The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  “Maybe later,” he said. “Lots to do.”

  “Always is,” the woman said, sounding genuinely disappointed.

  Jem moved on, passed another empty tent—same lonely spotlight, same spread of empty sand and scrub—then found himself outside one of the larger attractions.

  SKYLAB LAND, the sign read, and when Jem stepped inside he saw four tall box pedestals, two to each side of a throne-type chair towards the rear. On each rested what looked like a piece of old grey-white insulation paneling, presumably meant to be scrap salvaged from Skylab when it came down in the late seventies. The figure on the throne was tricked out in what was meant to be a spacesuit of the stuff: incongruous pieces glued and wired over an old ski-suit, complete with a makeshift helmet. The pitted and frosted face-plate concealed the wearer’s face entirely.

  As Jem moved between the pedestals, the figured stirred, started his spiel. “Skylab was the United States’ first space station.” It was a male voice, one that sounded a lot like Mr F.’s in fact. “Set in place in 1973, abandoned in 1974, completed 38,981 orbits, finally fell to Earth in August 1979. NASA meant to go back, have one of the new-fangled space shuttles move it to a higher orbit and re-use it, but that never happened. The station came down. This attraction celebrates its homecoming.”

  “That’s it?” Jem asked.

  “That’s it. You’re welcome to examine the exhibits.”

  Jem glanced at the scraps of metal and plastic, whatever they really were. “Are they genuine?”

  “Can’t say. I just wear this, give the spiel.”

  “Maybe another time then. Other sights to see.”

  “Always are.”

  Jem stepped outside to find the sky completely dark now, all traces of light gone from the western horizon. Without a midway to give him his bearings be became disoriented, found himself in the alley he’d been in earlier in the day, facing the signboard reading THE WAIT.

  Now the flaps were fixed back. Warm light shone from within. The stocky man by the entrance had an impressive handle-bar moustache—fake surely—and wore a showman’s purple velvet suit with embroidered lapels. He immediately assumed his role.

  “Evenin’, Mr Renton. I’m Grips Ashton. and this is—“

  “The Wait.”

  “Surely is. Step in.”

  Jem ignored the invitation, again settled for what he could see from the entrance. In the middle of a space the size of a family living room, a spotlight illuminated a single bentwood chair.

  Jem laughed out loud at the absurdity of such a pay-off. Truth in advertising again at least, like MUM ON THE SOFA, though hardly an attraction. Sit in the chair, become the exhibit.

  “You’re welcome to take a seat,” Grips Ashton said with not a touch of irony, voice as smooth as driftwood left in the ocean just long enough. “Rest a bit. Big night ahead.”

  “Have to check out all the attractions. You know not to slow me down.”

  The big moustache twitched. “Jem, let a guy do his spiel, okay? I’m meant to say it to anyone who shows up.”

  “Even specials like me?”

  “Especially specials. It’s only temptation if it works, right? And I’m a genuine Ashton. Old circus name down under. Give a guy a break! ”

  “Another time, Grips.”

  Jem stepped away, tried the next tent along. Again the signboard was blank, the lantern on the pole dark. When Jem peered in, he saw just the central mast, the solitary spot, a sad scrappy patch of sand, its exhibit long abandoned or, as Jem thought about it, waiting to arrive. Another kind of truth in advertising really, the promise of other days, other possibilities, that or a memorial for what had once been.

  Jem felt an odd emotion building, realized it was quite possibly dread, though dread as a concept, dread without the fear. What was he missing? Things were going on that he wasn’t tracking properly.

  He kept on to the next attraction in the alley, taking care with the guy-lines and tent-pegs, and it occurred to him for the first time that simply taking care not to stumble was keeping him focused, kept him paying attention, as if to offset the remaining effects of the obigato.

  THE THOUGHTFUL GLASS OF WATER this latest signboard read, and as Jem reached it a middle-aged woman in pink tutu, fish-net stockings and black Doc Martins, hair coiffed in the most striking fuchsia dreadlocks, made as if to hold the already open flaps aside, gesturing to the feature within: a wooden pedestal with a single glass of clear fluid resting upon it.

