The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files)

by Frank Tuttle

  The gates stood open.

  I folded my copy of the Daily neatly and put it under my arm. The sun was bright and the breeze off the river kept the stench of the nearby slaughterhouses wafting the other way so I didn’t mind the walk. The old road was choked with weeds and missing quite a few pavers, but it was passable all the way down to the bank of the Brown.

  I caught the stink of mastodons before I heard their trumpeting and grunts. Ahead, trees cracked and fell, one after another, striking the earth with enough force to jar my teeth.

  I got out of the way. Six of the beasts charged past, chained to massive logs they dragged sideways through the scrub brush. Any tree too big to be felled by the monstrous logs was wrenched from the ground and tossed aside by a Troll-horse’s mighty trunk.

  In their wake was a wide, clear path leading right through the woods. Workmen were already swarming the sides of the path, hanging lanterns in trees and hammering garish posters and waybills here and there.

  None spoke as I passed, at least not to me. I tried to follow their muttered conversations as I walked, but couldn’t make out more than one word in five amid whatever patois they were using.

  The posters and waybills needed no translation, however. SEE THE AMAZING MAN OF BONES, proclaimed one, depicting an unlikely living skeleton dancing with a scantily-clad woman. The woman’s sheer gown was in danger of falling off, but the Man of Bones didn’t seem to mind.

  Next came THRILL TO GOGOR THE TROLL, who menaced the dancing woman’s twin sister into revealing more of her bosom than she probably intended. After that was MALU THE MAGNIFICENT, MASTER OF MAGIC, and SYLIZABET, QUEEN OF THE ELVES, who must have borrowed her sheer gown from the Man of Bones’s dancing partner.

  The newly-cleared path ran a mile before reaching the river. I passed all manner of horrors and wonders, most of them engaged in ill-advised acts of flirtation with ladies who weren’t dressed for winter, but not a single one of the waybills or posters advertised a living dead girl.

  As the ravaged woods opened up to reveal the wide sluggish face of the Brown, a mob of cussing, stumbling clowns was hitching a makeshift barge to ropes secured around a mastodon’s furry neck. The buzzing cloud of horseflies that enveloped the beast was so loud it sounded as if the vile bugs were learning to sing.

  Ropes dropped down into the river, snaking off to the other bank, where a second lazy mastodon amused itself by spraying the clowns down with gouts of filthy water from its battle-scarred trunk.

  “So that’s how we’ll be crossing the river,” I said aloud.

  A clown detached himself from his fellows and duck-walked toward me, his painted smile not nearly artful enough to reveal the scowl beneath.

  “Look, mister, the ferry won’t be ready till nearly sundown, if then,” he said, spitting a gob of tobacco at my feet. “You’ll have to come back then. Unless you’re a tax man. Are you a tax man, mister?”

  I noticed half a dozen nearby clowns drop their lines and timbers. Painted ears cocked my way.

  “Me? Heavens no, my good man. Heavens no.” I brought up my copy of the City Daily with a snap. “Mortimer Bustman, at your service. I am a reporter for Rannit’s finest journalistic entity, the City Daily. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  He eyed the newspaper as though it were a three-eyed fish.

  “So you ain’t a tax man.”

  “I am reporter, sir. For a newspaper.” I waved the paper over his head, at his fellows. “Surely someone remembers newspapers?”

  “Ain’t seen one since before the War,” grumbled a fat, sweat-soaked clown. “Hell, ain’t they still outlawed?”

  “Not in Rannit,” I piped. My cheery smile was so wide and guileless, the corners of my mouth were beginning to hurt. “The Regent has seen fit to restore them. I’m here to do a story on your carnival.”

  “A story?”

  “A story, my good man. For people in Rannit to read.”

  “Tax men?”

  My smile didn’t waver. The fat clown saved me from further explanation by trundling past his fellows, snatching my copy of the Daily from my hands, and holding it upside-down while studying the tiny print.

  “I reckon this is for the boss to decide,” he said, after a time. Sweat dripped from his red clown nose, and horseflies orbited his shaved head. “Looks like you’ll be first across, mister,” he added.

  Then he broke into the single most dejected clown-dance I’ve ever witnessed, cussing and grunting the whole time.

