Dark Carnival (A Horror Anthology)

by Macabre Ladies

  “I think he’s right,” Dejan finally said.

  “Yeah, I’m right. I told you, I’ve done it,” Harry said. He started pointing, his arm guiding them through the actions. “Up the tree. Up to that branch there, see? It’s thick enough to climb onto and it goes right over the fence.”

  “So, if we fall, we break our necks and get shocked,” Miguel said. “We should be telling your mom about this. Don’t you guys know, someone could use this to get onto your property and break into your house. Why do you think your parents have electric fences in the first place?”

  Harry said, “It’s thick enough for us to climb on. Not adults. No kids are going to break into our house, Migs. Now, look, let’s start again. Up the tree, up to that branch, you crawl, or sorta slide along it until you can reach over for that branch there, see?”

  His friends nodded. Miguel looking less convinced than Dejan.

  “Then you just reach over, grab the branch of that tree there on the other side. Crawl to the trunk, then climb down.”

  “And why we doing this again?” Miguel asked.

  “Because once we’re on the other side, we can find the train tracks. And once we find those, we can follow them to Uncle Funbo’s Circus.”

  “We all going to go together when there’s a show?” Miguel said. “Why try kill ourselves just so we can get lost trying to go there in the day.”

  “We’ll see,” Dejan said.

  “Exactly!” Harry added. “Have they got tickets yet? Are they even going to get any? How often do we have things like that here? It’s a circus, it’s not like they’re going to chase us away or call our parents and get us in trouble. It’ll be so cool seeing it, just us three, with no parents or other kids around. And besides, do you really want to risk their ‘we’ll see’ becoming ‘it’s too expensive’? Don’t you want to find out who Uncle Funbo is? What Uncle Funbo’s show is all about?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Harry began climbing. One foot going over a knot in the trunk, one hand grabbing a corner of peeling bark, then lifting himself to the first branch. From there it was easy to reach for the next bough and go higher and higher, until he was sitting with his legs dangling to the sides over the branch he had to shimmy over, high above the fence, before grabbing the branch of another tree and shimmying to the relative safety of that tree’s trunk.

  “Guys,” Harry said, “remember, we go one at a time. Don’t even come sit on this branch until I’m across.”

  “Where did you even get the idea to do this?” Dejan asked, as if only looking down from the height now made him suddenly realize he might have a few questions about safety.

  “The monkeys,” Harry answered, thinking of the gray-furred Vervet monkeys that amazed him with their acrobatic ways. They pestered his parents if a window to the kitchen was ever left open, and once, they’d returned home to a ransacked fruit bowl and open cupboards with their contents spilled over the floor.

  “Oh, brother,” Miguel moaned.

  “Seriously,” Harry said in his most reassuring voice. “They don’t even have to jump. They just cross over where the branches from one tree sort of make an ‘X’ with the other,” he said as he slowly squirmed forward like a caterpillar, legs dangling to the sides, ankles locked together..

  Eventually he made it to the point where the branches intersected. He slowly, and carefully, unlocked his ankles. He tentatively stood, knees bent, hands reaching for the other branch. He felt the branch he was standing on shake beneath him like a cartoon diving board. Harry leaned forward, grabbed for the next branch, and feeling how sweaty his palms were, decided it was better to wrap his arms around it in a hug.

  Dejan and Miguel both hissed with fear. Harry got his feet wrapped around the branch and, trying not look down at the electric fence or the unforgiving ground below, crossed from one tree to the next. He began crawling over his property line and into the wilderness, towards the trunk of this new tree.

  Once there, he turned around and motioned for them to follow. “See? No sweat. Told you I could do it!”

  They all decided that Miguel would go next so that he couldn’t chicken-out while Harry was on the other side and Dejan was crawling from one tree to the next. Harry could hear Miguel complaining as he did so, “Told us you could do it, I thought you said you’d done it before!”

