The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files)

by Frank Tuttle

  Vallata the swamp witch hauled wiggling live things out of her black iron pot and stuffed them down her gullet. We left when she let the water moccasin poke its fat black head out of her snaggle-toothed mouth in a final desperate gambit to escape.

  Once outside her tent, we walked briskly away. The screams and groans of the hardy few who remained were loud and long.

  I saw a break in the milling crowd and parked us in the shadows at the edge of it.

  Before I spoke, we both heard the snores.

  We turned. Behind us, unlit and unattended, a sign announced the presence of one Gogor the Troll, Menace of the Wild.

  The mound of hay inside the cage stirred. A furry arm rose, a furry Troll nose was scratched, and soon the snoring resumed.

  “Is that a real Troll?” whispered Darla.

  “I think so,” I said. I’d never seen a Troll that small. I’d never seen a Troll that drunk.

  But the smell – you never forget that Troll musk, and it was wafting from the cage in thick, choking waves.

  “What’s wrong with it?” asked Darla.

  “I don’t know.” I approached the bars of the cage. They were thin and rusty. The cage just sat on the dirt, unsecured, and I figured I could lift it up with one hand and easily slip underneath.

  On the right side, though, was a door. It wasn’t even locked.

  Darla caught my arm as I pushed gently at the door.

  It swung easily open.

  “Hello, Walking Stone,” I said. “You alive, down there?”

  The Troll sat up, shedding hay. A pair of big yellow Troll eyes opened and fixed their gaze on me.

  It gurgled out a long string of Troll-talk. I shrugged. Without a sorcerer handy to turn Troll gargling into Kingdom words, we wouldn’t have many long conversations.

  Darla bent down and fished an empty whiskey bottle out of the hay. A dozen more bottles glinted in the dim moonlight.

  “I didn’t know Trolls got drunk,” she said.

  “They don’t. Generally. I suppose this fellow makes an exception.”

  The Troll turned his luminous eyes from me to the bottle Darla held. He reached out his hand for it.

  “It’s empty,” said Darla. She dropped it. “You’re killing yourself, Mister Troll. Shame on you.”

  The Troll blinked. Blinked twice, and stood, unfolding its backward-jointed knees as it rose.

  “Time to go,” I said, putting myself between Gogor and Darla. “We’ll let you get back to your drunken stupor.”

  “Wait,” it said, in slurred, wet Kingdom. “Wait.”

  I pushed Darla through the cage door and put my back to the bars.

  As Trolls go, he was a tiny specimen. He was no taller than me, not much bulkier, and a great deal less steady on his feet. But he had a jaw full of Troll fangs and a fistful of Troll talons so when my hand went inside my jacket it came out gripping my revolver.

  “You speak Kingdom?” I asked.

  “Little,” he growled. “Whiskey?”

  I shook my head no, remembered who I was talking to. “No whiskey now,” I said. “Maybe soon, though. You ever see the living dead girl?”

  He growled. I heard a faint click as Darla cocked her hammer behind me.

  “Bad,” said the runt Troll. “Bad.” He crossed his furry arms over his chest. I vaguely remembered that passed for a mortal insult among Trolls. “Bad man.”

  “He’s not bad,” said Darla. “He wants to help her. Set her free. Return her to her family.”

  “That’s why we came,” I said. “Look. You tell us about the dead girl, and I bring you whiskey. No tell, no whiskey.”

  It took a half dozen slow blinks, but the Troll worked his way through that, uncrossed his arms, and slumped.

  “Dead girl. No more shows. Whiskey now?”

  “Not enough. She was here? Was a part of the carnival?”

  “Was here. Darker carnival. Darker.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Darla. “What is the darker carnival?”

  “After. Secret.” Tears ran from the Troll’s eyes. “Whiskey now?”

  “Yes. Whiskey now,” I said. I put my gun back in its holster. Shooting that Troll wouldn’t make it any deader than it already was. “I’ll be right back with a bottle.”

  It collapsed, sobbing and gobbling in Troll.