  I stood politely by and watched, even clapping when it was over, as ancient tradition and good manners demand.

  “Blessed be all your crossings, your comings and your goings, and all that horse-shit,” he wheezed, when he was done.

  I retreated to the only meager shade I could find and waited for the new ferry to bear me across the river and into the company of the carnival master, who might or might not be hiding at least one farm-girl in his tents.

  By the time I reached the carnival master’s bright red tent, my lips were dry and I was hoarse and my newspaper was a ragged flopping thing, missing most of section 1A, Fine Dining in Rannit.

  I stood outside the red tent flaps and waited. I didn’t see the pair of shaggy Ogres crouching in the shade six feet away, watching me with that unblinking Ogre stare that conveys such wordless menace. I didn’t see the club one carried, or the shovel the other bore. I certainly didn’t ponder the significance of either item.

  Voices sounded inside the carny master’s tent. One voice was male, low, and none too happy. The other was female, soft, and even less jubilant than the man. They talked for a good twenty minutes, neither speaking loud enough to make their words intelligible, until footfalls sounded and the tent flaps parted and out stepped a tall blonde lady wearing spider webs, a pair of shoe-strings, and what I surmised to be the remains of a tiny silk coin-purse.

  “Oh, close your mouth, you flap-eared bastard,” snapped the woman, as I made to tip my hat.

  “Always a pleasure,” I said. She hurried away, hips swinging.

  “Come,” said a man, from inside the red tent. Being a cautious sort, I glanced at the Ogres. The one minding the shovel grunted and pointed at the flap.

  I dipped my eyes at the Ogres before making my way inside.

  It was midnight-dark within the tent. Candles burned, by the dozens, but the thick fabric blocked every beam of the midday sun. I took a single step before the flap closed behind me, and then I stopped, lest I barge into a shelf filled with priceless glassware or the pointy end of a freshly-sharpened sword.

  I blinked away the dark, took a quick look around, and nearly turned and ran.

  The tent’s walls were covered with faces. Hollow-eyed, mouths agape. Hundreds of faces, frozen in the midst of as many throatless screams. Amid the faces hung heads of hair. Men’s hair. Women’s hair. Children’s hair, fair and dark, long and short, young and old, locks draping and spilling across those below, some fluttering though the air was still.

  Between the faces and the scalps drooped butchered limbs. Arms and legs, hands and feet, shoes and gloves and shirts and trousers.

  A tall wide shelf lined with jars covered the back wall. Each jar was filled with dark fluid, and each jar contained something that moved, turning slowly, pressing white against the glass before retreating back into the murk. I saw half a dozen battered wooden trunks, each marked with strange script that crawled and writhed in the candlelight.

  I smelled cinnamon and lilies. Saw a tiny copper pot boiling on a wrought-iron brazier, books in a tumbled heap beside a ragged wicker chair. A big pre-War iron safe hid in a nearby patch of shadow, only part of its dials and levers concealed by a tattered throw-rug. In the far corner sat a spinning wheel, slowly turning of its own accord.

  Then I blinked, and the faces became masks, and the shocks of hair wigs, and the arms and legs prop limbs, things of wo
od and metal and paint.

  A man sat behind a crude desk formed by a pair of beer-kegs and a half dozen warped planks. He wore a bright red Marine lieutenant’s dress coat, a pristine black top hat, a yellow linen shirt, and a blood-red scarf. The toes of polished black boots peeked out from under his desk.

  His hair fell in long golden tresses from beneath the hat, framing his gaunt, pale face in the flickering candle-light. His nose was long and thin, his eyes were sunken and dark, and his teeth gleamed like new porcelain china out of lips so red I knew they’d been painted.

  He rose, removed his hat, and executed a fluid formal bow.

  “Welcome to my world,” he said, smiling a close-lipped little smile. “I am Ubel Thorkel, master of Dark’s Diverse Delights. My men tell me you write for a newspaper.” He nodded at the paper I clutched in my hands. “May I see it?”

  I gave it to him. “Mortimer Bustman, city desk,” I said. He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did I. “People in Rannit are curious about your carnival.”

