Every story you’ve heard about gory discoveries in the World’s Circus is true, or at least the initial report is. I’ve made my living in part from the idea that when people experience a shock or see something horrific, that’s not what scares them. It’s what they don’t see that really twists the blade. If you want to truly scare someone, you need to jolt them to attention and let their twisted little imaginations do the rest. The greats understood that. Hitchcock, Lynch, Craven. People say suspense is terrifying, but they’re not correct. You must be given a framework and jolted to attention for the fear response to start manufacturing its own nightmares. That’s all we did. We had the framework, which was being trapped in the park. We had the jolt, which was the gore. Once that was in the mix, people began to get genuinely afraid of us, which meant they left us alone. Which means we won, in a very real and tangible sense.
We would have decked the entire section of the park in guts and gore anyway, but the fighting within the park lent it a sense of urgency and in some ways spurred us to do our best work. Before the real blood started to spill, most of the people who made their way to the World’s Circus were content to be the stoner poets of this specific disaster. One of my wards, a fellow named Deckland, was a small-time drug dealer who had hidden his stash in the mechanical systems of the Three Ring Swing ride, so marijuana was abundant. Deckland, the boy wonder of the brain that he was, had imported a particularly strong batch and found ways to cut it to make it last longer. To most of the Freaks, as we quickly dubbed ourselves, Deckland’s resourcefulness was enough to make up for the terrible sin of being named Deckland. The result was that, for the first few weeks, the best adjectives to describe our group were damp, high, and relatively happy. There were some good-natured complaints about not being able to get online, and I admit I felt that as well, but you’d be amazed how halfway decent weed can make a bad situation into an extremely tolerable one. I’m convinced it would have stayed that way until the weed ran out if it weren’t for Mr. Springer and his call to arms.
Elvis to his friends, but Mr. Springer to me, we never meshed. In fact, quite the opposite. I have a strong personality and an even stronger work ethic. I’m passionate about my art and my craft and expect that ethic in those I work with. The long hair and the multiple tattoos fool a lot of people, and part of that is on purpose. I am aware of how I present myself. But if you work for me, I expect dedication, and I expect sweat. If I don’t get it, I have been known to come down on people. Mr. Springer, he had the opposite philosophy. He very much wanted to be your friend, not your boss, which was a precarious situation for a man who was supposed to be your boss, not your friend. When I needed something from Mr. Springer for our show or for Fantastic Fright Nights, I could count on him spending forty-eight hours with his thumb up his ass before getting to work, and it drove me mad. And from what I can gather, I was of a sort that irritated him all the way to his greasy black hair. If we were oil and water, the oil was on fire, and the water had been frozen into razor-sharp shards of ice. Every time I had to interact with him, I prepped for battle and he did the same.
Given our history, it came as no surprise to me when several of my Freaks saw him throw a lit bottle of liquor at our circus tent, nor was it a surprise when the bottle failed to break on the tent and spilled flaming liquor all over the ground. He threw a breakable bottle at a cloth tent. That, in and of itself, describes the man we’re working with here. It bears mentioning at this point that we had already put up a bit of a display, more for our own amusement than anything. It was a classic severed-head arrangement, inspired by season one of Game of Thrones. The heads were in a line and … well, they were fake, of course. The World’s Circus is where all the accoutrements for the Fright Nights are stored. We had severed heads and literal gallon drums of fake blood and entrails and makeup and costumes and other severed bits. The circus was where we did the mazes off to the north and the presentations in the small theatrical space near the entryway for Halloween, which was a month or so away when the storm hit. All the horror paraphernalia had been catalogued and disinfected and was ready for use. So, yes, fake. Fake, fake, fake. Like I said, I have yet to murder anyone, even though I was in the middle of the Hipster Killing Fields, and I meant what I said. To my knowledge, none of the Freaks murdered anyone either.
Getting back to Mr. Springer, after his attack befitting his intelligence, I simply walked up to him and asked what he thought he was going to accomplish. I believe I phrased it, “What fucking idiot thing are you trying to accomplish, you callow turd?” I remember, because I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of “callow” and “turd.” I have my moments of poetic flair, however profane. He didn’t appreciate it, though, and began screaming and bellowing on about murders and how he had to stop us, and then I noticed there were several employees from the Fantastic Future World behind him, all trying to light their bottles of alcohol. My response was to walk over to the display, grab the head nearest to me, and overhand it straight at the moron. He caught it, and between holding a polyurethane head and me screaming about how goddamned stupid he was, it sank in, and he told his people to back down.
Since I was surrounded by young men and women who had decided to stay high for as much of their waking day as possible, all was forgiven, and he was immediately shepherded into the tent, where he told us his story. Apparently he and his lady friend had been attacked by Pirates, defended by Deadpools, everything was going to hell, and everyone needed to fight back. Then he had the temerity to recruit from my population. He said numbers were going to be important, and we all had to band together. At this point, I began doing some calculations. Most of my group were not going to go with him, content to stay out of trouble’s way, if possible, but we were going to lose a few here and there. I immediately started targeting those with experience that I needed. Shady Ned, whose name I never actually knew but was a wizard with an airbrush, Jellica West, who I trusted with some pretty big projects, and several others. I went around while Mr. Springer went on ad nauseam and made damn sure the people I needed weren’t going to leave. There were variants on the theme, but basically I told them, “Don’t leave. I have a plan.” And they didn’t.