  I left, but didn’t bother closing the cage.

  “We should set this place on fire,” said Darla, after we placed a bottle by the snoring Troll’s head. “Or blow it up. Do you have any of that vampire gunpowder with you?”

  “We start burning every sad place we find, we’ll soon run out of matches,” I said. “Anyway, I left my gunpowder in my other pants.”

  Crowds streamed around us, laughing and eating and smiling.

  “Darker carnival,” said Darla. “Think that’s what takes place when the wives and the kids aren’t here?”

  I nodded, keeping an eye out for Gertriss and Orville. “First there’s the Dark Carnival. Then the darker. Play on words. Makes sense.”

  Darla nodded. A clown shuffled up to us, gibbering and grinning. Darla turned on him with an unblinking glare. The clown showed a flash of rare wisdom and took off after someone else.

  “So what’s next?” Darla asked. “We know she was here. Maybe she still is.”

  “You collect Gertriss and go home,” I said.

  She gave me the same look that sent the clown fleeing. Made of sterner stuff, I stood my ground.

  “Not going to happen, man of mine,” she said. “You need us here. Gertriss is a highly trained finder. And I’m a better shot than either of you.”

  “Won’t be any shooting. I’m not going to engage. Not tonight. Not alone. I just need to observe, see what this darker carnival is all about.”

  “Perfect. Then we’ll observe together. I’m so glad that’s settled.” She smiled, all sweetness and light.

  I know when to pick my battles. I wasn’t crazy about having Darla anywhere near anything that might involve the living dead, but as Mama is fond of saying, there’s a lot of daylight between I will and I did.

  We’d seen every side-show on our leg of the midway. I found us a bench and we waited.

  A few brave souls stopped by the Troll’s dark cage and shouted through the bars. If Gogor heard, he never responded, and for the first time in my life I felt pity for a Troll.

  Gertriss turned up a half-hour later with no Orville in sight. She said she’d sent him home for a nice cold bath before he succumbed to a fit of nervous exhaustion.

  Her experiences, relayed briefly in whispers, mirrored ours. She saw half a dozen second-rate carnival acts, no living dead girls, no signs of anything more sinister than rigged ball-toss games.

  My fancy pocket-watch showed midnight before the crowds began to thin. By half-past, only a few tipsy stragglers remained, and those were being shooed toward the exits by a dozen broom-wielding clowns.

  By then, we were safely tucked in the trees. I chose a hiding place downwind of the mastodons, sure that would mask our scent even if the carnival folk released dogs.

  Gertriss covered her blonde hair with a tight black scarf. Both women buttoned their jackets up to their necks. Darla’s skirt was gone, replaced by a pair of plain black trousers that she just happened to have in her purse.

  We watched the clowns sweep the last of the merry-makers down the path that led to the river. Once the civilians were out of sight, the carnival started shutting down in earnest.

  Fires flared as trash was collected and burned. The snack-wagons and food carts rolled toward a big tent in the rear, from whence came the sounds of pots rattling and water hissing as it steamed.

  Carnies ran to and fro, shouting and cussing, hauling this or striking that. The spider web of lights in the sky began to go dark, as the lanterns
either winked out or were hauled in, one by one.

  It took a half-hour. At the end of that, the midway was dark and quiet and every carnie worker from the ogres on down was tucked away inside, quiet as corpses.

  That raised the hair on my neck. Silence was the last thing I expected.

  Then the bugs stopped singing. The first hard frost hadn’t hit yet. There should have been crickets. Maybe the odd frog or two. Hell, frogs had been croaking, just a few moments ago, I thought. Hadn’t there?

  “Something wrong here, boss,” whispered Gertriss. Darla heard, and nodded agreement.

  My gun was in my hand.

  We waited, silent and still. Give the ladies this—the Sarge would have been proud of the way Darla and Gertriss held a long silence. No twigs snapping beneath a carelessly-placed knee, no stretching that rustled fallen leaves, not a sound.

  We heard the newcomers well before we made out their furtive forms in the moonlight. A crowd of men, sixteen strong, huddled together and moving fast in the middle of the fresh-cleared road.

