by Dan Poblocki
Dash scrambled to keep up as the girls quickly passed him by. “This doesn’t feel right, Poppy. Can I please have my phone back?”
But Poppy pretended she hadn’t heard him.
A few more steps forward and the shapes on the right side of the midway were suddenly clear. They weren’t people. Not exactly.
They were clowns.
To Poppy’s relief, she realized quickly that they were not actual clowns, but plaster statues standing in a sharp row. Most of them were over five feet tall, and some looked older than others. One had three multicolored spikes of hair poking up from his bone-white skull; his triangular, rose-colored nose squashed almost flat; a crooked smile revealing straight but yellowing teeth. He wore a pale jumpsuit marked with tiny red and blue dots, and his hand was raised in a frozen wave. Another had a small, more oval-shaped head, a huge bulbous nose, and hair made of straw, with eyes that were crossed out by haphazard smears of blue paint. His maniacal grin took up the entire bottom half of his face, stretching from one ear to the other and all the way down to his chin. One frowning bald figure stood out to Poppy. He wore a jumpsuit covered in an indigo diamond pattern, and he seemed to be staring directly into Poppy’s eyes.
“Uh-uh,” said Dash, crossing his arms and keeping his distance. “No way. This gets a big NOPE from me.”
“But it’s the only way,” said Poppy.
“I’m not walking by them either,” said Azumi.
The clowns stared blankly out across the path, as if they meant to entertain an immense crowd that no longer existed in this abandoned place.
“Poppy,” whispered Dash, an edge to his voice. “Where are you going?”
Poppy froze. She hadn’t even realized that she’d moved toward the tent opposite the row of clowns. There was a seam in the canvas that appeared to be torn.
Dash stood several feet in front of the row of plaster figurines, while Azumi hunched beside him, entranced by the clown with the frowning face.
“I … I don’t know,” said Poppy, her cheeks burning. Hadn’t they just agreed to stay closer together? “I think I found a new route.”
“Uh, no,” said Dash. “We should turn back. Find another way around.”
Poppy pulled at the seam, making the gap wider, and then shone the light inside. Musty shadows yawned from within. A wide sign hung over the closed flaps on the right—the word GAMES had been painted in an old-fashioned font, and illustrations of laughing children with grotesque smiles bookended each side.
“Hello?” she whispered, looking around for anyone who might be hiding inside.
Dash scoffed. “You really think someone will answer you?”
Sensing that they were getting ready to bolt, Poppy took Azumi by the elbow and led her to the gap in the games tent. Quickly, she tore the seam open. “Here’s our way around,” she said, nudging Azumi through the new slit in the wall.
“Poppy!” Dash said in shock. “No!”
“She’s fine,” said Poppy. “Right, Azumi?”
From inside the gap, Azumi called out a nervous answer. “I’m … I’m okay. The tent’s filled with carnival games. We can go through here and pass the creepy clowns outside.”
Dash joined the girls at the tear in the canvas. He gritted his teeth. “I want to let it be known that I am totally against this plan.”
“Would I lead you astray?” asked Poppy, forcing a smile as she stepped carefully through the canvas.
Once inside, Dash took his phone from her. The three crept across the space.
The light illuminated rows of stuffed animals hanging on the wall behind a barrier made of rusted chicken wire. Prizes.
“Which way?” he asked, his voice quieter now.
The eyes of the stuffed animals stared back at them.
Poppy nodded at a sign hanging from the center of the cage—bold black letters had been hand-painted on a large white square. “That looks familiar.”
“Oh, no,” whispered Azumi with a shudder, clinging to Poppy’s arm.
Slowly, Dash read the sign aloud. “Let’s … play? Last time something in the house asked us to play, the Specials showed up and tried to kill us.”
“All we have to do is get across the tent,” said Poppy. “Find another seam. Tear it open.”
Dash sighed, shaking his head.
AS POPPY LED everyone forward, Azumi looked back at the slit in the canvas they’d come through.
