Dark Perceptions (Mystic's Carnival Collective)

by Kristi, Debra

  He was brave. I could be brave, too. I latched my harness, pulled down the safety bar, and swallowed my cowardice. I tried not to think about the inconsistencies. Matt was right, I had nothing to fear. It had been silly of me to count the people getting on and off the ride while we’d waited our turn. I clearly miscounted. It’s the only thing that makes sense. How else can a ride end with fewer occupants than it started? Yeah, that’s it, I counted wrong. Nothing to fear.

  Scarred and ugly, the ride operator shoved into my personal space. Each waft of his rotting breath sent creepy crawlies skittering across my skin. My stomach churned a thick, clammy spin and twisted into a thorn-riddled knot.

  He pulled and jiggled my harness, and all I wanted to do was shove him and his B.O.-drenched body away. His clumped-mop hair and tobacco-beer cologne induced an automatic hurl response in my esophagus.

  “All good,” he said. I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

  I just wanted him gone. Away from me. Out of my face. As far as he could possibly go. I turned away, averted my gaze. Maybe avoidance would move the process along quicker.

  “Yep,” I mumbled, trying to keep my voice steady, nonchalant. “All normal.” My eyes volleyed, settling on the rusty metal at my feet.

  “Ya think?” he retorted with the hint of a cackle.

  My muscles, tendons, all went rigid. There was something about the way he moved, the tone of his voice. So Stephen King-ish. Even as he helped the person on my left, he baited me, teased me. I couldn’t help myself. I looked up.

  “Carnival wouldn’t ‘ave gotten its rep if it were normal.” His face contorted, took on an all-knowing smirk. “She likes to show you things.” He leaned closer, whispered in my ear. My insides churned and I shivered, jerked away. Ignoring me, he jiggled my harness, then continued moving around the ride’s ring like a spinning tornado ride. Within seconds he was gone.

  Panic burrowed deep within my belly. Nausea bubbled, burned up my throat. My eyes darted, searched the riders in the other bays, then sought the exit. Things weren’t right. People were missing and there had been monsters present. I wanted off. Had to get out. Had to move before it was too late.

  The ride lurched, began to spin, and my heart sank, froze me with fear.

  Already too late.

  In a circle we swung. Slowly at first, then faster and faster with each rotation. Riders, lights, machinery, all blurred into a haze.

  I reached for Matt’s hand and flailed in the dark. What I found was cold and clammy. It made my skin squirm. Fighting the force of the gravitational pull, I twisted my head. Turned toward him. He wasn’t there. The face of a rotting corpse stared back at me. His eyes brown, like Matt’s. The hair falling from his scalp, the same dirty blond. But it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be Matt—right?

  I couldn’t drop his hand fast enough, my scream erupting, ripping up my throat and out of my mouth.

  “Don’t worry, Sara. I’ll protect you,” it said. Words almost lost in the sounds of a bizarre musical track and an insane combination of screams and savage laughter. Words I would have sworn were meant to soothe me, yet did anything but.

  My head snapped forward and I screamed again. Screamed with every ounce of blood-curdling might I could muster. I wanted to escape, run, get away, but the ride moved at astronomical speed and my body merged with the wall from the force of it all.

  The back wall seeped in around me. Held me with a dry ice grip and werewolf claws. Frost encased me, molded around me, torment splintering through my chest at the speed of my rapid, thump-thumpidy heart.

  I’m going to die.

  The thought dropped in my gut like a boulder to the bottom of the sea, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

  I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.

  I grasped at the handles. Held out for hope. For a chance I’d make it through the ride alive.

  The Matt-corpse shouted, its voice pitching like a little girl’s. Is it scared, too? The message was garbled, words gobbled by the grind of the motor, the gale of the wind, and the gorrific screams within. That thing was a monster, an ugly symbol of death. And I refused to look.

  Instead, I focused on tobacco and beer. The eerie ride engineer. He knew. He said as much. He said the carnival wasn’t normal. This is a Krypton’s throw from normal. My heart accelerated like God had slammed his foot down on the gas pedal of my life.