  Clowns moved with them. Two before, four after. The clowns had swapped their brooms for studded oak clubs. The clowns weren’t capering. Weren’t shuffling.

  The front clowns halted the parade right before the carnival ticket gates.

  Thorkel stepped out of the dark, swinging his cane. I couldn’t hear what he said, could barely make out the dulcet tones of his voice. Whatever he said met approval with the crowd, because they hooted with glee and charged the gate, parting around Thorkel while he slowly turned to watch them go.

  Thorkel said something to the clowns. They beat it for a tent just inside the gates. A few lights flared, here and there. The carousel organ began to toot and whistle as it lit up and began to turn.

  Thorkel put his back to us and strolled inside his carnival, swinging his cane and whistling a tune I didn’t know.

  Darla put her hand on my right shoulder and dug her fingers in. “You are not going in there alone.”

  “How many women did you count, in that crowd?” I asked.

  “We’ll stick to the shadows, boss,” said Gertriss.

  “You’ll get us all killed, is what you’ll do,” I said. “No way can either of you pass for a man, and you know it. Anyway, I’m not convinced I’m going in. Let’s wait a bit. See what we can see.”

  Darla loosened her grip, just a little.

  It didn’t take long.

  The first scream sounded five minutes after the crowd hit the gates. It was a man’s scream, short and gruff and cut off suddenly.

  Laughter, high and shrill, sounded right after.

  “That’s one,” whispered Gertriss.

  The second scream came moments later. This one was long and interspersed with cries of “no, no, no.” There was a flash of light from inside the midway, briefly illuminating the rows of tents. The screaming man had time for one last wordless shout, and then he too fell silent.

  “Two,” said Gertriss.

  The riding wheel flared to life. A man climbed it, leaping from seat to seat, finding handholds in the rusty iron frame. If he cried out, we never heard it.

  Something leaped onto the wheel below him. At first I thought it a man, but when it began to climb, it used too many legs. It scuttled up the wheel effortlessly, leaped on the climbing man’s back, and after a moment of stillness it flung his limp body to the ground and climbed down after it, moving like some monstrous eager spider.

  “Three.”

  “I’ve seen enough,” I whispered. “We’re leaving, and I’m not coming back without cannons and the Army.”

  Darla’s face relaxed. “Oh,” she said. “How will we get back across the river?”

  I shrugged. “What, you don’t have a boat in your purse, purely by accident?”

  “Hell boss, we’ll swim if we have to,” said Gertriss. Wild cackling sounded from the midway, and a man cried out. I caught a brief glimpse of a squat form astride an honest-to-Angels flying broom, and then Vallata the swamp witch swooped down upon her prey. I’m guessing he didn’t fare any better than the snake we’d just watched her swallow whole. “That’s four.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth before I heard a shout behind us, and realized we weren’t alone.

  A man charged down the path, bellowing and stumbling. He bore a sword in his right hand and a bottle in his left and he was on us and past before I recognized the tall, rangy figure and the booming, hoarse voice.

  “Damn it,” I said. I stood and I raised my gun but it was over before I could act.

  The first bolt took him in the gut. He dropped his bottle, fell and rolled. I saw the patch of new blood glisten in the moonlight.

  He got up. He got up and took another step, but I heard crossbows throw, too many to count.

  Bertold Ordwald went down to his knees, gurgled, and collapsed in a limp, dead heap.

  Darla pulled me down. We waited, listening for the silky hiss of bolts flying past.

  None came. In a moment, half a dozen clowns emerged from the shadows and converged on the corpse.

  “Oh shit,” whispered Gertriss. She wasn’t looking at our former client, or the clowns. I followed her gaze.

  Atop the empty riding wheel, a child-like figure glowed, dancing.

  Buttercup.

  Darla rose to a crouch, her hand over her mouth. Gertriss cussed again.

  The witch’s broom rose from the tents, arcing toward Buttercup.

  The scuttling spider-thing leaped back onto the frame and began creeping toward her.