  “Time out, luvvy!” she said in a passing imitation of a Cockney accent. “You can pee behind the vans whenever y’like, but we need other kinds of refreshment, right? Dinner’s later, all of us together, but for now drink your fill.”

  “Why the ‘Thoughtful’?”

  “People ponder it like you’re doing.”

  “Any takers?”

  “Rarely. But they don’t get the prize.”

  “There’s a prize?”

  “Made you thoughtful again, see. Working already. Quench your thirst.”

  “It’s my first time round. Maybe later.”

  “Right you are. Press on.”

  Jem did so, determined to get it over with. How long he’d been at it he had no idea. It was full night now, the sky filled with stars, streaked with the occasional tektites rushing down.

  The next signboard read THE MERMAID, and this time it was Mally by the entrance, still in her flimsy evening finery.

  “You know the drill,” she said as Jem stepped inside.

  He’d expected someone in a tank, one of the women in a mermaid get-up, so what he saw threw him: a large plasma screen showing stars, space, the glowing curve of the world as if seen from low-Earth orbit. Not a still either, he realized, but possibly recorded footage from a station like Skylab had been. In the soft lighting of the tent the effect was powerful, like looking through a window.

  “Mally, I don’t get the connection. Where’s the mermaid?”

  “I keep asking myself the same thing,” Mally said.

  Jem sighed, tired of the trickery, of how off kilter all this was. Why couldn’t they just say what they wanted, spell it out? Let him be on his way?

  But there were so few exhibits to go. Without a word he continued along to a signboard reading: THE CHEERFUL EXCHANGE OF GASES, whose “attraction” proved to be just as frustrating, as elusively annoying as the rest, nothing but a small tree in a terracotta pot, one of those topiary things like a green ball on a stick. It stood on a low pedestal inside plastic dust-curtains arranged like a makeshift shower stall.

  A man in his forties, looking like a pastor in a black suit and plain white shirt, waited inside the entrance, and gestured grandly towards the booth. “Put your head inside, brother, and take a breath of God’s clean air the way it was intended.”

  “Just take a breath?”

  “Easy in, easy out, friend. One of the Lord’s sweetest gifts. Clear your head. Won’t take but a moment.”

  Jem said nothing, just turned and left. Two to go. Only two.

  Maybe the obligato was wearing thin. He was feeling unsettled, anxious, vaguely frightened now, more and more aware of how wrong it all was, though the next signboard distracted him a bit. THE ISSUS TRIP, it read, which immediately had Jem recalling his high-school history classes, and how Issus was the town in ancient Turkey where Alexander the Great had defeated some Persian king or other. Curiosity had the better of him. What could it possibly be this time?

  Inside he found two large art prints side by side on easels, each under a warm yellow spot, and both dealing with that historical event. A mature-aged woman in spectacles and worn dove-grey suit immediately stepped forward like a museum curator or matronly tour guide.

  “On the left we have the Alexander Mosaic dating from around 100 BCE,” she said, “originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii but presently in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. It shows Alexander the Great and Darius III in conflict at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE. On the right you se
e Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1529 painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus, long regarded as that artist’s best work and presently in the Alte Pinakothek museum in Munich.”

  That concluded the presentation, though the woman remained to one side as if ready to answer any questions her visitor cared to ask.

  Jem studied the prints for a minute or so—the mosaic with Darius in his chariot, the Altdorfer with its grand view of mighty armies locked in battle—then said “Thank you” and went outside, feeling incredible relief when he saw that the next tent along was the two-masted one, the Big Top.

  Was this the final exhibit, the ninth, or had he missed one?

  When Jem stepped inside, he found it as empty as it had been earlier in the day. There was just the display case under its fierce white spot. Warm yellow elsewhere, dazzling glare for this single display.

