. “I saw her run in here.”
“I can’t see any blood.” He moved his flashlight over her body. “She’s still warm, no visible trauma. I think I can bring her back.” Noah started chest compressions. “Hold the flashlight for me.” Jessie stared at the mirror, leaving the offered flashlight unclaimed. “I need your help, if you just—”
“How will you get her out of the mirror?”
“Out of the—? Holy fucking fuck!” Noah jolted back, looking from the body to the reflection in the mirror and back again. “What the fuck is going on here, Jess? That smoke isn’t a man-made acid, is it? It followed us.”
“If I think too hard on what happened, everything fades away, but it was bad, real bad.”
Stacy stared sadly out of the mirror raising her hand in a half-hearted hello and Jessie pressed her palm against it.
“Stacy shouldn’t be dead. She’s one of the good ones.”
“So there are bad ones?”
“I… I don’t know, I suppose, Trev, maybe.”
“Trev?”
“We went on four great dates, then he invited me to this carnival, told me where to wait for him, but never showed. He came here with Stacy.”
“No, I mean like a terrorist, someone who could have killed all these people.”
“So, someone who controls smoke, fairground rides, and traps souls in mirrors? No, Officer, I don’t believe I’ve ever met someone fitting that description.”
Noah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ok, so let’s focus on getting out of here. We can figure out what happened after—look out!” Noah grabbed Jessie and shielded her with his body as one mirror exploded, sending deadly shards in all directions.
His weight slumped against her, and a hoarse rasp left his lungs. Jessie waited for the inhale, but it never came. “Noah?”
“It was my body they found your DNA on,” he said in the real world. Jessie felt him guiding her, moving her forward, but she wasn’t quite ready to break free of the memory.
“Please, Noah.” Jessie rolled him off her and looked into his unblinking eyes. A large mirror shard stuck through his back, piercing his heart. Another embedded in his neck. “Speak to me, Noah.” She cradled his head in her lap, rocking back and forth on her knees.
“That’s why the police pursued you so hard. They thought you’d killed one of their own.”
Jessie found herself in the maze of mirrors once more, but this was no memory. She recognized the shapes of the shattered mirror on the floor and picked up the shard Noah had been frowning at earlier. “This one killed you. You saved me. You died for me.”
“But I still don’t know what caused this. Don’t know why I died.”
“I wish I could give you answers, give you peace, but I remember the joy and the carnage, nothing in between.”
“The ringmaster knows, but he says he’ll only talk to you. I’m sorry, Jess, for pulling you in, for guiding you here. Until I saw that newspaper on that heap, I thought I was still alive.”
Noah faded into a mirror. A light erupted above Jessie’s head like a halo, and the mirrors gently vibrated all around.
Circled by blood and glass, Jessie gazed at the body. She pushed back some of Noah’s hair—messy for a police officer—and tucked it behind his pointed ear.
Stacy’s reflection faded, and Augustine took her place in the mirror. “You need to go.” His voice snapped Jessie out of a near catatonic state. “You can’t be here when more come. You’re feeding this nightmare.”
Jessie glanced at him, then back at the dead man cradled in her lap. Noah, she was sure she would remember that name for all days to come. Here lay the man who’d saved her life. “Augustine? I saw you die.”
“That you did, but now is not the time to mourn. Now is the time to flee.” His reflection moved from mirror to mirror. Reluctantly, Jessie rolled Noah onto his side and stepped over him, following Augustine through the maze and out the other side.
The memory faded. Jessie raised her head and rubbed her temples. Noah and Stacy were gone, though a figure kept her company in place of her reflection. Augustine stepped from the mirror and stood before her, looking alive and well, but she knew no other living soul dwelled here.
“You came to me that night as a ghost, though I didn’t understand at the time.”
“I had no intentions of misleading you, Matchstick. I didn’t see how walled your mind was at first, and after I realized, it was easy to slip inside and take those memories from you.”
“But why hide it from me at all? They all blamed me for this, and I had no recollection to defend myself with.”
Augustine helped her to her feet. His touch felt as real as Noah’s had, but now she knew to look for the emptiness behind it. “The trick to nurturing magic in your world is to show just a glimmer. My performers wore wires they didn’t need, used machines to produce the smoke they molded, but the magic needed feeding; and that’s where the audience comes in. It feeds on their joy, wonder, and awe, using it to fuel the tricks, stunts and rides.”
“Are you saying you’re not human?” The mirrors, the walls, the planks beneath her feet, faded.
“We are Fae. Fairies you call us, though your tales bear little resemblance to our people or culture.”
“And this magic, it killed everyone?” Jessie watched the carnival slip back into the veil, leaving her trembling in an empty field, save for the ghost of Augustine. She re-examined everything she’d seen, everything she’d touched, and questioned her sanity.