  “They can’t hurt her,” I said. “She’s a banshee.”

  “Buttercup, come here,” said Darla, in a loud whisper. “Come here at once.”

  The tiny banshee leaped and twirled. The spider-thing was halfway up the wheel, climbing the underside of the frame, out of Buttercup’s sight. The witch circled her, cackling and spiraling closer.

  A veritable cloud of small flying things rose up like the shadow of a whirlwind from amid the tents. Bats, they were, but flocking like blackbirds.

  Down along the midway, the sixth man screamed and died.

  Buttercup went still. I was too far away to see, but I imagined her face turning somber, the glowing nimbus about her intensifying.

  She howled.

  The witch veered off, diving for the tents. The spider-thing spasmed and fell, legs clutching and twitching all the way down.

  The bats, or whatever they were, formed a funnel cloud with Buttercup at its center.

  Her scream rose up and up. The mastodons bellowed. They reared up and waved their front legs and brought them down with cracks of dull earthy thunder. Lights winked out along the midway. The carousel darkened and went still.

  Still, Buttercup howled.

  Pine limbs broke a stone’s throw away. Leaves crunched. We turned, the three of us, in time to see a nightmare come reeling out of the woods, passing not ten feet from our hiding place.

  It was twenty feet tall. More. It walked on two fur-covered ape legs, had cloven hooves for feet. Its torso was a scaled monstrosity that gleamed oily and black in the moonlight.

  It had arms. Human arms, scaled up, but human. The head was a ram’s, with enormous, wide antlers like the ones of the snow-beasts up north.

  Its hands were clamped over its ears. It ran and stumbled and bleated in agony, bouncing off some trees, toppling others. Its mad goat eyes met mine briefly, and blazed with hatred as it snapped a jaw full of fangs at us.

  Another moment, and it would have been upon us, and we wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  I grabbed Darla. Gertriss was already up.

  “We’re going,” I said. “Right now.”

  The monster fell, tearing at its head and howling.

  We ran. I looked back once, saw Buttercup st
ill dancing atop the riding wheel, amid the cloud of flying things. They were so many and so thick we could barely see her light.

  “Dammit, Buttercup,” I said.

  We ran all the way back to the river.

  We found a tiny two-man fishing boat pulled up on the bank. The three empty bottles of cheap whiskey inside suggested Ordwald was the boat’s previous occupant.

  We set across the Brown in a dead man’s boat. We all hoped to see Buttercup’s faint glow bobbing across the water in our wake.

  But all we saw was darkness, and all we heard, until the gurgle and slap of oars and water drowned it out, was the faint music from the carnival’s carousel, and the occasional screech of Vallata the swamp witch’s mad laughter sounding high above the barren hills.

  Chapter Seven

  We set up watch in Mama’s tiny card-and-potion shop.

  Mama surprised me by failing to lecture or preach. She made us tea. She treated the half dozen injuries we’d suffered between us in our mad dash away from the carnival, and then she moved a chair to face her door and she sat in it, smoking a pipe.

  I put my butt on the floor and my back to Mama’s wall. Darla and Gertriss took the other two chairs. Buttercup’s favorite toy, a diminutive human skull still inhabited by a restless ghost, sat on its shelf and whispered all night long.

  My client was dead. I’d watched him fall, and hadn’t done a damned thing to save him. Knowing there was nothing I could have done wasn’t any comfort to me, and wouldn’t be any to his widow.

  Maybe it was time, said a soft little voice in the back of my mind, to take the finder’s eye off my door and take up gardening instead.

  I saw Bertold Ordwald take a bolt to the neck. Part of me wanted to reach down deep inside, see if I could grasp any of the dark magic that sometimes led me to walk with the slilth in my dreams.

  What if I could do more than dream?

  What if the huldra lived on inside me, hidden away somewhere, awaiting that fateful whisper that would set it free?

  The sun touched Mama’s only window with a pale golden glow.

  Buttercup didn’t come home.

  I pulled out my pistol, checked the cylinder for the fiftieth time.