Carnival of Stone: A Novella (The Soren Chase Series)

by Rob Blackwell

  Glen couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, but his tone was one of intense interest.

  “I would if I knew it,” Terry said. “I’ve been attempting to track their movements for some time, but I’m afraid I’ve had little success. I’ve learned the leprechauns’ names and I have a few details on what kinds of other creatures work for the syndicate. But I have no information at all on the boss.

  “Even if I did, it’s not like you could barge in and wipe them out. This group is old and its members are dangerous. The leprechauns, for example, are easily underestimated. They have unique abilities.”

  “Tell me about it,” Soren said. “One of them could teleport.”

  “Precisely,” Terry replied. “But unlike most creatures, which have the same powers, each leprechaun has his or her own set of abilities. They use illusion magic. One might be able to teleport while another could, say, mimic voices or project images. It makes them unpredictable. Even if you wanted to take them on in a direct assault along with whatever other allies they have, you may see your infamous luck finally run out.”

  “I have to do something, Terry. They’re after the boy, the one from the case I mentioned to you. I won’t let them find him.”

  Terry nodded his head.

  “I understand,” he said. “I may be able to help, but let us discuss the issue at hand first.”

  “If they discover the boy on their own...” Soren said.

  Glen wondered why Soren was quite so protective of his former client. It was commendable, of course, but Soren didn’t seem like the type who would worry that much about it.

  “That’s unlikely,” Terry said. “If they could have done that, they would have. The syndicate I referred to is... old-fashioned. They could have broken into police records to find who they were searching for, but the idea hasn’t occurred to them. They rarely think outside of brute force. We have some time, I think, before they strike again.”

  “And I’m just supposed to take your word on that?” Soren asked.

  “Without him, you wouldn’t know anything else at all,” Glen said. “So yeah.”

  Soren tilted his head toward Glen, and he felt a shiver run up his spine. He couldn’t see Soren’s eyes, but he could feel them boring into him nevertheless.

  “We need your help,” Terry said, and Soren turned back to him. “I’m afraid the matter is rather urgent. Assuming you assist us, I’ll be happy to see if I can come up with a solution to your problem that does not involve getting you killed or harming the child.”

  Soren nodded his head.

  “You’ve done a lot for me, Terry,” he said. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. I’m just worried. He’s the son of an old friend of mine. I have to protect him; I owe both the kid’s father and mother that.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Terry replied. “I believe I can help. And under different circumstances, I would do so immediately. But we have another matter, one that unfortunately is also urgent. Many lives are at stake. Have you ever heard of the Carnival of Stone?”

  Soren paused for a moment and then shook his head. He seemed to think for a minute.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “I am not surprised,” Terry said. “It is relatively obscure. In the summer of 1934, a young artist named Jackson Cleary set up an exhibition of stone sculptures in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It was the height of the Depression and in a remote location, but gathered some local renown. Apparently the sculptures were known for their life-like appearance and Cleary’s meticulous eye for detail. It was, as one critic said, as if real people had been ‘frozen in place.’”

  “Now why don’t I like the sound of that?” Soren asked.

  “Cleary called it the Carnival of Stone, and apparently he was quite successful,” Terry continued. “It didn’t hurt that he was handsome, had a pretty wife, and periodically traveled to Washington D.C. to show off some of his best work. Among others, his sculptures were admired by Eleanor Roosevelt, though I do not believe she attended the actual carnival, but a smaller version of it in the city. Cleary was the talk of the town, and many people came all the way out to the mountains to visit. There was just one small problem.”

  “Let me guess: some of these people didn’t return,” Soren said.

  “Precisely,” Terry replied. “It was easy to explain at first. Someone got lost in the mountains or some other mishap befell them. But as the months wore on, there were rumors that perhaps Cleary was robbing and murdering some of his guests. There were no bodies, of course, but the number of disappearances was alarming.”

  “I’ll bet,” Soren said.