  Then my ticker froze. Stopped. Suspended mid-beat.

  Breath rose, hitched in my chest, time and time again. Splotches danced, made tracks across my vision, fading in and out and in and out. I was hyperventilating.

  It was too much. Too much panic and fear and anxiety and unknowing.

  Something rough―gnarly, knotted skin―clamped around my ankle. My shriek trapped within my throat. The tiniest of yelps escaped.

  What this side of Hell’s Gates could move contrary to the centrifugal force flattening me like a pancake? I didn’t want to look, yet I tried. It was like my head had been strapped. I couldn’t move.

  Fire flared across my neck muscles as I pressed forward, determined to see my feet. My arms, my shoulders, they ached from the strain. And that something, that thing clamped around my ankle, continued to scratch and paw as it climbed up my legs. Fear froze my responses. My mind colliding, tripping and falling over all my thoughts like a pile of dirty laundry.

  Then I saw it. Saw her.

  She was me—only dead.

  Like the Matt-thing in the bay beside me. She dragged her torn and bloodied body up mine, climbing until our eyes met. Then I squeezed mine shut and refused to look. Trying to press and hold the positive and beautiful moments behind my eyelids.

  No use.

  Her voice slithered through the recesses of my mind. Detached, slow, scary, and weary. “There’s no evading―”

  Siren song swooped in all around me, signaling the ride’s end. The spinner lurched, slowed. A pop―my body ungluing from the back wall. All motion shifted to a crawl. With hesitation, I opened my eyes and watched us slowly spin to a stop. She, the dead version of me, was gone, and Matt was normal again.

  A tremble shuddered through me, my psyche crumbling into wreckage.

  Internally I was still screaming, kicking and ripping at my restraints.

  The engineer flashed around the circle, releasing the riders with a gunman’s quick draw. His mangled, wicked grin focused on me. “Did you see it? See what you refuse?”

  A nervous giggle bubbled up to camouflage my anxiety and fear. I didn’t answer, not in words.

  I stepped away from the harness, away from the ride. I slipped, skipped, skittered as quick as I could, pulling Matt at my side. An empty bay on our left and one far off to the right. Riders gone missing, but where had they gone? Glimpses of things stared out from the mirrored walls, passed too quickly to truly be seen.

  When the spinner’s metal cage fell behind us and the crisp night air kissed my skin, I yanked Matt closer, wanting nothing more than to melt into him. “Hated that,” I said, my voice low and hoarse, refusing to cry. No matter how frazzled the experience had been, I would not give in. I was stronger than tears.

  We stood, two wrapped lovers, among the carnival crowd. Whispering couples, laughing families, kids of all ages, even kids with balloons, all passing around us. I laid my head against Matt’s chest and stared at the festive, magical lights splaying ahead. No longer the impossible find, the Ferris wheel loomed before us, twinkling high into the midnight sky. In the damp night air the glowing, glittering lights blurred, casting a come-hither aura.

  I wanted to go. Now I knew we soon would.

  Matt squeezed me. His arms fitting firm and secure around me. It wasn’t the kind of hug you gave on a first date, or even a second. It was a sincere melding of bodies. The kind you felt all the way to your core. My fingers clenched at the fabric of his shirt, wanting to pull him around me, into me. Gone were my fears about love and relationships. I was ready to cement my commitment to Matt.

&nbs
p; He gently kissed the top of my head. “It wasn’t all that bad. A lot better than our last date,” he murmured. He stared at me in silence for several beats and I felt the weight of his words press upon me. Push the breath of truth into me. “You remember now, don’t you?” he said, and I looked up at him, unblinking. “Damn big rig ruined everything.” His lips fell into a somber frown.

  Every ounce of every bit of me went infinitesimally rigid. I stared at the rides, at the game booths, at all the kids with their Mylar balloons. In every single reflective surface―every one―dead versions of Matt and me stared back.

  Shows you the truths you refuse. That’s what he’d said. The eerie engineer.

