Dark Carnival (A Horror Anthology)

by Macabre Ladies

  “You will go on. People are expecting you.”

  “I have never missed a performance before,” he said sullenly. “They can go one night without me.”

  “You will not miss a performance tonight either,” the Dwarf Queen said, her voice rising now. “You are not sick. You are not injured. You don’t feel like going on? Well, too bad. How do we know you will feel like going on tomorrow?”

  “I will get over myself in a few days…”

  The Dwarf Queen would never let the clown prevail. “You will get over yourself now. You are not going to let everyone down. You wanted to be the center of attention. You are the number one attraction in the freakshow. This is the price of being the star. The show must go on.”

  “I just don’t think that I can do the show with you,” he admitted, hoping to hurt her feelings.

  “I am not stupid,” she declared complacently, because she had an ace up her sleeve. “I have already thought of that. I know you so well.”

  Pindick realized she was ahead of him. “Then, how?”

  “You will do the act with Wanda.”

  He liked the idea of doing the performance with the man-girl. He did not appreciate how she always tried to compete with the Dwarf Queen, but he could not deny that there had been a spark of electricity between them whenever they had appeared together before. It was not the same, but she had her own set of skills. At first, it had been easy; it was getting harder and harder to do the act. He was curious to see where Wanda might take the scene.

  “I have already discussed it with her,” the Dwarf Queen continued. “And she has agreed.”

  “What about the nose?” the clown asked sheepishly.

  “She knows about the nose.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her everything. I told her that you need the nose to get into character. She understands.”

  He did not feel so isolated now. Over the years, everyone had weak moments. Intoxicated, she had followed her impulses and now she was ashamed. She had no reason to feel shame, he understood, she was a free spirit. They could forgive each other for anything. He had the feeling that despite what had happened, she was still trying to watch over him. She was always so protective towards him. She had considered his feelings. It would all be easy if he was wearing the nose.

  Pindick surrendered. “All right. I will do the act with Wanda.”

  The sun was setting over the ocean, and they had not yet turned on the lamps in the room. They gazed at one another in the half-light.

  “I will prepare the nose for you beforehand.” She softened her tone and came closer to where he was standing. “So, you will have nothing to worry about.”

  But the Dwarf Queen would never see her partner again after that night.

  Wanda the man-girl came to the room to get Pindick about half an hour before curtain. She was wearing a tight spangled leotard, a short cape, elbow-length gloves, and high shiny boots. She had her signature whip coiled about her. In white face paint and in costume, the clown was ready. She took hold of him roughly.

  “Let’s go, fool.” She laughed.

  Pindick blinked at her vacantly and muttered an inaudible response.

  The Dwarf Queen smiled at Wanda. “He’s all yours. Have fun.”

  “Enjoy your night off,” said Wanda.

  They went out into the corridor and the Dwarf Queen watched them leave. Wanda strode a few steps ahead with a swing in her hips, while Pindick waddled behind her in his clown feet with his head bowed.

  A warm breeze was stirring. The night had fallen, and the half-moon rose over the sea.

  It was a short walk through the resort to the backstage entrance of the old burlesque house. From a distance, the illuminated, creaky building loomed spookily against the dark horizon. It gave him that same ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Pindick took his place at the back of the theater as soon as the house lights went down. He had never felt nervous before. He always waited until his cue, when the Ringmaster asked for a volunteer, someone ridiculous. Then the spotlight would sweep through the audience and discover him at the back of the hall.

  At first, he would pretend that he did not want to go up on the stage, and the Ringmaster would be insistent. People would start clapping and whistling. Sometimes, someone would give him a shove as he gingerly went forward and up the small flight of steps at the apron.

  But on that final night, the Ringmaster thought better of it. He went through the motions, and the spotlight raked the seats, skimming right by him. The harsh beam of it settled instead on one of the hotel guests, a tall, thin, lantern-jawed man on holiday. The Ringmaster called him up, and egged on by his group of friends, the volunteer did the fire-eating trick while Pindick watched from the back of the theater.