  He went and studied the miniature again, found it just as unsettling as before. It was too realistic, as if waiting to move yet confined by these glass sides. It made Jem feel like he was a god peering down, which brought the immediate “Russian Doll” reaction that such a god might be looking down on him. That had him glancing upwards instinctively, peering first into the terrible glare, then beyond that fierce core of light to what lay in the shadows to either side: dozens, hundreds, thousands of masks, faces, fixed there, staring down, a vast audience.

  Jem blinked, strained to make sure what he was seeing.

  Then Mr Fleymann spoke. “So, Jem, what’s it to be? Which three will you pick?”

  Jem looked down to find the whole troupe gathered about him, about the display case: Mally in her shift, the woman in the tutu and Doc Martins, the pastor in his dark suit, the curator woman, all of them.

  “Is this one included?”

  “Of course. If you need more time—”

  “I’m ready.” Jem said, and realized he was, that he could choose, had already done so.

  “Shoot then.”

  Jem hesitated only a moment, getting the exact names clear in his head. “Right. My choices. Skylab Land, The Mermaid, and The Issus Trip.”

  Mr Fleymann grinned. Mally did. There were immediate smiles on the faces of the troupe, not just of happiness and excitement, but what looked like genuine relief as well.

  Mr F. raised a hand, smoothed his cravat in a nervous gesture. “Now think carefully, Jem. You chose Skylab Land, The Mermaid, and The Issus Trip. Very revealing for us here. Very useful given our specialty. But if you had to pick one of the three, just one, which would it be?”

  Jem thought immediately of the Alexander Mosaic. “The Issus Trip. No idea why.”

  It was like everyone started breathing again, Mr F., Mally, the whole troupe. There were more smiles, more excitement, sheer relief.

  “Good choice!” Mr F. said. “You’ve turned out to be everything we wanted you to be, Jem.”

  “What did you want me to be?”

  “How we operate, sorry. How we have to operate. All the Heirloom Carnivals.”

  “Please. What have I just done?”

  Mr F. stretched his arms wide in an expansive, almost hieratic gesture. “You’ve just helped us move ahead. Enabled our next target.”

  Now it was Jem who went very still. He understood nothing, but sensed that something awful had just happened.

  Mr F. could barely contain his delight. “Good thing you didn’t pick The Wait. Many do. Looks so easy.”

  Jem made himself stay with the flow. “Just sit there till you get the joke, hey?”

  Mr Fleymann’s eyes flashed with a fierce delight totally without mirth. “Sit there till you realize that’s all you’ll ever do.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Wordplay again, Jem. How it seems. How it sounds. How it is for us. Names of power every one. That’s what we trade in here.”

  And the grin locked, held. It was a grimace that nudged.

  Get it? Ged it?

  The Weight.

  Jem felt a rush of horror. “You’re joking.”

  “Try it when we’re done if you’ve a mind.”

  “It looks so innocent.”

  “So can a throw switch with an electric current running through it. So can a glass of acid looking like water. Need to think a certain way about things.”

  Like why a carnival would set up in a desert.

  That thought flashed through Jem’s mind, even as he pictured the humble set-up of The Wait. How many people never left that chair? Had never been able to? Took their ease. Felt the pressure come.

  “Come morning—”

  “Wouldn’t find much. It’s exponential.”

  “The other exhibits—?”

  “Have ways of biting.”

  “My three?”

  “The only ones that are genuine. The rest kill. You passed the test.”

  The implications overwhelmed Jem. The faces on the canvas just now. Visitors dropping by.

  “Surely there’d be investigations. Missing person reports.”

  “Always are. They find nothing. We have ways.”

  “But why? It can’t be just trimming the bush.”

  “Much more, Jem. We’re back to words again, see. Names. Ways of saying, seeing. If trees are solar engines exchanging gases, and people are living furnaces, burning away day and night, making more living furnaces, what does that make a carnival like this one? The Heirloom Carnivals? The Sly Carnivals?”

  “Not just entertainments, distractions?”

  “Try harder. Go deeper?”

  “A machine? A device? A means for catching souls? Making a hell on Earth?”