  My skin chilled like an arctic wind had rolled over me. My heart stopped with a ka-thump. My eyes hardened, steeled with purpose. Now focused on the tall man in the grey suit with a fedora, standing in the mist by the Ferris wheel. I’d seen him in the crowd, alongside the tents and in reflections, all night long. Now I understood.

  He waited for us. He was our Reaper.

  I remembered now.

  We died that night. Our last date. Time I accepted it.

  Time to face the Reaper.

  Mr. Grey-suit moved through the crowd like brutal royalty. People looked away, yet moved aside. Matt and I followed him in a rather sheepish manner. No one stood in his path or tried to slow him down. Even the people in line waiting for the Ferris wheel let us pass. Straight to the front we walked. Right up to the car waiting for the next passenger. The carnie working the ride held the bar back, allowing us to step inside.

  “This is where we part ways,” our Reaper said and bowed slightly, without removing his hat.

  Matt stepped in, not bothering to question the man. He took a seat and shifted uncomfortably when the car rocked. I imagined he, like me, knew the situation. Knew it was pointless to argue Death. Plus, Grey-suit was somewhat intimidating.

  I stepped forward to follow Matt into the Ferris wheel carriage, but Mr. Grey-suit’s arm sprang up across my chest, bringing me to a halt. “Not you, my dear.”

  The bar dropped across Matt’s lap and the carriage leapt into action, taking him up toward the top of the Ferris wheel.

  “Matt!” I screamed, and struggled against the Reaper’s hold. “I belong with him!” I yelled at Mr. Grey-suit.

  “You are not marked the same,” he said.

  My hand flew to the back of my neck, feeling for the glowing tattoo. “What do the marks mean?”

  “They are your destination designation―post life.”

  “So all those people inside the Big Top…?”

  “Dead,” he responded matter-of-factly.

  I looked to Matt, gliding away from me on the Ferris wheel. If we were both dead I wanted to go with him, not transverse the unknown alone.

  “Sara!” Matt leaned out across the seat, yelling my name as the ride continued to carry him upward. It swung in a mad manner, him hanging out the side, attempting to keep me in view. I worried he would fall out. It was a silly thought to have. Ludicrous, actually.

  But then magic happened. Brilliant, light-up-the-sky, supernatural power. Power to rival the finest stardust showers Merlin could ever muster. And it wasn’t trickery or illusion. It was Matt’s soul shifting into a zillion light particles and dancing up to the heavens. Swinging on stars and flirting with the bewitchment of the carnival below. It was everything, and it was nothing, because I was left below, not allowed to go.

  Only moments ago I had decided Matt was the one. Now he was gone. A hole tore through the center of my being. Death had scooped out my emotions and replaced them with a vacuum of despair.

  Mr. Grey-suit moved his arm. “Grieve not his loss. He may be no more real than you or I.”

  I balked at the absurdity his words conveyed. None of us real? What did that mean? I knew when he caught the look on my face because the corner of his lip twitched, if only for a moment. Then he spoke.

  “Who is to say anything we touch, taste, or experience is truly real? It could all be one large creation of the mind. Merely a fragment of our individual perception. What one person sees may not be real for the next individual.” His right brow hitched and he studied me, as if anticipating my reaction.

  I shot up ramrod straight, eyes widening like a full moon. It can’t be true, can it? I wanted to ask but felt my tongue tacked in place by shock, confusion, and a wee bit of anger.

  He laughed and his entire demeanor lightened, making him appear more approachable. “My dear, I got your wheels turning with that one, didn’t I? You’ll be thinking about it for the rest of the walk in, I gather. Maybe longer.” He chuckled, though I failed to see the joke. “Don’t you worry your pretty head. You are real enough. And your friend, well…” He swirled his finger up into the air, as if acting out Matt’s ascension in a game of charades. “All well and good, but you are meant for other things.” He straightened his shoulders, fixed his lapel, and began walking off the exit platform. He looked back when I did not follow. “Come along.”

  Scurrying to catch up, I gathered my courage and stepped up next to him. “Why didn’t I get to go with Matt?”

