"You see, what my researches hadn't taken into account was geographical location. My discoveries had initially occurred in my hometown and, unbeknownst to me, that was the secret. I had been traveling with the circus and, while it offered me a seemingly endless source of energy for my creations, it was actually pulling me further and further from the location of the originating energy. I was building larger and more powerful machines just to stay in one place. But now ..." he paused.
"Now you're home again," I finished.
"Indeed," the Ringmaster said, and he pulled the tarp.
The machine was an abomination to the human eye. It resembled a stationary steam engine, such as one might find in a mill or factory with a piston, crank, and flywheel. But these superficial similarities were the only bridge between a piece of workaday machinery and the monstrosity that squatted upon the cart.
For squat it did. On legs cobbled together from the limbs of who knows how many young people. In fact, the entirety of the machine was composed of the limbs, skin, organs, and musculature of humans. Presumably young humans. And still, it was identifiable as an engine.
"I found my smaller devices had stopped working and so I built a larger engine. Each time it weakened, I added to it. I built and built and built. To compensate, I had not realized, for its increasing distance from the Miskatonic Valley. Something here--something in the very air of this region--feeds the engine. Now that we have returned, you can imagine how powerful my machine is. Normally, what you witnessed under the Big Top would have required the plugging in of several fresh 'fuel cells,' but here in the Valley, my machine runs practically fuel free. Here in the Valley, I will finally be able to achieve what I could not out in the wilderness. Here in the Valley, I will finally not only be able to see through the veil, but travel beyond reality itself!"
Sensing movement behind me, I spun and saw the Ringmaster's two goons entering the tent. One carried a wrapped bundle, the body of the young girl from earlier. The other carried the head.
The Ringmaster gestured to his monstrous assistants and they laid the remains gently on a sideboard that had sprung from the side of the cart. With a practiced deftness, the Ringmaster pulled two fleshy cords from the tissue of the machine and drove their bony ends into the neck stump of the body. He extracted a thicker intestine-like cord from another part of the device and worked it up through the neck of the head.
"Please," he said, "stay and witness history in the making."
The assistants turned and faced me. I realized they were there to ensure my compliance. The Ringmaster would have me bear witness to this event whether I desired to or not.
I shrugged. My editor has a saying that he employs whenever a writer betrays any trepidation about entering a dilapidated house, reading a book of forbidden text, or invoking the name of a homicidal entity: "Just get the goddamn story or you're fired." This philosophy has served me well over the years and I decided it was in my best interests--both financial and physical--to follow it.
"Understand," he said, "that what you are about to witness is a privilege. The culmination of my life's work. The Ghost Circus may function as an entertainment for most who gaze upon its wonder, but it is, in fact, sacred to me. The strength afforded me by the land of the Miskatonic Valley should allow me to not only see the truth, but to cross over into it."
He removed from the cart the metal rod from the evening's performance and inserted it into the aperture on the cart. He pulled down on it and the device began to ... churn. Honestly, what that machine did cannot be described by any word or turn of phrase that would make sense to a sane reader. Imagine the most horrible thing a body can do to itself and multiply that by infinity and you are no closer to understanding what I saw. And with the churning came a sickly hum that grew in volume and insistence.
"What you are about to see may alarm you. But do not cry out. Do not speak. Do not draw attention to yourself. In the realm of the Ghost Circus, you are more than a spectator; you are a potential participant. Now relax. And let the show ... begin."
The Ringmaster's final words were lost in the hum, which now filled my head and built in dimension and pitch until it seemed the very fabric of my brain was about to come unraveled. I squeezed my eyes shut to prevent them from erupting from my skull. And as soon as it seemed the noise and pressure would send me screaming from the tent, it stopped.
A cold silence filled the room.
I opened my eyes.
The Ringmaster, the machine, the goons ... as still as stone. Behind the Ringmaster, a hole in the truth. A physical, tactile hole.
Things moved beyond it. Things a part of this world and apart from this world.
And I thought of the movement I'd seen behind the truth in the Big Top. The flitting thing.
And I saw them. I saw the flitting things.
And they saw the Ringmaster.
And I fear they saw me.
And they entered.
They were not angels, the beings that floated through the tent walls, unfolding around impossible angles, vibrating at impossible frequencies, singing impossible songs with impossible lyrics that bled impossible rhymes.
They were not angels. They carried no streak of the divine. They brought no comfort. They offered no understanding or comprehension.
They brought the children with them.
The children did not frolic; in their hands they held their severed heads, the eyes empty yet shining with a greasy light.
The shimmering beings led the children in a pattern around the room, their feet lightly brushing the ground.
White, pulsating, floating, mysterious, gelatinous objects flitted about and through my head.
The machine on the cart ceased its pulsating motion, rose on its two misshapen legs and stepped down onto the dusty ground. Flesh, muscle, and viscera pulled and stretched as it tentatively maneuvered toward the frozen Ringmaster.
It opened. I don't know how, but it opened. I saw at its core a face looking back at the old world, the world rarely seen by the beings that dwelt in the truth. The machine took the Ringmaster up and into itself and added him to its outlook, its input, its timetable.