  Half-relieved and half-jealous, he shuffled out through the side doors and went backstage to wait for his turn with the man-girl.

  Wanda strutted up to him as he waited in a corner of the wings, getting her face so close to his that he could count the tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead.

  “Nobody wanted to see you eat fire,” she teased. “Oh, poor little Pindick.” Then she playfully squeezed his spongy nose. “What on earth am I going to do to you tonight?”

  A kaleidoscope of naked bodies, feathers, glitter, scenery, backdrops, trampolines, and trapezes tumbled through his mind. There was frantic circus music and laughter and applause, and he imagined that he could hear the drumbeat of his own heart.

  His head spun like a pinwheel. His legs felt weak. He saw the blurry features of the man-girl in front of him, her white teeth gleaming in a lascivious grin, but he could not focus his eyes. He tried to catch his breath, sucking in the air through his lips. He hardly recognized where he was. Everything in the grand universe seemed pinpointed to the overwhelming image of the Ringmaster and the Dwarf Queen doing it.

  Time sped up, and before he knew it, he heard the Ringmaster wielding the microphone to announce the act which everyone had been waiting for. And then Wanda was marching him out onto the stage.

  The crowd stamped their feet and jeered in unison. “Pin-dick! Pin-dick! Pin-dick!”

  The spotlight hit him, and a roar of delight came from the throng.

  Wanda circled around him, in front of him, in his face, then behind him, invisible. She prodded him, poked him, and all of a sudden, she jerked his trousers down around his ankles. He stood exposed.

  “We’re going to do the Penguin tonight,” she declared, crossing to the far side of the stage. “Let’s see you do the Penguin walk.”

  Hands perpendicular to the sides, he took a few awkward steps towards her. He saw the Ringmaster leering from the wings, his lips curved in a nasty smile. Pindick looked around, lost without the Dwarf Queen to encourage him. He took a deep inhalation, and in his stupor, stumbled leadenly towards the bleary figure in the spangled cape.

  It was not quick enough for Wanda. She uncoiled her whip and cracked it once against the hard wooden planks of the stage so that the yellow dust rose from the floorboards.

  “I’m waiting for you,” she said with a lilt in her voice, and he tried to get his legs to work faster.

  Then, as he approached her, Wanda did the cruelest thing that Pindick could have imagined.

  She tossed her whip aside, and before he knew it, she reached for his face. In a flash, she had plucked off his nose.

  “No!” cried the clown.

  The audience erupted with laughter.

  “You want it,” teased Wanda. “Come and get it.”

  He hobbled towards her, hampered by the oversized clown shoes and his trousers coiled around his feet. She moved away as he got closer. She tossed the phony nose from hand to hand. She pretended that she was about to give it to him and then snatched her hand away again as he reached for it. She tucked both hands behind her back, hiding the nose in her fist.

  “You don’t understand,” Pindick stammered, “The nose is very import
ant…”

  “It’s v-v-very important,” mimicked Wanda. “Then you had better go and get it, hadn’t you?” She stepped to the edge of the stage and, to the horror of the clown, flung the little red nose into the audience.

  The spectators got into the game at once, throwing the nose like a ball from one hand to another. Pindick pulled up his trousers and clambered down the stairs at the apron into the dimly lit hall.

  From the balcony, the spotlight was pointed at him. He chased the nose as the audience members transferred it from the front rows to the back of the house, and somehow or other as the theater ushers got into the lark, it went out the back door. And Pindick followed his nose.

  It was a spectacular exit and the man-girl took a bow on the stage to thunderous applause.

  His nose, as it turned out, would elude Pindick.

  About an hour after the performance ended, the Dwarf Queen hammered on the door of Wanda’s room.

  “I can’t find Pindy,” she said when Wanda came to the door. “He’s not at the bar. He wasn’t backstage. And he did not come back to our room.”