  He rolled his eyes. “And Higgins spoke so highly of you. Thought you would have figured it out by now.” He looked at me and let out a single, silent laugh. “You have a different future lying in wait. It’s as simple as that. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  We moved down the ramp onto the midway and into the crowd. Tall as he was, he was easy to follow, his hat always sticking up above everyone else. But as we moved my skin started to prick. The air around me felt electrified and smelled strange, like it had when we’d approached the Ferris wheel and lost it, time and time again. The crowd was suddenly gone, and we stood in a different area of the carnival. I spun around to find the Ferris wheel no longer at my back.

  “What…? How…?” I stammered.

  “It’s all part of the carnival’s charm. Intriguing, isn’t it?” He laid out his hand, as if expecting me to take it. I held mine in a fist at my chest.

  “I still don’t understand why I don’t get to go with Matt.”

  He let out a large gale of wind, as if annoyed by my question. He dropped his hand and with it, his shoulders relaxed. “Transcending is for humans. You get to come with me.”

  “I’m not human?”

  “Score one for the young lady.”

  “But—I don’t understand.”

  “You will, soon enough. Now come with me.”

  I studied him, his tall, imposing stature, unreadable facial features, and the stiff nature in which he held himself. “Wherever I’m going, and whatever I am, will I be able to look for and find Matt?”

  “Anything is possible,” he said with a snort.

  “Okay, then.” I stepped up beside him, intending to do everything in my power to reunite with Matt―somehow.

  “It’s a start.” Satisfaction grew across his face, warmth spreading in the form close to a smile. Once again he extended his hand, and this time I took it. Together we walked to the outskirts of the carnival, where a thick layer of fog stood flat and tall like a wall. It surrounded, possibly caged, the gala of shows, rides, and festival fun. “This, Sara, is where your new life begins. You haven’t yet scratched the surface of living.” Crow’s feet appeared at the edges of his eyes and his cheeks lifted and darkened. “Wondrous things are in store. Wondrous.”

  The fog opened like a door when we stepped up to it, a vast hallway extending on to forever. All I could hear bouncing off every corner of my mind—you haven’t yet scratched the surface of living.

  If I wasn’t human, then what was I? I wanted to know, looked forward to finding out. I was anxious to discover the real me.

  And then get Matt back.

  I stepped into the fog excited and without regret.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from the books one and two in the Age of the Hybrid series set in the same world, both coming soon.

  Book one in the Age of the Hybrid seriesr />
  A Mystic’s Carnival Collective novella

  Book two in the Age of the Hybrid series

  A Mystic’s Carnival Collective novella

  Glimpse

  Death was always the same. Not the people or the place or the circumstance. That changed from one stop to the next. Each one unique in its own special way. But Sebastian had come to understand his calling in the past few weeks and now recognized the signs for what they were. Always present. Always pulling. And always overwhelming with the constant stench of death. His own personal calling card.

  A mere few assisted prior to helping his best friend, Kyra, escape purgatory, Sebastian had lost count of the number of souls he’d crossed over since embracing his Reaper half. He’d fought his destiny. Feared being an icon of death. A messenger of doom. For her, he’d do it again in a fluttered heartbeat. She was more than a friend. He’d come to crave everything she brought to their relationship. Even the rage of her dragon.

  Things were different now, though.

  He understood a Reaper’s value.

  And Kyra…well, she didn’t remember him. Not at all. Of course, he was going to change that. Yes. Definitely change that. Very soon. First he had to get past Marcus’s damn barrier spell. Sebastian clenched his fist and imagined it slamming into Marcus’s jawline.

  Damn Marcus for taking Kyra.

  Damn him for keeping her from Sebastian.

  And damn him for escaping the Reaper.

  Sebastian stood beside his second stop of the day. If he had a choice he’d be at Marcus’s door right now, but the opportunity to get away from prying eyes or the constant watch of his father and his men had yet to present itself. The asphalt spread before him, a dark and crumbled highway to the unknown―at least, unknown to most who found themselves in need of Sebastian’s services. He knew exactly where it led.