  A bright flash lit the sky. Miguel froze where he was, clinging to the branch. A few seconds later, the resonant boom of a thunderclap followed.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Dejan announced. Fifteen seconds from the flash of lightning to the roar of thunder. “Means it’s only a few kilometers away!” Dejan called, urging Miguel onward.

  They were all climbing down when the next flash of lightning lit up the shadows of the forest.

  “Ten,” Dejan announced.

  Harry quickly led them onwards to where he thought the train tracks would be. The impending storm gave them a new sense of urgency. They had to find the tracks, get to Uncle Funbo’s, and be back before Harry’s mother noticed they were gone and preferably before an afternoon thunderstorm struck.

  None of them would fancy climbing back up and crossing from one tree to the next with rain pouring down and the fear of one of those trees being struck by lightning—thunderstorms, rain, and lightning were always accompanied by fire and climactic endings in movies.

  When the trees and bushes were thinner, and the signs of cut-down tree trunks became more common, Harry knew they were heading the right way.

  “Boom! Here they are,” he announced, pointing at the train tracks. “Now, when we were driving back the other day, the circus was on my left, so if we go this way, we should see it on our right, eventually.”

  “As long as we don’t see any dead bodies,” Miguel mumbled, remembering the old movie.

  Dejan spooked Miguel from behind and said, “As long as dead bodies don’t see us!”

  With that, they sprinted and hollered down the track. Scaring each other and screaming at the top of their lungs like explorers wandering through this bush for the first time.

  They had been walking for far longer than they’d expected. Thunder cannoned in the distance. Dejan stopped, turned around, and tried to peek at the sky through the foliage. He saw the slash of lighting and counted before they heard the accompanying thunder. “Seven,” he said. “We must be walking away from it.”

  “Or it’s a real slow storm,” Harry said. “Wait, you hear that?” He ran up an embankment and parted the bushes. Tar road and a car driving away. “We must be getting close,” he said. “I think we should try to cross here.”

  Soon after, they had the road and now the train tracks to their left. The bush on both sides started giving way to a lane of trees they all recognized.

  “Look!” Harry said triumphantly.

  A metallic finial rose to the sky and below it—like one of those olden-day ballgowns women used to wear—the red and white marquee. Harry thought the finial now looked more like an accusatory finger, pointing at God, asking to be struck.

  Thunder.

  “Five,” Miguel said this time. “It’s getting closer.”

  Uncle Funbo’s Natalia Circus. 19th December 1999. 19:00. Admit One.

  “This is where the circus people must live.”

  You weren’t supposed to look at carnival rides and think of bones.

  They entered Uncle Funbo’s Natalia Circus through the back. Behind them, a roiling gray sky, before them, a wonderland of rides and tent poles and canvas and empty stands waiting for vendors to offer carnival games and sugary or salty delights. There was no fence or wall, not even a chain. Just a point where the grass was suddenly occupied by crates, boxcars, and old but fancy-looking caravans or trailers. To their left, the great poster that covered the view of all this from the roadside.

  “Woah,” Harry said, “Looks a little like the trailers from Dumbo. You guys think these all just hook together, and they connect to a train?”

  Dejan nodded but put a finger to
his lips, “Shh, I think this is where the circus people must live.”

  “Guys, are you sure we’re allowed to be here?” Miguel said.

  “Well, doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Harry said, climbing the short wooden steps of an ornately designed but paint-chipped trailer. He stopped to read the names on the door—three names on one door. Three names that Harry associated with three cartoon duck brothers.

  “Are you going inside?” Dejan asked from right behind Harry. When he read the names, he sniggered and added, “If anyone catches us, you’re really going to ruffle their feathers.”

  Miguel was busy whispering about what they should do if somebody did happen upon them. Harry was pushing the door slowly open, trying his best to not let the hinges squeak, even though they didn’t hear or see any signs of anybody else being around. The interior was normal. It all looked old and unused, though. Bed. Cupboard. Small desk with a chair pushed in. No feathers scattered on the floor, no bowl of breadcrumbs anywhere. But there was, “Hay,” Harry whispered.