  “Too corny. Too clichéd. Harder. Deeper.”

  Jem tried to grasp what Mr F. wanted. Completions? Ways of resolving something? He didn’t want to say.

  Mr Fleymann read that hesitation. “Ever heard of the face in Skylab’s window?”

  ”The what?”

  “You picked all our space features.”

  “A face in Skylab’s window?”

  “Our favorite urban myth. Favorite conspiracy theory so far. Too much time on your hands in space. Lots of boredom. Lots of astronaut humor you never hear about. Pranks among the different mission crews. The Skylab 3 crew leaving dummies wearing flight suits for the final Skylab crew to find, stuff like that. Somewhere in there is talk of a face peering in the single wardroom window, Al Bean seeing it but staying mum, figuring it was just a reflection, rogue optics, then Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott seeing it, which later had them quizzing the other crews, but all agreeing to keep it to themselves. No use drawing bad psych ratings, screwing up re-selection eligibility or their pensions. But somehow it got round, somehow it became a face peering out, of course, which became the face peering out when the station fell.”

  “Skylab Land!”

  “Go on, Jem. It’s your pick. Finish it!”

  “Where exactly did Skylab land?”

  “That’s the way! Let’s have it!”

  “We’re in the debris field!”

  “Most certainly are. This is where she came down—all the way from Esperance and Ballardonia up to where we’re standing right now.”

  “Then your Spaceman. That get-up!”

  “Who knows exactly? Parts of the Multiple Docking Adaptor or the Apollo Telescope Mount. Bits of hull, who can say? We’re not about to call NASA and have them verify what’s what.”

  “But the face plate—?”

  “Glass burns up pretty quick, Jem. That may not be any part of the actual window.”

  “But—”

  “Let’s continue shall we? This is your test, remember. The Mermaid?”

  “That view from space. It can’t be Mer-maid. It has to be Mir-maid, for the Russian space station Mir that came down in the late nineties!”

  Mr F. beamed his approval. “Well done. In March 2001, to be exact. Following some interesting mishaps: a fire in February 1997 and a major collision with a supply ship a few months later, temporary loss of contact with the station at the end of 2000. But we mis
calculated, didn’t allow for the extent of official efforts to control re-entry. She came down in the Pacific east of New Zealand. We only managed to secure the tiniest fragments.”

  “Then the ISS in ISSUS! The Issus Trip has to be the ISS, the International Space Station!”

  “Bravo, Jem! You’re a true paragon! Worth a thousand drop-ins.” And in his near-manic delight he gestured up to where the imaginary audience watched, the faces on the inside of this largest tent.

  And no obligato could keep that thought from Jem’s mind.

  “These tents! Your suits!—” He tried to speak it.

  “Oldest tradition among the Heirloom Carnivals, yes. Something worthwhile passed on. Probably comes from the steppes of Russia long ago, but who can say?”

  Jem looked up, again saw beyond the terrible glare of the spot to what lay in the spread of shadow: dozens, hundreds of masks, faces, fixed, peering down. Faces on the canvas. Faces made of canvas!

  Canvas made of faces!

  The display case miniature the bait, a distraction to keep candidates looking down, looking in, looking away. This is what had happened to those who failed in their choices, the uninvited, the unsuccessful ones. Those tents, all deadly, all capable of biting.

  This was how the Heirloom Carnivals replenished themselves, added to themselves, repaired, maintained, made new tents, new suits.

  Mr Fleymann may have regretted his exuberance, though it seemed that he always revealed how it was like this. “One Sly Carnival specializes in the sinking of great passenger ships. I’m sure you remember a certain White Star Line vessel meeting an iceberg, and can recall a rather more recent disaster off Isola del Giglio. Another works at upsetting Royal Houses and world governments. Our specialty is bringing down balloons, aircraft and, more recently, space habitats—the first haunted houses ever to be off the planet. A real cachet in that.”

  “What becomes of me?”

  “We keep you on a bit longer. Use your services again.”