  “I know,” Wanda replied, “He ran out of the back doors of the theater at the end of the scene, but then he was nowhere to be found.”

  “How was the show?”

  “Hilarious. The audience loved it. So did I. He was a sensation.”

  “What made Pindy run out of the back of the theater? He has never done that before.”

  “Oh, my darling, you should have seen it.” Wanda laughed. “He was chasing his nose.”

  “He lost his nose?”

  “I took it off him.”

  The alabaster complexion of the Dwarf Queen seemed to turn a paler shade. “That nose is what puts him into his trance.”

  They heard the distant smash of glassware from the pool-deck bar. Someone started shouting in another language.

  Wanda thought that the Dwarf Queen was about to faint. “You’d better explain.”

  “The sponge of the nose soaks up a special concoction which he inhales.” She drew a sigh. “He is completely addicted to it.” She was embarrassed to say the truth, so she spoke it quickly. “It’s amyl nitrate, a little alcohol, and some powder.”

  A gust of wind swept her black hair across her face.

  There was a stamp of boots up the staircase.

  Still in his circus wardrobe, the Ringmaster lumbered down the corridor. “There might be a problem.”

  “Do you know where Pindy is?”

  “Jumba the giant said he saw Mr. P running down to the beach. The wind caught his nose, and he chased after it.”

  They ran through the resort, with Wanda and the Dwarf Queen striding ahead and the Ringmaster wheezing behind them, holding onto his top hat.

  Jumba, the big muscle man, was standing on the sand barefoot and stripped to the waist. His trousers were soaked. He was shivering, even though the night was warm. He had swum out into the treacherous backwash, but he had had no luck.

  As the Dwarf Queen, the Ringmaster, and the Man-girl approached, Jumba shook his head somberly. There was no sign of the clown in the water or anywhere down the beach, not even a footprint on the sand. There was no shadow under the moonlight. The four performers with their outlandish physiques stood in a frozen tableau, gazing into the tides, not sure what to do or feel or believe. Nobody moved, nobody dared to breathe a word.

  But then, bobbing on the dark waves, they spotted the little red dot that was his nose. Jumba and the Ringmaster had to hold the Dwarf Queen back or she would have plunged into the breakers.

  “Pindy! Pindy! Pindy!” wailed the Dwarf Queen, but it was only the blind moan of the wind which offered any response.

  Years after, when the Dwarf Queen was no longer welcome at the resort, they said that at the half-moon, you could still hear her voice on the whispers of the wind, calling, “Pindy, Pindy, Pindy.”

  Haunted by the black cloud of uncertainty, the circus lost its popularity without its star. The resort fell on hard times, and the theater itself fell into disrepair after a bad winter storm damaged some of the wooden framework.

  Every night, it was Pindick who closed the program, who was the grand finale. On the island after that night, there were many who thought that it was the sad-faced clown who’d had the last laugh; but many believed that he had disappeared into the salty waters as if he had drowned in a sea of his own sorrowful tears.

  Whatever happened to the clown after that remained a mystery. Eventually, the tales of his lively antics for a few short seasons faded from memory to legend. And, like all legends, nobody knew for certain if any of it ever existed. In the shrinking spotlight at the end, like the admirers watching his solo and like all jesters, everything vanished in a tiny pinhole.

  About The Authors

  Patrick C. Harrison III

  Patrick C. Harrison III (PC3, if you prefer) is the author of A Savage Breed, Inferno Bound and the Hell Hounds, 5 Tales That Will Land You in Hell, Visceral: Collected Flesh (with Christine Morgan), and Cerberus Rising (with Chris Miller and M. Ennenbach), and his works can be found in numerous anthologies, including And Hell Followed and Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers Vol. 4.

  PC3 is also the co-owner (with Jarod Barbee) and editor-in-chief of Death’s Head Press, a Texas-based publisher of dark fiction. The Splatter Western is the brainchild of PC3 and has become somewhat of a phenomenon in indie horror, published solely by Death’s Head Press.