  “There was no official inquiry at first, and it’s likely Cleary paid more than a few people to look the other way,” Terry said. “But in the fall of ‘34, a woman named Bryce Matheson attended the exhibition. By all accounts, she was quite enjoying herself until she came to a particular sculpture—and then she began screaming. Cleary tried to rush her away, but Bryce fought him off. She began pointing at the sculpture and shouting to anyone who would listen that it was her son. For the record, David Matheson had disappeared a full year earlier, but he had been hiking an early version of the Appalachian Trail not far from where the exhibition was later set up. Bryce accused Cleary of witchcraft, and word spread rapidly. At least two other family members of those who had vanished in that year came forward to find sculptures that bore an uncanny resemblance to their loved ones. The police were forced to take an interest.”

  “I’m assuming it didn’t end well for Cleary,” Soren said.

  “No,” Terry said. “The day the police were arriving to take him into custody, there was a large explosion. Officially, it was a freak mudslide, but there are many that say Cleary had access to blasting dynamite used for mining and triggered it on purpose. Or perhaps someone else triggered it to put a stop to what Cleary was doing. Either way, Cleary, his wife, and the entire Carnival of Stone were buried under rock and mud. Fortunately, there were no others on site when it happened, but Cleary had been spotted in the area shortly before the mudslide occurred. Nobody ever bothered to search the rubble for him, and only a few of his sculptures were ever unearthed. The rest remained buried.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  Terry paused and for a moment, it seemed to Glen that he was uncomfortable. Glen wasn’t sure why.

  “I looked into the matter on my own some time ago,” Terry said. “But my research was inconclusive and I let the matter drop. Circumstances have forced me to take an interest again.”

  “What happened?” Soren asked.

  “I’m going to let Glen tell the rest,” Terry said, “since he knows one of the people involved.”

  Soren turned to look at Glen, who suddenly felt nervous.

  “Okay, so,” he started, “yesterday I got a call from a former college roommate named Jay Sloan. He and I weren’t close anymore, but I used to tell him stories about the supernatural and he was the resident skeptic. He used to talk all about science and superstition and how people were fooling themselves by thinking there was anything supernatural, including God, in the world.”

  “I can remember thinking much the same way, once upon a time,” Soren said.

  “Anyway, we mostly lost touch our last two years of school, but I saw him at a friend’s party about two months ago,” Glen said.

  What Glen remembered was that he almost didn’t recognize Jay. The guy he’d known was a slob who wore jeans with holes in them and left his dirty underwear on the floor. Jay’s hair was cut by a half-blind elderly barber down the street and looked in a constant state of disarray. But the person who came up to him at the party was sharply dressed and well-groomed. His black hair was closely cropped and he had a thin yet fashionable goatee.

  “Glen!” Jay had shouted. “How’s it going, man?”

  He’d clapped his hand on Glen’s shoulder and nearly spilled the beer in his hand.

  “Jay,” Glen said. “You look,
uh, different.”

  Jay cracked a wide grin and looked around, searching for someone in the crowd.

  “My girlfriend’s idea,” he said. “She made a few ‘suggestions’ when we first started dating and I decided she knew better than I did about style.”

  Jay appeared tipsy, his words coming out in a rush and slurring slightly.

  “Plans for the summer?” Glen asked.

  “We’re going on a dig with Professor Peterson,” Jay said. “Apparently he’s got a line on a treasure trove of lost art, thinks we might be able to uncover some of it.”

  “What, like Native American art?” Glen asked.

  “More recent than that,” he said. “It’s from something called the Carnival of Stone. Ever heard of it?”

  Glen shook his head.

  “Spooky shit, man,” Jay said. “You’d totally dig it. Anyway, the prof thinks there’s some valuable sculptures that were buried in a mudslide decades ago. People had sorta lost track of where they were, but he recently got a lead on it. We’re going to go see if we can dig it up, maybe get the university some free art.”

  And the fame that would come from uncovering precious artifacts, Glen thought, but didn’t say.