A year passed, then two, then a hundred, and the objects filled the tent, always in full view and yet always just out of my range of vision. I saw a field of eyes. I witnessed alien numbers and letters spilling out of the too-open mouths of the children.
A child's face, held low in its untiring arms, brushed my hand and I emitted a small gasp.
The room grew still.
I do not recall what followed. I do not believe a properly functioning brain would allow a man to recall what I endured.
I came to, alone on the blasted heath.
"Well, I cannot say that was entirely unexpected," I said to the ashy landscape.
My name is Joris Severen. Most of my life has been given over to the investigation and exploitation of the unexplained and the unexplainable. I have risked life and limb in order to bring tales of the deranged and whimsical to an increasingly jaded and disinterested readership. I have never turned my back on a story.
Until today.
I write these pages that I may close the book on this chapter of my life. I will no longer witness and report. Things have broken loose into our world that should not be here. And I, as one of the only surviving witnesses to these events, am duty bound to find them. To stop them. And, if need be, to put them down.
I may lose my life in this quest. However, I find the fear of death no longer applicable. I do not dread succumbing to the inevitable embrace of oblivion. Rather, I dread the embrace of things far more sinister. Should I fail, Joris Severen may find Death's claim on him to be outmatched by the machinations of the Ghost Circus. And he may find that eternity holds for him a place among that damnable kermesse.
But, I hope not.
I've grown to somewhat dislike circuses.
* * *
A Belgian by birth, Joris Severen has proven a valuable asset to the word of Amer
ican extra-natural journalism. His experiences leading Congolese savages against the Krauts in Togoland toughened him to the hard life of a reporter as his numerous and shocking articles for Whimsical Wonders, Tantalizing Tales, and Unbelievable World can attest. "The Ghost Circus" is Mr. Severen's final piece of journalism for Unbelievable World Magazine, a publication that folded in 1941. Severen disappeared soon after the events in the enclosed piece. His journals were discovered in a trunk purchased at auction in 2012. The enclosed account has never seen publication.
* * *
Phil Gonzales's story "Cool Cats" was a winner of the HPLFF 1st Annual Lovecraftian Micro Fiction Contest. In between performing, directing, and scribbling horrors at zengroans.wordpress.com, he earns his living as a Public Awareness Associate for the Minnesota Brain Injury Alliance and struggles to find time to spend with his beautiful partner and two lovely daughters.
* * *
August and Autumn
An account by Doctor Scott Randall Thornton, as provided by Jenna M. Pitman
* * *
I pushed at the heavy oak door though it was already abundantly apparent my efforts were in vain. The wood was dry and the veneer had worn away over the years. I suspected that was the direct inverse of what the rust on its hinges had done. I was going to have to accept it. These doors were as immobile as the white stones that lined their lintel.
I cursed, frustrated, but gave myself permission to let go of this particular avenue of entry. I took a step back, eyes traveling along the face of the old manor home, searching for a side door.
August wasn't here yet. The gravel of the drive was thick and smooth, overrun with sprouting foliage. No one had been here in at least a month, if not longer. August would have keys, and he knew every door and window, but I didn't want to wait for him. Well, specifically I didn't want to deal with the head games he carted along everywhere, just as surely as he carried his cell-phone. I wanted to get at information, at least some of it, on my own before August had a chance to sour it.
Not that a discarded old mansion was likely to have much to find. At least nothing juicy. Even acknowledging that fact, however, I was betting that there was something out here to make the trip worth it. Just one trophy to justify the travel time, that was all I asked.
That was the mantra I kept repeating in my head. If I didn't, the guilt would eat me whole.
My feet crunched into pebbles so deep I was practically wading through them. Thankfully there was no need for secrecy.
I followed stone molding that cut a path through the still-rich red bricks of the house's exterior. There was a carriage house peeking out from around the corner, where it seemed likely that I would find a staff entrance.
I came around the corner, so singularly focused on my intention, and nearly collided with a broad, sculpted chest. Chiseled from something as immobile as steel and as fine as sandstone. Perfection. August had always been attractive, there was never any denying that no matter how much personal pain was tied up in the man. But in the years since college, August had bulked up, his shoulders and chest widening, enhancing the slender "v" of his torso, cutting suggestive lines hinting at even more muscles through the thin cotton of his too-small t-shirt.
I swallowed. Had August always been that tall? Or had he put on extra inches upward as well as outward in the years since we broke up? It wasn't just physical, there was something more, something almost primal and magnetic ... I swallowed harder.
"Oh." I didn't mean to sigh but the sound punched from my mouth unbidden. I brought Henry to the front of my mind. Thin and fragile, abruptly so, so old in his hospital bed back at the university. Henry, who was too weak to make this trip, laying in a well-lit room with nurses and tubes flowing from his body and the strange bouquet of holly and wormwood and unidentified greenery August had sent along with the invitation to meet him out here. Henry was the reason I was here, in so many extremely literal ways. In other figurative ones as well. These were the thoughts I held on to, I had to hold on to, to get through the day.