  He sat, opening the paper so that I could no longer see his face.

  “Are they now?” he said.

  “Oh, they are indeed,” I replied. “Mr. Thorkel, do you have any idea how many Rannites start each day by reading the City Daily? Our circulation is well over twenty thousand, and growing by the week. Why, a paragraph in our Diversions section could bring in hundreds of visitors to your carnival, the first few nights alone.”

  He lowered the paper and stared up at me.

  “My men suspect you are a tax man, Mr. Dustman.”

  “The name is Bustman,” I replied. “We both know even the Regent of Rannit can’t collect taxes on a traveling carnival encamped outside the city walls. But I don’t work for the Regent. I’m just here to write about your carnival, Mr. Thorkel. We haven’t seen a traveling show in years, and people are eager to read all about you.”

  The walls of the tent shut out noise as well as light. There’d been a gang of workmen hammering tent-stakes into the ground when I entered. I hadn’t heard a single hammer blow since passing through the flap.

  I didn’t like the man’s eyes. They looked dry, as if both were glass with irises and pupils daubed on with paint.

  He spoke. “Why don’t you tell me the truth, Mr. Bustman?”

  “I just did.”

  He let the Daily fall down to his rude desk. “You came here to mock. To ridicule. To demean. To print lurid descriptions of my show, for the titillation and fleeting amusement of your vapid, witless readership.”

  “That’s twenty thousand vapid, witless readers, each paying five coppers a week to be titillated and fleetingly amused.”

  He smiled.

  “Twenty thousand, you say?”

  “Twenty-two thousand by the end of the week.”

  The carnival master nodded. Amid the masks and the wigs and the rest, mirrors hung haphazardly on every wall, and the effect of his nod reflected in so many mirrors filled the tent with the illusion of movement.

  “May I ask what wage you are paid, to mock and demean?”

  “Five coppers a word,” I said. “Six, if I manage to fit in ridicule.”

  He laughed. The sound was abrupt and dry and harsh. I’d heard jackals once, while my unit camped under the stars at Branach. Jackals sang while sand dunes sparkled with hoarfrost in the night. Thorkel’s laughter sounded like a jackal’s cry, humorless and cruel.

  He fished in his jacket, withdrew a silver Old Kingdom coin, and tossed it to me.

  I caught it.

  “Make them good words, Mr. Bustman. Excellent words. Now then. Let us show your magnificent audience the varied and unforgettable wonders of Dark’s Diverse Delights, mobile circus extraordinaire.”

  Chapter Five

  I learned a lot about circus folk that day.

  First of all, they drink, and drink hard. Especially the side-show wonders. I met the Man of Bones when he stumbled out of his tent, went down on all fours at my feet, and vomited between my boots. I was amazed at the volume of liquid he expelled, given the emaciated state of his spindly frame.

  The circus master kicked the Man of Bones unceremoniously in his gut. “And here we find the Man of Bones, who has terrified audiences from the Sea to the Wastes,” said Thorkel, as he sent the scuttling wretch away with a second kick squarely on his backside. “A living skeleton, whose grinning skull will haunt your dreams forever.”

  I nodded and scribbled in my notebook. It didn’t seem polite to point out that the Man of Bones was still entirely covered in skin.

  We met the Queen of the Elves next. She wore a moth-eaten flannel gown over her spider-webs. A pair of mismatched work boots adorned her dainty feet. She puffed on an enormous cigar between swigs of dark brown liquid gulped from a dirty jar.

  “Go to Hell,” she opined, before sprawling lengthwise on a bench.

  “Men have traveled the world to pay homage to the Queen of the Elves,” said Thorkel. The Queen responded with a raised middle finger. “Her beauty and charm are unmatched in all the mortal world.”

  “She wears flannel as only an Elf could,” I added. Thorkel’s brow furrowed beneath his immaculate top-hat.

  “That is to say, her ethereal beauty blinds, so dazzling is she to gaze upon,” I said, quickly. Thorkel rewarded me with a humorless jackal’s grin.

  We passed a stage, upon which a bleary-eyed thin man in an old-fashioned long-tailed coat and fancy high-heeled gentleman’s boots waved a short black wand over a yawning young woman.