“You filled this place with your self-hatred, doubt, rejection, and pain, and like every other person’s emotion, you fueled the magic. It resonated with you over all others in a way I’ve never seen before. If I’d had your name, I could have guided and reshaped the terrors as they manifested. After the first death, everyone else added their own fear to the mix and it grew beyond control.”
Jessie clutched her mouth and felt the dam of tears burst. “I did kill all those people?” One by one, ghosts of the deceased phased into existence, walling her in on all sides, but Jessie didn’t sense any malice from them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“None of us knew, Jess, but now we do,” Noah said, taking up the spot next to Augustine. “As far as I’m concerned, you didn’t kill any of us.” He shot Augustine a glare. “Magic didn’t belong here.”
“It’s still my fault.” Jessie wished the evidence had been enough, wished she would spend all her days behind bars. It’s not fair for me to live free, when none of you can.
“We forgive you,” Stacy whispered.
Whispers of absolution erupted from all, except one solemn, mangled face.
“Do you wish to be left behind, Trev?” Augustine asked. “To spend all eternity haunting an empty field by yourself?”
“I forgive you,” Trev mumbled with a glare.
“Then the carnival is finally ready to leave.” Augustine’s eyes shone brightly, capturing Jessie’s imagination as they had once before. “Move forward, troop!” He marched toward a streak of light and the crowd followed.
The carnival troop and audience, a mingled, bonded group, disappeared one by one into the light. Noah stayed at Jessie’s side, watching them vanish. They left no marks behind. Jessie’s boots made the only tracks winding through the field.
Though all trace of the Big Top had gone, the rubbish heap remained, and it filled Jessie with disgust and rage. “Where’s their respect? People died here.”
“No one comes up here, so there’s little risk of being caught.”
Jessie couldn’t look Noah in the eye. He died for me. He died because of me. “Aren’t you going with them?”
“I don’t know if I belong with them. Before tonight, I’ve only come to the field to look for clues. I spent every day at the station believing I was alive. And some days, I followed you. Everyone else had a year to come to terms with this.”
Jessie thought of her new life in Bristol, and its bustling streets of strangers. “I don’t belong anywhere either. Didn’t before, but now?” She sighed. “How can I go on knowing the truth?”
“So come with me.”
“I…” Jessie looked to the streak of light and swore she heard laughter and carnival music coming from within. “I’m afraid.”
“Come here,” Noah said, opening his arms for an embrace.
Jessie grabbed him and held him tight, letting her tears flow into his shoulder. The longer she held him, the more real he felt and the less corporeal she became.
“It’ll be ok, Jess. Neither of us has to be alone anymore.”
She could smell him now—his body-spray combined with his natural scent—and feel the warmth of his cheek on hers. All of her guilt and pain faded away.
>
Hand in hand, the two walked across the field and stepped through the veil into the unknown together.
The mysteries of that night still inspire much speculation. When they discovered Jessie’s body in the exact spot Noah’s had been a year before, some claimed it was proof of her guilt. Others believed she was another victim of an evil force—a satanic ritual, witchcraft, government experiment gone wrong. The truth died with her, but the horrors live on, outshining the memories of those who lost their lives.
13
Pindick by Stuart Stromin
When the Dwarf Queen first brought Pindick to the island, everyone thought he was an idiot. No-one imagined a fool like that could be a mastermind. He had a glassy stare and spoke in monosyllabic mumbles. He quickly became the object of ridicule, which was exactly what the Dwarf Queen intended.
The Dwarf Queen, it must be explained, was not the monarch of a pygmy tribe. She was five feet tall on high heels and she did have dwarfish features, as a result of a premature birth which allowed her hands and feet to grow in the womb before the full development of her arms and legs and torso.
Her spine curved outward at the top and bottom (like parentheses), making her buttocks pert and round. There was something provocative about her odd shape, and she was an insatiable flirt. She had thick raven hair and alabaster skin and, if her charisma could not captivate every man on the island, there was no doubt that Pindick hung on her every word.
From the very beginning, they were rarely apart. With a slight stoop, he always followed a few steps behind her on the promenade where the island gypsies sold their trinkets; in a crowd, she held his hand. They were both in good physical condition. They made a handsome couple, even though there was about a ten-year age difference between them, and his hairline was receding.
She liked to play hot and cold with his emotions to keep him off-balance. She seemed to read him like a fortune teller. But even the Dwarf Queen, who knew how the intricate cogs were turning in his head, could not have unraveled his scheme to take over the entire show, and eventually, the entire island.
The show was, to put it mildly, an adult-themed circus. There were exotic dancers, acrobatic contortionists who performed simulated sex numbers in the nude, and a bawdy Ringmaster, and there was a decidedly perverse edge to the program. There were acts with cracking whips, and a girl who did rope tricks, but the stunts which the Dwarf Queen performed with Pindick would shock the audience and keep them coming back for more.
Dark Carnival (A Horror Anthology) Page 20