Once Mr. Springer got all the yelling out of his system, I made a big show of going over, giving him a forearm shake, and telling him his group was welcome here, and we were not going to hurt anyone. Then I told him we were going to make this place look really scary, and, if he would, he could try to help us build a legend. I instructed him to tell everyone not to come here. That we were demonic, that we hunted children in the night, that coming past our gate meant putting your blood and your flesh at risk, that we had turned savage. He was really spooked by what he had seen from the Pirates, so he agreed. I don’t want to give him any credit at all, but I think he understood. We were going to appear fearsome; we were going to puff our plumage as big as possible and hope no one noticed we were nothing but some artists and stoners. Then, after his group left, we got to work.
The first thing I did was find Mr. Powers, who worked in maintenance. I had heard the maintenance folks had set up camp in the tunnels, and I could not blame them one iota. The tunnels run all over the park. My theory was if this gambit worked and we could convince those who had turned violent to stay away, then the maintenance folks might feel more comfortable camped out under our section of the park. I was able to track him down fairly easily, and we had a great conversation. Turns out, the flooding in the park that was keeping us from mounting any sort of evacuation was also starting to take a toll on the tunnels. They weren’t flooding, but they were damp, it was dark, and the workers were finding it more and more unpleasant. He liked our plan, had heard some of the stories, and agreed to move his camp in our direction as much as he could. Mr. Powers—he kept asking me to call him Charlie, and I never would—he was an eminently reasonable man. He also volunteered some of his staff to help with our gory little decorating project.
Once work started and I fell into my old work habi
ts, those who had worked with me before followed suit. Those who hadn’t, they got with the program. The idea was to create a real-life haunted park, but we couldn’t just sling gore everywhere. That was tackiness, not camouflage. In the design phase, we decided that drawing people in was important and that giving them both a jump scare and a shot of gore was the best way to go. We did some research on what was visible from what vantage point. Where would people approach us from if they were curious? If they were attacking? If they were hostile? It wasn’t until fairly deep into the process that I realized that in creating a subterfuge, we were also creating both a warning system and rudimentary defenses through various elements of the design. We were hunkering down, and the power of creation was glorious.
When we were done, if you approached by day, we had actors and electronic elements that would make you think twice about coming up to the tent. Mr. Powers, he had the market cornered on generators, fortunately, so we could run deterrents of all sorts from loud noises to jump scares and even a serious weapon or two. We had a machine that was initially meant to sling a dummy from a hiding place into the open. We disabled the safety apparatus on that and made it launch a couple very big, very sharp pieces of wood. We decided that was the last line of defense if intruders made it to the tent, kind of a “you’ve seen the scares, now here’s the real thing, motherfucker” sort of finale. It worked every time and would do some serious damage to three or more people, by my estimation. Turns out I was right, but that was much later on.
Turning the World’s Circus from an amusement into a human butcher shop, albeit a fake human butcher shop, that was only half the battle, as they say. We needed to build the backstory, so we schemed and came up with a plan there as well. Under the cover of night, we would go and leave little clues around the park as to what we wanted people to think we were up to. One example was a bloodstained note from one of the Robots begging for help. It said things like, “If it’s a good day, I stay whole. If it’s not, I lose a finger, a toe, or an ear. They’re running out of small things to cut off me. Please help.” It was that sort of thing. As an aside, I love how that letter runs on pure fear and how the logic of someone writing a letter with no fingers doesn’t even enter into it. To put it another way, people are dumb, in my experience.
Sure enough, about two days after we finished, we got to test it out. One of the more rational ShopGirls had heard our story, and she and two of her friends walked right through the gate around lunchtime. Typically, we were more effective if you had some shadows and darkness going, but our actors more than picked up the slack. As they approached, a couple of them started very softly whistling to each other, which, of course, had been agreed upon. Then they started circling around and making banging noises. That, coupled with the various gory decorations, had them scared. Then we hit them with the music. One of the advantages of being a man in your early forties who works primarily with younger adults is they have no frame of reference for your pop culture, so I was able to pipe the first twenty seconds of “Mr. Tinkertrain” by Ozzy Osbourne over the small sound system we had cobbled together. It’s this minor key circus-style opening before the guitars come in, and it features children playing in the background. In reality, it’s a song about a serial child molester, but such were Mr. Osbourne’s muses, I suppose.
With the music and the movement and the gore and the banging, they didn’t make it within a hundred feet of the tent. I was a proud papa. A proud, ghoulish, gory papa.