She didn’t know who to trust anymore, and couldn’t stop the flood of questions—Is Poppy right? Do we go this way? Can we believe our eyes?—from racing through her thoughts over and over until she was dizzy. Maybe that was why she was so exhausted, why she wished to just lie down and go to sleep, instead of walking, sleepwalking through these infinite nightmares.
Get it together, Azumi told herself, shaking her head. You cannot let Dash and Poppy see you like this or they’ll leave you here just like they left poor Dylan with his sad clown mask. How could they not have noticed that he’d been hiding inside that plaster figurine out on the midway?
Then she wondered, Why didn’t I tell them?
Azumi glanced back at the hole in the canvas.
The frowning clown was peering through the gap.
Azumi shrieked and then tripped over her own feet, falling to the ground. Poppy and Dash rushed to help her back up.
“What’s wrong?” barked Dash.
“Did you see something?” Poppy asked.
But when Azumi glanced back, the opening was dark. There were no clowns there. Only shadows.
“I … I thought I did,” said Azumi. “But it was nothing. Just jumpy, I guess.”
Dash and Poppy watched her for a few seconds before they turned toward the games and the prizes that surrounded them in this new tent.
Why am I the only one being tormented like this? Azumi wondered. Poppy and Dash were practically fine. An ember of anger sparked in her belly, jealousy that they weren’t feeling what she was feeling or seeing what she was seeing. It hurt that she was alone in this bubble of confusion.
But you’re more normal than they are, she told herself. You’ve always been normal. And smart. Weren’t those good things? Azumi thought of all the activities she used to do in her old school outside of Seattle—playing forward on the soccer team, leading her die-hard study group, being the student government representative for her grade. And when she’d needed to protect herself from her own mind, from her nightly dreams of walking through the suicide forest in Japan, she’d gone as far as seeking a boarding school across the entire country.
Who but a very brave girl would do such a thing? Neither of them, that was for sure.
* * *
When they were about halfway across the dark space, the tent trembled.
There was a sound of fabric shuffling, followed by a great, loud whush! Azumi looked back at where they’d entered and yelped. The entry had disappeared.
Dash felt the earth tilt as dizziness crept inside his skull. He focused on Poppy to straighten himself out.
“What did you do?” he shouted.
Her brow wrinkled. But then she walked over to the spot where the gap had closed. “It’s only canvas,” said Poppy, tugging at the seam. “We can just open it—” But she couldn’t. The opening seemed to have been sealed over. She scraped her nails against the fabric, and after a few seconds, Poppy glanced sheepishly over her shoulder. “It’s not working.”
“But it’s only canvas,” Dash echoed, flinching at the venom in his voice. He blinked and cleared his throat, trying to find a seed of calm somewhere in the whirlwind of his brain. “Can you lift it from the bottom? We’ll crawl underneath.”
Poppy bent down and tried to get a grip, but now the canvas was attached to the ground itself. Dash rushed over and grappled with the tent, but he couldn’t get it to budge either. In a fit of fury, he kicked and thrashed against the wall, as if his anger could break through to the midway, until he fell away, winded and faint.
“Dash, are you all
right?” asked Poppy, reaching for his shoulder, but he flailed away from her. She shrank back, biting her lip.
He was fighting with everything he had to keep from bursting into angry tears. After everything they’d been through in the past few hours—Moriko’s transformation into the creature, Marcus’s death, Dash’s decision to walk away from his brother’s tormented ghost—it was a horror to imagine that he’d lose it over something as simple as a carnival tent. But then nothing here was simple. “I told you this was a trick!” he yelled.
Poppy closed her eyes, as if he’d just lobbed a water balloon at her and she was resigned that it would smack her in the face.
When would they all stop being so naive? he fumed. What would it take? Another of them dying?
“Can’t we cut it open?” asked Azumi.
“With what?”
“Smash one of the lightbulbs. Use the jagged edge.”
“This glass is paper-thin. It’ll never—”
The strings of lightbulbs hanging overhead were suddenly all aglow, illuminating the game stations inside the dim room.
“What’s it doing?” asked Azumi.