  “Hey, give me your number,” Jay said. “It would be great to catch up before I go.”

  Jay dug into his pockets and then held out his phone.

  “Program it into there,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to remember this conversation tomorrow.”

  Glen took the phone and entered his digits. As Glen handed it back, Jay saw someone in the crowd.

  “Gotta go, man,” Jay said. “Nice seeing you.”

  Jay half-walked, half-stumbled off through a crowd of people and Glen shrugged. Jay never called him and it hadn’t occurred to him that the conversation was important until yesterday.

  Glen filled Soren in on the drunken encounter with Jay.

  “What happened yesterday?” Soren asked.

  “He left me a voicemail,” Glen said. “I’ll play it for you.”

  Glen took out his phone, put it on speaker, and punched in the code to access his voicemail. What came next was the sound of a garbled message.

  “You were right,” Jay’s voice said. “Do you hear me? You were right about everything, Glen. Everything! It’s real. I thought it was a stupid story, but I can hear it nearby. It got some people already and... I think it got Emily too. Oh God, Glen, I’m going to die out here. You’re the only one who will believe me. You gotta come, man. I gotta stop it. Please! I… oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit. It’s here. Please help me, Glen. Please…”

  There was a break in the call, but the line stayed open. Glen hated this part. He’d listened to it at least fifteen times already and wanted to walk out of the room. But he stayed rooted to the spot. Running away wouldn’t make it any better. He would probably still hear the sound in his head.

  On the voicemail, there was a clatter as Jay dropped his phone. Glen could make out what he still hoped was the sound of Jay running away. And then a new sound filled the voicemail. It grew louder and louder until it blared through Terry’s office.

  It was a hissing noise, like not just one, but thousands of snakes had slithered over the phone. A moment later, Glen heard something else as well. It was distant, not near the phone, but it was unmistakable.

  It was the sound of a man screaming.

  Chapter Four

  The screaming continued for a full five seconds before the message cut off.

  Soren looked from the phone to Terry and Glen. He pursed his lips.

  “This sounds like a great case,” Soren said. “I’m excited to be eviscerated by whatever was making that terrifying hissing noise.”

  “Watch it,” Glen said. “That was the sound of my friend dying.”

  Soren looked a tad sheepish.

  “Uh, yeah, sorry about that,” he said.

  “We don’t know that he’s dead,” Terry said.

  “Well he sure as hell didn’t sound like he was having a disco party,” Soren said. “Do you have any idea what was doing that to him?”

  “We have a theory,” Terry said.

  Soren took another look at the older man sitting behind the desk. He always seemed so unflappable, even in this situation. It wasn’t that Soren hadn’t heard a man’s dying scream before—he had, too often—but he was shaken by the voicemail just the same. Glen, meanwhile, was red-faced and looked somewhere between anxious and scared.

  Yet Terry sat there totally still, apparently unmoved by the hissing or the screams. It was possible that when he’d first heard the message, he’d reacted differently, but Soren doubted it. He had a suspicion that Jay could have been in the room vomiting blood in front of them and Terry would have regarded him with the same calm, cool stare from his brown eyes. Hell, the monster that made those sounds could have been noisily munching on Glen and Soren at the same time while periodically pausing to sip a mint julep and Terry would have been nonplussed. He wondered what it would take to get the man worked up.

  “Is your theory a gang carrying a bunch of maracas? Because that’s my best guess on short notice,” Soren said.

  Terry didn’t smile and Glen glared at him. Soren sighed. When he got extremely tired, he tended to react with sarcasm. Actually, he tended to react with sarcasm most of the time. Sara used to chastise him for it too.

  “No,” Terry said evenly. “A gorgon.”

  Soren whistled.

  “Like Medusa?” he asked.

  “Precisely,” Terry said. “According to Greek myth, there were three gorgons: Euryale, Stheno and Medusa. They were human women cursed by the gods for their vanity. They were turned into giant snake-like creatures. They were hideous to look upon, with tough, scaly skin and snakes as part of their hair.”