We continued to make tweaks as we went along, and it got better and better. I can honestly say it’s some of my best work, given the restraints and the circumstances. When Mr. Garliek came with the invitation to his summit, he didn’t make it nearly as far as the ShopGirls did. He started yelling about authority and any other damn thing that came into his head that helped him deal with his fear, but it was obvious we had him where we wanted him, and we did not relent. We did not drop the act, we did not break character, and by the time he dropped his note and ran … well, let’s say there was evidence that he had urinated when he did not wish to urinate. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so fulfilled by my work. I brought the invitation to the group, and they decided we would break character this one time and show up, but I would do so in a suit and tie and say as little as possible to maintain some mystique. The decision was made after a great amount of discussion as well as a fair amount of rifling through the wardrobe available to us. You’d be surprised what you can find in the costume department aside from large foam heads.
That’s the story up until the Council of Pieces and it’s a fairly simple one. So. Now I have nowhere else to go. I have to go … there, which is where I assume you were actually headed all along. If I must, I must, and I will begin this way. I have no problem living amongst macabre decorations and settings. It’s in my DNA, so it seems. But after a while, all the fake blood started to get to some people, and they would talk to me about it. Mr. Powers was particularly affected and told me frequently how our project gave him the creeps. I would always be reassuring and tell them this was for our safety, and it was the easiest way to avoid a fight. More and more, what people were reporting wasn’t a simple case of the creeps but something different. They reported seeing something … two somethings, actually, and their reports were similar enough to where I began to take notice.
The story would go like this. They were always in an area without many people, which is big red flag in terms of credibility, and they would get a sensation as if they were being watched. They would become hyperaware and begin looking around, and they wouldn’t see or hear anything. Then they would decide to move back toward the rest of the group from wherever they were, and they would see two figures in their path, usually off to the side, but obvious enough to where they wanted to be seen. They were dressed in dark clothing and had modified a few of the masks we use for Fantastic Fright Night to include pieces of what looked like bone. The effect, according to reports, was to create an evil warthog sort of thing, which is kind of a brilliant design aesthetic. Very few designers go for that warthog thing, but they’re terrifying creatures. The two warthogs, let’s call them, would then slowly advance. They would take their time and would never break into a run. They never responded when spoken to, and they never showed any interest in anything except advancing on whoever they had cornered. Of course they were carrying weapons, and the reports always varied. One person said they had modified blades from table saws, big ones that they had fashioned grips for so they could swing them. Others said it was simpler, like machetes. The one that got me was when one of my Freaks said he had tripped on something as he tried to retreat, and it turned out they had strung some sort of trip wire and started advancing on him more quickly. He got away, but I know true fear when I see it, and the guy who had this encounter was straight terrified. I was also concerned, because if these two were indeed what they seemed, they were trying more advanced hunting techniques. They were developing as they went along.
Do I believe they’re real? Of course someone was out there doing something, and if you give it any thought at all, there are only two rational explanations. Either someone was taking what we did in the World’s Circus and pretending to be crazy and violent in order to keep people away or … the other thing. Either way, the Warthogs never bothered me and, aside from a few stories, never bothered my people that I could tell. Once the battles really got going and raids were a daily thing in most sections of the park, people would go missing on a fairly regular basis, so if you want to make it seem like the Warthogs were out there, picking people off and blaming it on the other tribes, that’s certainly an argument you could make. I know that we kept a close eye on our people, and most of them got out of the park safely. It was the same way with the Mole Men, which was my least favorite tribe name. We tried to keep to ourselves, not make allies, not make enemies, and survive as best we could. By and large, it worked.
I will say this about the mysterious figures in the masks. They did us a big favor. A hug
e favor. Everyone thought the Warthogs were somehow associated with us and that we were controlling them. I will tell you, face to face and on the record, that we had nothing to do with them. They weren’t our personal hit squad, they weren’t agents of fear, and they weren’t the product of some sort of evil ritual. You’d be amazed at the sort of mumbo jumbo some people take seriously. I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know what they did.
Here’s what I do know. We won. We outsmarted everyone. If you set aside what happened at the Council of Pieces, we had the highest rate of survival of any of the tribes, we were in the least amount of conflict, and no one from our side was prosecuted for crimes, because we weren’t forced to commit any. I’ve read, extensively, all the think pieces and all the writing on what happened in FantasticLand, and I’ve fixated on one idea. A writer from the New Yorker set forth the idea that by pretending to be the most violent, we saved ourselves but created more violence in the park. I think that’s right. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think we set everyone against each other because they were afraid of us and what we were eventually going to do. We bluffed, and everyone raised the stakes, and no one ever called us, to beat a card metaphor into the ground.
When you take into account what happened at the Council of Pieces, I find what we were able to accomplish pretty fucking remarkable.
INTERVIEW 15: LOUISE MUSKGROVE
Cashier at Hero Haven Comics, Deadpool.
Riley said she had a bad feeling about the meeting. She said nothing good would come of it. We were heavy into the back and forth with the Pirates at this point, and there were lots of injuries, and a few people had been killed, so everyone was already weary and sad, and it was starting to feel hopeless. Nobody objected when Riley said, “Let’s do this.” If I had spoken my mind at that point, I would have said something along the lines of, “No shit, nothing good is going to come out of this. You are seriously understating the issue,” but that wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere. We had fought the Pirates to a stalemate, and the meeting was a way forward. We weren’t sure forward to where, but it was forward.
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