  “Two, three, raise the cloth,” said the man. The young lady raised a dirty bed sheet up over her head, and the magician snapped his fingers.

  The cloth dropped, revealing an empty stage. I heard a distinct thud from beneath it, and a muffled feminine curse.

  “You forgot the damned mat again,” shouted the young woman.

  The magician cussed and yelled for a runner.

  “Here we have Malus the Magnificent, master of magic,” said Thorkel, with a flourish. “Prepare to be amazed as he confounds and mystifies!”

  A section of the stage floor lifted and the young woman emerged. “Bruised is all I’m getting lately,” she said. “Malus needs to lay off the hooch.”

  “An accomplished illusionist, Malus the Magnificent fills audiences with delight,” I said. “Performing perilous feats of magic unseen since the days of the Kingdom.”

  “I see my coin is not wasted,” said Thorkel. He smiled, his perfect white teeth wet and gleaming.

  “You do have a remarkable cast of performers,” I said. “Not at all what I expected.”

  We passed Gogor the Troll, who snored peacefully beneath a pile of hay.

  “And what were you expecting, Mr. Bustman?” asked Thorkel, idly swinging his cane as we walked.

  “Well, the old stories. They described carnivals as more…salacious. Carnal, if you will.”

  Thorkel nodded. “Dancing girls, side-shows of a decidedly immoral nature? Gambling, fighting, that sort of thing?”

  “So the old stories say.”

  “Perhaps, in the old days, other carnivals catered to a less refined audience. But Dark’s Diverse Delights is clean, wholesome enjoyment, for the whole family.” Thorkel graced me with another smile. “Especially the children. We love children, you see. Love them.”

  I nodded amiably as I scribbled. “Sounds wonderful, Mr. Thorkel. Just what Rannit needs these days.”

  He reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a pair of bright red tickets. “Come and see,” he said, as I took them. “Bring your wife. Bring a friend. I promise you will never forget your time with us.” Someone called his name, and he tipped his hat to me. “I have neglected my duties long enough. Pray wander as you will, speak to whom you would. Good day, sir.”

  He withdrew.

  I wandered as I willed, spoke to whom I
would. I saw no signs advertising the presence of a living dead girl. I didn’t ask about her by name. If anything the Ordwalds told me was true, asking was more likely to earn me a beating, or worse.

  Halfway down the midway, on the right, was a long narrow tent festooned with wind-chimes fashioned from wire and bones. HALL OF HORRORS, read the placard over the entrance. NO ADMITTANCE TO PERSONS OF MEEK CONSTITUTION.

  A clown snored by the ticket box. I passed by him, meek constitution and all, and ducked inside.

  They hadn’t lit the candles. But enough light leaked into reveal two rows of stuffed and mounted monstrosities. A DRAGON, read the first marker to my right. Behind the sign lurked a ten-foot-tall assemblage of bones tied together with wire. The dragon’s fore claws were raised in menace, its head hanging over me, its jaws opened wide for a killing bite. It was only after my eyes adjusted to the dark that I saw the cracked plaster holding the beast’s spine together and recognized carved wooden bones wired in with the rest.

  Even less impressive was the mottled gray cemetery ghoul chained to the wall. Yes, its rotten limbs twitched in a feeble effort to escape, but the loud ticking of the clockwork mechanism behind the body robbed the display of any real menace. Every twenty-two seconds, the ghoul turned its head and extruded its long, slimy tongue before resuming its original posture and starting to twitch all over again.

  Maria the Snake Headed Woman might well be a display of a large woman’s corpse and a dozen long dead serpents, but none of the various parties had met until an indifferent taxidermist’s needle stitched them all together. I daresay Egan the Crocodile Boy and Engorgia, Mistress of the Dark were the products of the same method, if not the same taxidermist. Too, the unfortunate Engorgia’s horns were held in place by means of a rather obvious pair of nails.

  There was a unicorn. I suspected more than a hint of donkey in its recent lineage. A coiled gray bulk labeled Serpentia, Terror of the Sea floated in a great tub of old beer. Toward the back was a towering thing of coils and wires which claimed to deliver ‘Powerfulle Jolts of Life giving Spirit Essence.’