  “Straw,” Dejan said as quietly. Hay on the floor, strewn straw over the table, coming out from the pillow and even the mattress.

  Harry and Dejan both started at the rumble of the sky, louder and closer now.

  “Three,” Miguel said from outside.

  The little trailer seemed to have suddenly gotten darker.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Harry said.

  “Maybe they’re all in the big tent rehearsing?” Dejan said.

  They were both looking for reasons to get going. Other than the one true reason, it looked, smelled, and felt wrong in there. Wrong in the way kids knew something was wrong when a parent came home smelling of beer, saying their day was great, and then later saying the words, ‘canned, let go, redundant’. Wrong in that way. In the this-is-all-an-act way.

  They slunk through the apparent living quarters, past trailers that all seemed to have names of TV or movie characters, mostly those of the animated variety. Past an old-looking washtub filled with inky, rank-smelling, sudsy water—it was also wrong. Foam and bubbles were meant to be white, not this rusty, reddish, half-black molasses. Harry felt nothing had ever been cleaned in there. Wrong, like a stage prop from the school play that the kids knew, despite how hard they’d worked making it, would never fool any adult into thinking it was a real landscape you could walk into like in the cartoons.

  Even the bones of the Ferris wheel—to their right, beyond the big tent, just visible over the trailers, crates, and cages—were wrong.

  That was why they looked like bones, Harry thought, because there’s something wrong about them. You weren’t supposed to look at carnival rides and think of bones. On TV and in the movies, they always looked bright, with flashing lights and whimsical music.

  “Maybe they look better when they’re turned on,” Miguel said.

  “Yeah,” Dejan replied. “It’s just the clouds making it worse, too.”

  Harry didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said anything, had he? He just grunted and nodded as if he had and that was a good enough answer. Thunder rocked the sky. They spun about. The slate-gray clouds were almost right above them now, casting wide and dark shadows over the circus grounds.

  “Anybody see the lightning and count before the thunder?” Harry asked.

  Doing so suddenly seemed important. Even though they could see how close the fury of nature had crept up upon them.

  His friends shook their heads. Dejan pointed to the high tent pole at the center of the marquee, and to the Ferris wheel. “Think we’ll be fine, though. Lot of lightning rods here.”

  The first drops of rain began to fall, making dark little specks on their clothing.

  “Maybe we should just head back?” Miguel said. “Or even just go to Cole’s restaurant?”

  The other option in Harry’s mind was the shopping center. It was closest. Was bound to be full of people, maybe even somebody they knew who could drop them off at home. And then they could accept whatever punishment his mother dished out.

  Even a ride home with a stranger would be better now, even in this country… because… because…

  “Bad things happen to kids here,” Harry said.

  Dejan and Miguel nodded. Again, like they’d been thinking the same thing.

  Harry said, “Going to the center means going through or maybe around the big tent.”

  “I don’t want to,” Dejan said.

  Miguel added, “It’s not showtime, they’re not ready, and we’re not supposed to be here.”

  The rain went from the few drops of drizzle on the edges of the cloud cover to full on downpour in a matter of seconds. The three friends quickly huddled under the awning of a trailer one of the performers presumably stayed in. Harry recognized the name, but as lighting flashed—far too close for comfort—the lettering changed to something that was not English, Afrikaans, or Zulu, and definitely not Greek.

  He thought he might ask Dejan or Miguel if it was Serbian or Portuguese, but he knew—the same way Miguel had voiced that they were not supposed to be here—that the language was one very few people, if any, could read. And Harry knew it would be better not to meet somebody who could read it.

  When the echoes of the thunder accompanying the blast of lighting had subsided, swallowed by the gunfire of the rain, Dejan pulled them close, “You guys hear that too?”

  Voices. Strange voices. Talking. Using words the same way the doorway behind them used English letters: as props and costumes. Strange but familiar voices. Someone doing a bad impression, voices.