Poppy rushed over to the cage with the stuffed animals, snatching the sign from the chicken wire. “Let’s play,” she read pointedly.
“You’ve got to be crazy!” Dash yelled, following her.
“Don’t call me that!” said Poppy, scowling. She turned and headed toward the ring-toss table.
“I’m sorry. But you’re not the only one trapped in here, Poppy. Our lives are at stake too. The way out is closed off now because of you. What if something worse happens?”
Poppy’s face flushed red. “We can’t just do nothing!”
“Let’s search for another way out,” Dash said. “Another seam we can rip open.”
“Fine. Let’s look.”
The group explored the tent’s perimeter, but there was no other way out.
Dash threw his hands up. “We could have turned back! Ignored the tents altogether. We could have found another way to the driveway.”
“I’m sorry!” Poppy cried out. “You’re right. We could’ve gone into the woods! But would that have been any better than this?”
“Yes!”
Azumi backed away from both of them.
Poppy picked up the sign again. “I believe this will work. We have to at least try.”
“Or it might make something else happen,” Dash said. “Something worse.”
“LOOK AT THEM all.” Poppy stood in front of the partition made of twisted wire, her fingers looped through the small holes. The canvas wall across from her was covered in little stuffed animals—tigers, frogs, bears, and more—and their black plastic eyes shone in the beam of Dash’s flashlight. “They’re almost beautiful, all together like this.” She rattled the cage lightly, but it wouldn’t budge.
“If we’re going to play,” said Dash, “what do you hope to win?”
Poppy sighed and then backed away, giving him a sidelong glance.
“What about the rabbit, the bear, and the cat?” asked Azumi.
“What are you talking about?” Poppy asked.
“Azumi’s right,” said Dash, pointing beyond the chicken wire at several of the stuffed animals. “Look. Up there. A rabbit. And on the bottom right. A bear. And over on the left. A cat. They look just like the Specials.”
Well, not just like the Specials, thought Azumi. These were toys—much smaller than the ghosts that had been chasing them through Larkspur. Now they were huggable-size and plush, like her own stuffed animals that her mother had donated to charity a couple of years prior.
She didn’t mention the raggedy clown hanging right in the middle. It looked like the one that had been staring at her through the gap in the tent.
“Azumi!” Poppy said, flinging her arms around the other girl’s neck. Azumi made a surprised peeping sound. “You’re brilliant.”
Azumi smiled, satisfied that she was still useful to them, happy that she was able to hide her fear behind a mask.
“It’s an ambush!” Dash exclaimed.
“It’s not an ambush if we’re prepared,” said Poppy, her voice steady and loud. She stepped back and stared at the cage. “I have the things that Cyrus took from them: the doll, the football, and the candy. Now how are we going to get to them? This wall seems pretty solid.”
Dash examined the sides of the barrier, where heavy bolts met vertical metal gutters. “It looks like this whole panel should slide up.” He yanked on it, trying to force it to open, then yelped and let go. Blood beaded where the wire had caught him. “Ow.” He held his hands to his T-shirt, leaving red marks.
“You okay?” asked Poppy.
“I’ll be fine, but this stupid thing—”
“I think we’ve got to win a prize,” said Azumi, trying to find the same confidence in her tone that Poppy had used seconds earlier. “Isn’t that how carnival games work?”
“I’m pretty good at the ring toss,” said Poppy. “Let’s start there.”
“Let’s get this over with,” said Dash.
Azumi followed the others over to the table with the bottles. As Poppy reached for a trio of silver rings on the counter nearby, Azumi stared at the miniature version of the frowning clown. “Good luck,” she said.
DASH STOOD BESIDE Poppy with his arms crossed. “How’s this going to work?” he asked, trying to not sound annoyed. He knew he should be sending Poppy good vibes, yet he couldn’t stop thinking that playing these games was a mistake, even if there were animals that looked like the Specials locked behind the chicken-wire cage. The pain in Dash’s leg had finally begun to lessen; he barely even needed his crutch anymore. Their group should be moving along as fast as they could.
