Carniepunk

by Rachel Caine

  “Two tumescent tumors on either side of her nose! Face cancer ain’t for the faint of heart! We have the freaks but you can’t get freaky—all you get is a peekie! See the sights that can’t be unseen for only three dollars!”

  “Huh,” Granuaile said. “That sounds interesting. What do you think they have in there? A woman who let someone draw on her face with a Sharpie?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

 

  Sure, if you can keep close and sneak past the bouncer.

  We joined the queue and observed a profound lack of excitement in my fellow entrants. The mood was one of passive resignation to the coming rip-off, albeit garnished with a wedge of hope, sort of like stinky beer graced with a slice of orange.

  Oberon easily slipped through into the tent with us once we paid the mountain of beef manning the door. We were immediately confronted with a slab of painted plywood serving as a wall and a lurid sign that shouted at us: LAST CHANCE: CHOOSE HEAVEN (left) or HELL (right).

  “Is it the same either way?” Granuaile wondered aloud.

  “No idea,” I said. There was a bit of a backup going to the hell side, so I suggested we go left.

  “Well, in case it’s different, I’d like to see what’s going on in hell,” she said. “Let’s split up and compare notes outside.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. See you soon.” Then I asked Oberon, Which way do you want to go, buddy?

 

  All right, keep talking to me and let me know what you see.

 

  I’m sure you do, I replied as I turned left and followed a couple of switchbacks.

 

  Yeah. I know.

 

  I wasn’t soliciting your fantasies, Oberon. I was rather hoping you’d tell me what you see in the present.

 

  I sighed and dropped my eyes to the bare ground over which the tent had been erected. What grass remained was well trampled and forlorn, perhaps wondering why it, of all grass, had to suffer a herd of bipeds to crush it into the earth. Rounding another plywood barrier, I was confronted with a large woman wearing a costume beard, Grizzly Adams–style. The elastic band keeping it in place was plainly visible over her ears. Next to her stood a man with a cheap, old-fashioned prosthetic arm attached to his chest via a clever arrangement of suspenders and bungee cords. He grabbed the forearm with his left hand and raised it a bit, then wiggled it to make the plastic hand flap at me. I shook my head in disgust and moved on, hoping something more inventive would be around the next sheet of plywood.

 

  What? No.

 

  I spun around and searched for trapdoors or anything else that might indicate a trip down below on my side. Nothing. No wood flooring, either. The idiot three-armed man flapped his prosthetic hand again, figuring I wanted additional proof of his dexterity.

  Have you seen anything stupid posing as a thrill?

 

  That’s weird. It’s completely different on this side. Seems more elaborate than all their costuming.

  Maybe it was a thematic thing. Their side was supposed to be hell, after all. If my side was heaven, though, where was the stairway to it? I hurried around the next corner and saw the woman with two “tumors”—they were red gumdrops attached to her cheeks with adhesive. And the conjoined quintuplets were there too: “They” were one guy with two shrunken plastic heads resting on either shoulder.

  How could anyone walk out of here and praise this farce? It made no sense, especially since the few other people who’d chosen this side with me were obviously annoyed by the extent of the swindle. I didn’t know what to expect around the next wall, most likely the exit, so I was surprised by a little blond girl, maybe eight years old, in a pretty pink dress and shiny black shoes. She would have been adorable had her eyes not been glowing orange. The smile she smiled was decidedly un-girlish—more like inhuman—and her voice was one of those low basso frequencies that shiver your bones.

  “You came alone and it was the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen,” she rumbled, and a wave of her power—or perhaps I should say its power—did its best to slap me upside the head. Since my aura was bound to the cold iron of my amulet, the mojo fizzled and delivered a small thump to my chest, like someone had poked me right on the amulet. She was standing on a square of plywood. I blinked as I realized that the deception going on here was much grander than a three-dollar fraud.

  I kicked off my sandals and stopped hiding from Amber the elemental. I’d been powering Oberon’s camouflage with stored magic in my bear charm, but it was running low and the orange-eyed girl demanded more resources, seeing as how she was casually slinging around hoodoo and speaking like she had a giant pair of balls that dropped two feet after puberty. I drew energy through the tattoos that bound me to the earth and watched as the girl repeated the ensorceling phrase for the person behind me. It was a young man in a white cowboy hat, and he rocked back visibly under the little girl’s greeting before his expression assumed a thousand-mile stare and he became a mouth breather.

 

  No kidding. I activated the charm on my necklace that allowed me to see in the magical spectrum and discovered that wee miss was an imp crammed into a human shell. That shell was the same thing as taking a hostage: If I attacked it and it couldn’t bamboozle people anymore, those same people would think I was assaulting a child.