  Harry quickly scurried under the caravan, into the mud. Dejan and Miguel followed suit. They tried to hide themselves behind the short steps and the spoked wheels. Harry hoped they would see ordinary looking circus performers. Then they could tell them they’d snuck in and take whatever punishment was meted out.

  His heart rose as he watched three figures appear, walking in their direction. They were people, just people in costumes. He had to believe that. But they weren’t. Harry’s heart sank.

  Dejan whispered, “Are they supposed to be…?” He didn’t need to finish. The three duck brothers. White feathers, red and green and blue clothes with matching caps. But that’s not who they were supposed to be.

  Harry knew, perhaps in the way only a kid can know, that what they were supposed to be was three humans pretending that they were only dressed up as the characters. And if their voices weren’t bad enough, just the look of them—even obscured through the sheets of rain and darkness of the cloud cover—told Harry that those three performers were failing at pretending to be people in costume.

  The three duck brothers trailed wet stalks of hay in clumps and bundles behind them as they walked. Like Hansel and Gretel trailed breadcrumbs. Like snails trailed slime. If they trailed anything, it should’ve been feathers, but it was hay and straw. It struck Harry as the most wrong thing about the triplets.

  In the mud, rainwater puddling around them, they hunkered down beneath the caravan as more and more of Uncle Funbo’s performers—all pretending to be people pretending to be children’s TV and film characters—funneled back to their quarters, rehearsals obviously finished for the day.

  Every last one of them trailed soggy, sodden straw and hay.

  Harry, Dejan, and Miguel watched as the shadows going past became indistinguishable from the darkness of the unrelenting storm. A sunny afternoon drowned out by a summer storm. They watched as pointed shoes, with bells jangling from the tips, mounted the steps Harry hid behind. They waited as the gnome monstrosity made itself comfortable above them.

  The rain showed no signs of letting up or slowing down. The filthy muck and mire they were in became wetter and wetter. The water rose to their elbows and chin. Harry and his friends knew they’d have to get out from under the caravan soon. They also knew there was no going back the way they came, not with those quarters now all occupied.

  So with no tickets on them, and it not even being opening night, they were go
ing to make a break for Uncle Funbo’s Big Top.

  They didn’t dare to run flat out. Instead, they half crawled or jogged—leaning low and forward—from cover to cover. They needed to get out of the pelting rain. They didn’t want to go into the marquee, but they definitely didn’t want to be caught skulking about by any of the performers.

  With each flash of lightning, for a second, stained on their retinas, was the stuff behind the straw and hay marking the path the performers had taken out from the marquee. In each brilliant pop of liquid fire, the straw and hay became something else. Something that made the three boys scrunch their eyes shut and swallow their gorge, all while still loping forward, bent over in the sheets of driving rain.

  In the afterimage of a lightning strike, so close Harry would’ve expected to see sparks and flames, the Ferris wheel was made of bones. Colossal, gigantic bones. Harry had to steel himself just to keep heading towards the marquee. Red and white canvas became blood and ghosts.

  “Ah… guys… I can’t,” Miguel stammered.

  He’d seen it too, Harry knew.

  “Just c’mon, we have to,” Dejan said.

  He and Harry each grabbed one of Miguel’s arms and yanked him along with them towards the blood and ghosts billowing in the wind. They passed the thick, shadowy pythons of ropes that secured the massive canvas to the ground. Harry didn’t want to think about what the lighting might illuminate them as, or if the huge iron stakes driven into the ground would flash with claws or teeth biting and gripping, holding everything down in the churning winds.

  “I don’t want to,” Miguel was saying, over and over.

  Harry slapped a hand over his mouth to silence him, even though it must’ve been impossible to hear any of their whimpering with the wind rushing and bellowing through the canvas flaps and howling around the wooden carriages; impossible with the cascading sea falling from the sky, pummeling like spitfire bullets against every surface; impossible with the thunder booming and clapping and lightning ripping.