"Hey there, Scott," August drawled in a voice that had haunted the edges of my repressed dreams for more than a decade. "Where are you off to in such a hurry, partner?"
"Off to?" I repeated blankly. How was it possible, or fair, for him to still affect me like this? I told myself that I had simply forgotten just how overwhelming he was. "Not off. Just ... looking ..."
August arched an eyebrow and quirked his lips. It was an expression I remembered well. Not fondly. Just well. It was amorphous, managing to appear either indulgent, affectionate, amused, or condescending all at once. I could never tell if it was the expression of just one of the feelings or an arrogant amalgam of all four. When we were freshmen, I always made myself believe it was affectionate amusement, but age and experience left me almost certain it was neither.
"Looking?" August prompted.
Suddenly, I was very conscious of how close we were standing. Body heat radiated from August, seeping through to me. I took one step back. Then another. Before he could take offense, I thrust out my right hand, determined not to let it tremble.
"Looking," I said with more confidence this time. "For you. The estate is rather large and I wasn't entirely sure where you had expected to meet me."
Ignoring the outstretched hand, August stepped forward, pulling me into a tight, somewhat uncomfortably intimate, hug. I froze, blood chilling and my body icy stiff. For a moment, just a brief, breathy hush, I thought I smelled the suffocating dust of holly and a taint of sulfur. But August flexed his arms, constricting the hug, pulling me closer, and it was gone, replaced with my body's embarrassing response to the proximity of such a charismatic slice of my history.
"It's so good to see you," August said. His entire body pressed along the planes of mine. I could feel the carved plates of abs and the subtle bite from his hipbones where they rocked into me.
For a third time I swallowed, ordering my hormones to stand down. They fought me, drawn to something deep within August I wasn't sure I could even explain. But I won out over them, peeling myself out of August's embrace. My teeth worried at my lower lip. It was already chapped and I pulled off a strip of brittle skin, the metallic taste of blood rising to where it had been.
"It's been a while," I said. The most diplomatic thing that came to mind given the circumstances.
"It has," August agreed, looking me up and down slowly. Boldly. There was an eerie light to that look, predatory, but beyond that nothing. "What's it been? Five, six, eight years?"
I looked away, consciously keeping my breath steady. I focused instead on the carriage-house-turned-garage, staring through the grease smeared window at the dirt-smudged bumper of August's Aston Martin. I noted, not really seeing, the lichen that coated the building both inside and out, the paint that had faded to an unidentifiable hue on its doors. A thin but unbroken blanket of dust had been distributed across the gracious curves of August's luxury car. Somewhere deep in a dark, hollow room of my mind, an alarm bell started to ring but I couldn't say why. An insect began whirring in my ear, distracting, far more obnoxious than the ephemeral sense of dread that hovered over me in much the same way.
It had been eleven years. Or near enough. Eleven years and three failed marriages (to women), a string of jilted (female) mistresses, no children, five DUIs, four public scandals, two arrests, one community service sentence--half-filled--and an uncountable number of tabloid stories that flirted with dragging out the truth, kicking and screaming. Even if they never actually did. For me, those eleven years had included one heartbreak, one subtle wooing, three therapists, a switch in majors from comparative religions to local history, four degrees, tenure, five papers published in peer-reviewed journals, one novel co-authored with Henry, and one quiet wedding along the Massachusetts coast. And half a million in hospital bills to keep Henry breathing.
"Something like that," I said. I manhandled an easy, friendly smile onto my face, where it vibrated with brittle sincerity.
"E
ither way, it's been too long. Let's never do that again."
"Let's." I hoped the tone was agreeable. I didn't feel agreeable. "So you said you found some old ledgers? From the eighteenth century?"
"Did I?" August asked in perfect August-like boredom.
It's always nice when the universe confirms that there are some things that can always be counted on as a constant. The sun rises in the east, rain falls from the clouds to the earth, the moon waxes and wanes, and August never speaks straight if there is a power game to play.
"Yeah, you mentioned something like that."
"Oh. Yes. I think I do know what you mean. It may take me a bit to dig those out."
"Alright." I almost cut August off. Almost. "Well, while you are doing that, would it be too uncouth of me to explore a little?"
Most families as old as August's were private to the point of paranoia. The Winsingtons were no different. If anything, they were more rabid about keeping their name clean. It was frankly awe-inspiring that they hadn't disowned August. Personally, I believed all that prevented such a thing was the fact that August could publicly step out of the closet at any moment. Probably would out of spite. Or boredom.
But it wasn't modern scandals that interested either Henry or me. There was a rich mystery the family harbored, something that had happened between 1620 and 1790. Even the oldest and WASP-iest of families generally weakened their death grip on that sort of history. Not the Winsingtons.
I flashed an incredibly shallow smile, one my time with August had taught me to wield, and continued. "It's not every day one gets the opportunity to visit a gem of history like this. Especially not with such an attractive and knowledgeable host. I would hate if I were to miss a single brick."
That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1) Page 18