 

  I frowned. Stop. Don’t go any farther. I’m coming to join you. In fact, go back.

 

  She couldn’t hear Oberon’s thoughts yet, since she was still about six years away from getting bound to the earth. Grab her by the shirt or something. Pull her back. Don’t let her go.

  I spent a few seconds trying to think of how to beat the imp without a kerfuffle until I realized it wasn’t trying to prevent my escape. All I had to do was act dumb and walk out. Picking up my sandals, I did precisely that, vowing to return later. Once safely outside, I sprinted around to the front of the tent to have another go.

 

  Don’t let her go! I’m on my way.

 

  The line at the front of the tent was just as long as when we entered—perhaps longer. The barker, I saw through magical sight, was actually a full-fledged demon. The huge man at the door taking money was an imp, so the barker was the boss. His words came back to me: Guaranteed to harrow your soul. Reap what you sow. And then, in writing, an offer to choose hell. I couldn’t afford to wait in line again.

 

  Can’t you stop her?

  ! On the nose!>

  That didn’t sound like Granuaile at all. She loved Oberon every bit as much as I did. Only one thing could explain her behavior. Oberon, she’s under a spell. These are demons at work. You have to stop her. Knock her down and sit on her if you have to.

  Oberon weighed more than she did. He could keep her pinned.

 

  Normally demons smell so bad that it takes a herculean effort to keep your lunch down. I shot another look at the demon barker but saw no one violently ill in his vicinity. Neither the man at the entrance nor the girl at the exit had set my nose twitching.

  They’ve sewn themselves up tight in human bodies. Have you got her?

 

  I’m going to dissolve your camouflage and hope the sight of you helps. You have to stop her, Oberon.

  I dissolved his spell and then triggered camouflage for myself, which would allow me to slip past the imp at the door.

  However, nothing happened.

  “Oh, no, not now, Amber,” I said, and then reached through my tattoos to speak directly to the elemental of the central Great Plains. Speaking was a relative term; elementals don’t speak any human language but rather communicate via emotions and images. My recollections of such conversations are always approximations.

  //Demons on earth / Druid requires aid//

  Amber replied immediately, not even pretending that she didn’t know I was around. //Query: Demon location? / None sensed//

  //Demons here// I replied. //My location / Demons using wood to mask presence//

  The bloody barker hadn’t been insecure about his height; he needed the stilts to make sure the earth never twigged to his presence.

  Demons were usually the responsibility of their angelic opposites, but I’ve run into them more often than I would care to. The problem with them from a Druidic perspective was that they kept trying to hijack the earth’s power to open and maintain portals to hell, draining life in the process and endangering the elementals. Aenghus Óg’s giant suckhole to the fifth circle, for example, had destroyed fifty square miles in Arizona. If there was a gateway underground here, Amber should have felt it.

  //Query: Power drain in this area?// I asked.

  //Yes / Intermittent//

  //Demons responsible// I said.

  Amber’s judgment and sentence took no time at all. Her anger boiled through me as she said, //Slay them / Full power restored//

  //Gratitude / Harmony//

  //Harmony//

  Had I the time, I might have shed a tear at that—or celebrated with a shot of whiskey. It had been far too long since I’d shared a sense of harmony with Amber—because these were feelings, after all, not mere translated words, and it was impossible for either Amber or me to lie about feeling harmony. But I had an apprentice and a hound in danger of going through a mysterious unholy orifice, as well as another mystery to solve: since the demons obviously had some kind of portal down there, how were they hiding it?

 

  You’re a good hound. We are totally getting you some gourmet sausages for this. Keep her down. She’ll apologize later.

  I cast camouflage successfully this time and melted from view. It didn’t make me completely invisible when I moved, but it was good enough; no one would be able to see me in time to react well.

  Except perhaps the demon barker.

  “You, sir! What do you think you’re doing?” He was staring right at me, even though I was camouflaged and still. Damn it. I didn’t have a weapon, either. Since stealth didn’t seem to be an option, my only hope lay in speed and some martial arts. I bolted for the entrance and the barker shouted, “Gobnob! I mean George! Stop that man!”

  The imp’s name was Gobnob?

  “What man?” the hulk said as I whisked past him. Apparently only the demon could pierce my camouflage. Advantage: Druid.

  Indiscreet shoving was necessary to get past the line of people and down the stairs. I heard lots of “Heys” and “What the (bleep)s” as I endangered ankles and hips.

  “Sorry,” I called. “It’s an emergency.”

 

  Grab her pants leg in your teeth and pull back hard. Don’t let her get traction!

 

  Go after her and protect her!