But then Poppy flicked her wrist, releasing one of the rings. It sailed a short distance toward the platform with the bottles and landed around one of the glass necks. Poppy and Azumi cheered. A bell rang, and from the rear wall, there came a scraping noise.
Dash turned to find that a dangling string of lightbulbs was flashing above the rows of animals. But more important, the chicken-wire barrier had raised about three inches.
“Whoa,” said Poppy.
“If Poppy keeps winning, that cage will open all the way,” said Azumi. “Then we can grab the animals.”
Dash sighed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this room, the game, and the prizes might all be a trick. Larkspur knew what was in their heads, and it was probably anticipating their next moves. He wished he could just smash through the barrier without thinking and tear the dolls into pieces.
Poppy threw out the next ring. For a moment, it seemed to hover over one of the bottle’s necks, ready to drop for another success. But then it wobbled and came down askew, just missing the target.
The mesh cage slammed down again, making them jump.
“Shoot,” Poppy whispered. “I have to start over.”
“Great!” said Dash, squinting at her. “Take all the time you need.”
“I’m pretty good at Skee-Ball,” said Azumi. She strolled over to the row of machines, palming one of the balls, feeling its weight.
Poppy lowered her voice, smoothing out the rough edges. “What about you, Dash? Any games you want to try?”
“I don’t want to do any of this,” Dash said, rolling his eyes. Why did she look like she was having fun?
He glanced around the space. Another stand caught his eye. The sign above it flashed with tiny lights. Carnival Punks! Knock ’Em Down! Three shelves were crowded with colorful little creatures made out of beanbags, each with an exaggerated, comically monstrous face and wild wool hair. Several balls were stacked on the counter. Nearby, a little sign read: See how many you can hit in a row!
Before Dash could pick up one of the balls, he heard the jingle of another little bell. Poppy whooped. The ring she’d just tossed was still swinging around the bottle’s neck. The chicken-wire cage rattled as it rose up several inches again.
“Nice!” said
Azumi.
Dash was just about to force himself to congratulate Poppy when something hit the wall of the tent behind him. Dash jumped away, but the canvas continued to bounce and shudder. Poppy and Azumi watched, their mouths open in terror.
Someone outside was trying to get in.
POPPY STEELED HER nerves, blocking out the rattling canvas. She rushed over to Dash. He flinched when she touched his shoulder. “If we’re trapped in here,” she said calmly, “whoever or whatever it is must be stuck out there.” Dash raised his head, eyes wide. She nodded at the booths they’d each picked. “We know that if we keep winning at these games, the prize cage will open and we’ll set the Specials free.” Nodding at the canvas wall, she added, “That is just a distraction to stop us. Ignore it. Let’s do this.”
Dash returned to the carnival punks and Azumi lunged toward the Skee-Ball machines. Poppy gathered up several rings from the counter. She concentrated as she pulled her wrist back, but then Azumi screamed and a buzzer rang out, and the chicken-wire barrier came crashing back down again.
“Gutter ball,” Azumi called out after a moment, shivering.
“Block out everything else,” said Poppy. “Just be here.” She tapped her temple. “Inside your own head.”
She watched as Azumi snatched another ball, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, whipping her arm forward, she rolled the ball up the alley. At the end, it flew in a perfect arc and landed directly in the top hole, the one worth fifty points.
Lights flashed around the tent and the barrier slid open—wider this time, but still not wide enough for anyone to reach through and take any of the animals. Then Poppy noticed something strange. The rabbit, the bear, and the cat all seemed to have grown a little. Her stomach dropped as she understood: Poppy, Dash, and Azumi weren’t the only ones playing games here. Of course the house had set this up. She couldn’t let the others know. It would only throw them off.
Dash yelped as he knocked over several of the carnival punks. Poppy watched the cage jolt upward a few more inches. And at the same time, the three animals that mattered grew even larger, like balloons about to pop. Poppy ran to the rear wall, grabbing at her messenger bag and flipping it open. She dug around inside and removed the flattened football, several pieces of candy, and the headless doll.