  PC3 is a family man at heart, who enjoys baseball, camping, horror movies, fishing, and, of course, reading. He lives in Wolfe City, TX with his wife and children.

  Shea Herlihy-Abba

  Shea Herlihy-Abba’s psychic medium business You Guys, I’m Psychic can be found on Facebook and Instagram at youguysimpsychic. If you want to talk to ghosts and stuff, reach out to her if you dare.

  Jody Smith

  Jody Smith is a horror author who lives in small town Ontario, Canada who likes animals and TV. His gory, splattery horror novella, Who Will Save Your Soul? is available now.

  https://dancingflamebooks.wixsite.com/my-site

  Aristo Couvaras

  Aristo Couvaras was born to Greek parents in Durban, South Africa. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English Literature and Clinical Psychology, as well as a Bachelor of Laws.

  He has had stories featured at horrortree.com, Econoclash Review, Things in the Well’s anthologies, Beneath the Waves- Tales from the Deep and Trickster’s Treats 4, Critical Blast’s anthology, Gods & Services, and Fantasia Divinity’s Behind Glass Eyes.

  Aristo can be found on Twitter @AR1sto.

  J. Edwin Buja

  J. Edwin Buja is a retired technical writer who lives in a village in Ontario, Canada. His first novel, The King of the Wood Part 1, was released in 2019. The second novel is being released later in 2021. He has published several short horror stories and is currently working on two ghost novels. A history major at university, he enjoys doing research for stories and has a special affinity for World War One.

  https://www.amazon.ca/J-Edwin-Buja/e/B07WSFN2VX

  Christine Marek

  Christine Marek is an X-Ray technician and author of the short story, Carnival Daze. For over a decade, she has written horror and fantasy stories mainly for herself. Born and raised in Northern Illinois where the weather can change in the blink of an eye, her newfound stability in the X-Ray world has pushed her passion in writing to a new level. More of her horror and fantasy writings can be found at https://www.wattpad.com/user/halfbloodlycan.

  R. David Doan

  R D Doan, a member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers, has had short stories appear online on sites such as burialday.com and in The Sirens Call eZine. His tales of horror have also been featured in anthologies such as the GLAHW anthology Marisa’s Recurring Nightmares and in the anthology, Nobody Goes Out Anymore: Futuristic Fiction Post Covid-19. As a Physician Assistant, he has authored the Textbook Evi
dence-based Medicine on the Trail and has written numerous academic articles; but he prefers to wade into the world of darker fiction. He resides in West Michigan with his wife, two sons and dogs.

  He can be found online on Twitter (@rd3_pac) and Instagram (@rddoan)

  Chisto Healy

  Chisto has had over 200 stories published in the past year. He takes inspiration from his amazing kids. Please find him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @ChistoHealy and get his newest book Hotel Evil which also has some really cool merch available. You can follow one of his children’s inspirations, the Puppet Man as he continues to haunt the pages of several publishers. Follow him on Amazon for a full list of what he has out and what’s coming.

  Kristen Lester

  Kristen Lester is a 28-year-old horror/dark fantasy writer from Roanoke, VA. She discovered her love for horror and writing as a child and with the encouragement of her mother and sister she went on to study creative writing at Radford University. She received her B.S. in creative writing in 2015. She currently spends her time writing on new horror projects and listening to heavy metal. Kristen lives with her husband of 4 years and her cat.

  https://www.facebook.com/likeacheesecake

  Stuart Stromin

  Stuart Stromin is a South African-born writer and filmmaker, living in Los Angeles. He was educated at Rhodes University, South Africa, the Alliance Francaise de Paris, and UCLA. His work has appeared in Blood Puddles, The Chaffin Journal, Garfield Lake Review, Temptation Press, Sheila-na-gig online, The Raven, Dissident Voice, etc.