  The first bizarre “orifice” was ahead. An imp in a human suit was stationed there and charming people much the way the little girl imp was at the exit on the “heaven” side, except that this fellow was telling people, “You can’t wait to get through the next doorway after this one.” That’s why Granuaile and the rest of them kept going even when they heard and smelled something awful ahead.

  It was time to put a stick in their spokes.

  There wasn’t any need to think about it: Amber had ordered me to slay the demons, so I was going to do it. Before I passed through the gross doorway, I placed one hand on top of the imp’s head and the other underneath his chin and jerked it violently to the side, snapping his neck.

  As he crumpled I yelled, “Go back! They’re killing people in here!” The “What the (bleep)s” multiplied, and I hoped for their sakes that their sense of self-preservation would win out over curiosity. They were quite confused because they hadn’t precisely seen me kill the imp, but they did know that something had gone horribly wrong and someone had been severely injured. Some of them pulled out cell phones and dialed 911, and at least a couple expressed a loud desire to get out of there and headed back up the stairs.

  The orifice was wet and smelled fishy and I had to sort of slither through it, since it was a slit cut into a quivering wall of protoplasm; I felt squeezed out through a pastry chef’s frosting gun. Dubbing it the Anchovy Gate due to its odor, I decided, for my own sanity, not to dwell on whether its substance had been secreted or shat or otherwise spawned from unsavory origins. It was a kind of gelatinous, semitranslucent slab of dead lavender sludge that filled the space completely from floor to ceiling, a tight sphincter sealing one environment off from another. Its function was clear: Without the protections it provided against smells and sound, nobody would want to continue onward, for the stench on the other side of it made me gag and the howls of people dying ahead filled me with fear for Granuaile and Oberon.

  What’s happening? I asked my hound.

 

  Nonsense. I can still hear you.

 

  Almost there.

 

  Everyone ahead of me had been charmed. Their need to get through that next gate was the call of a siren. If the first one had been the Anchovy Gate, this was the Needle Gate, I suppose. It was designed like those tire-shredding devices; you were fine to go through it one way, but try to back up and you’d be punctured with slivers of steel.

  Still, whatever was happening on the other side, people were opting for the needles and trying to push backward through the needles, getting cut up in the process. Pelting through the charmed victims until I reached the gateway, I drew on the earth’s power for enhanced speed and strength—bindings that essentially improved the efficiency of my neuromuscular system and prevented fatigue.

  The Needle Gate was a mass of hinged, bloody steel spikes, doubtless constructed in chunks and then assembled here like the tent and the rides and everything else. The metal didn’t burn my skin—in fact, it was quite cool, as one might expect metal underground to be. The fabled temperature of hell wasn’t in play here; the horror of it was.

  I pressed through the clacking hiss of needles and came through low onto a killing floor, rolling out of the way of a desperate middle-aged man whose face was streaked with snot and
tears and spattered with blood. He tried to stick his arm into the gap in the gate I’d just vacated and wound up puncturing it on all sides. The needles must have had wee barbs on the outer sides so that as one passed through the gate they wouldn’t snag; but once you tried to back up, you’d be not only stabbed but hooked. There were at least a dozen other people crowding the gate, trying to get out as I was trying to get in, and some of them had caught their hands and arms on needles in their desperate attempts to escape, so now they could either tear free or remain stuck, but either way they had pain to deal with on top of their terror. Two people—a man and a woman—had been pushed into the needles by accident or design and were now wailing in agony, unable to win free. It looked like others, in the frenzy of their fear, might be more than willing to tear them lose forcibly or even use their bodies to wedge the gate open if it meant escape. Thankfully, Granuaile wasn’t one of those crowding around the gate.

  Oberon? I’m through the door.

 

  I squeezed through a couple more rows of panicked citizens and emerged into an abattoir. The floor was cheap, splintery wood laid over the earth. The ceiling was surprisingly high—we had descended deeper than I thought. The reason for the height lay at the far end of the room, which was about the length of a high school cafeteria: ghouls had stacked bodies nearly to the top and were adding more rows of fresh kills, presumably for later consumption. A demon with a scythe was supplying the freshness, and right then he was after Granuaile.

  He wasn’t the actual grim reaper but a demon that had assumed the likeness; enough people associated a robed skeletal figure with hell that it made sense for a demon to take that form. It was certainly working on the psychological front.

  The reaper had on the iconic long black robe but had pulled back the cowl, exposing the rictus of a merciless white skull. Tiny fires blazed in his eye sockets, and he appeared competent with the scythe, whirling it around by the little handle halfway down the shaft. Granuaile was leaping over or ducking under his swings, and losing steam, but she would have been dispatched long ago if she hadn’t trained the last six years with me in tumbling and martial arts.