  “It’s just a myth,” Soren said.

  “So are a lot of things you’ve encountered,” Terry said. “Shades, for example, are often discussed in Greek legends. You know first-hand that they are real. Doppelgängers as well.”

  Soren frowned.

  “Yeah,” he said, “it’s just...I don’t know. I sort of thought it was too well-known to actually be true. Most of the things I investigate are obscure.”

  “Said the man who was just attacked by two leprechauns,” Glen interrupted.

  Soren opened his mouth to give a retort and then stopped.

  “Solid point,” he said. “I guess the popular mythological creatures can be real too. So what’re you suggesting? You think one of Medusa’s sisters is alive?”

  “I wouldn’t get hung up on it being Medusa’s sister,” Terry said. “Those were just the celebrity gorgons, if you will. But there are other legends about beasts very like those three, legends that are far older. Sometimes they go by other names. There is a creature called a cockatrice with the body of a dragon and the head of a rooster, for example. Its gaze can also turn people to stone. As can a look from a basilisk, another giant snake-like creature.”

  “That’s a celebrity too,” Glen said. “There was one in a Harry Potter book.”

  “Who’s Harry Potter?” Soren asked.

  Glen stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “Seriously? Do you live under a rock?” Glen said.

  “You’ll find that Soren pays very little attention to popular culture,” Terry replied. “He has not watched a movie or cracked a fiction book in the time I’ve known him.”

  “But still, you’d think you’d absorb a little of it,” Glen said.

  “I’m impervious to the unimportant shit most people live their lives around,” Soren said.

  “Oh, well, when you put it that way...” Glen said, and rolled his eyes.

  Soren never understood why people cared about his complete lack of interest in popular culture. Before the accident—before his entire life had been upended—he’d watched movies, read books. He’d known Monty Python by heart. But the knock on his head seven years ago had erased all of that information.

  Which w
as just as well, he thought. He could remember who he was and why he needed to investigate the supernatural. He remembered John and Sara and everyone important in his life. He didn’t need anything else. And as far as he could tell, people obsessed about that kind of junk, ignoring the critical aspects of their life. They let themselves get distracted, thinking life was some fun, happy trip. But Soren knew it wasn’t. He thought about explaining this to Glen and opted against it. Let him live his life in blissful ignorance. Soren was probably doing him a favor.

  “I get it,” Soren said. “You think the basilisk, the cockatrice and the gorgon are different legends describing essentially the same thing. A large snake-like monster that…”

  “Can turn people to stone,” Terry finished. “Exactly.”

  Soren thought it was possible. The tough thing about chasing legends was that one creature could be described a number of different ways, with unique names and different attributes. It was natural since oftentimes different cultures encountered the same monster and each took their own slant, focusing on disparate elements.

  Was it likely that there were three different monsters, each described as reptilian but all three with the same basic power—turning men into stone? Or was it more probable it was the same creature referred to in alternate ways?

  Given the hissing noise on the voicemail, Terry’s theory was a decent guess. Whatever attacked Jay might be a gorgon/cockatrice/basilisk. Or it might not. Soren knew it was dangerous to make assumptions, although he trusted Terry’s instincts.

  “So does it look like a dragon, a snake-woman or a big snake?” Soren asked.

  Terry shrugged.

  “You’re an investigator—find out,” Terry replied.

  “So let’s say your hunch is right,” Soren said. “If it is some variation on a gorgon or cockatrice, what’s it doing here? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of one living on this side of the world.”

  “It all comes back to Mr. Cleary, the artist who started the Carnival of Stone,” Terry said. “As I said, I researched this case some time ago. At the time, I found several letters written by Cleary. He wasn’t always an artist. He had a relatively crude education and worked most of his life as a miner in the Appalachian Mountains. In one letter, he wrote to his mother about finding an egg in a mine. He didn’t say much about it except that it was an unusual shape, size and color and that it seemed to pulse with some energy.