The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (17 page)

“I’m getting tired of killing you,” I said. I didn’t stop until a dozen paces lay between Thorkel and Darla and me. I didn’t look back, though I could hear furtive shufflings in the dark. Slim still roared out a Troll battle song, but his voice was distant, and growing weaker with each bellowed refrain.

Thorkel smiled. His hair was black this time around. Black and ragged, hanging down past his shoulders.

“A brave effort,” he said. He turned his eyes to Darla, and tipped his hat to her. “There may be a place for you in our ranks,” he said. “We recently lost our living dead girl.”

“Maybe you haven’t heard,” I said. “The show’s closing. No more acts. No more darker carnivals. You should have steered clear of Rannit. You won’t be moving on.”

“Oh, but we will,” said Thorkel. He nodded to someone or something behind us. “We will soon be aloft. You will stay alive long enough to watch your lady die, and be resurrected. Hold them fast,” he added, not to us.

I turned. Maybe half the Hall of Horrors had survived their encounter with Slim, but that left me outnumbered a dozen to one. They were shambling my way, claws, paws, and hands outstretched.

Darla’s twin revolvers appeared. “Alfreda Ordwald was a child,” she said to Thorkel. “A terrified country girl. I’m none of those things. Come and get me.”

“You’ve irritated my wife,” I said. “That’s bad. But this is worse.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out a grenade, and stuck my index finger through the silver ring. “Remember these? They make things go boom. Things like you, or the monsters sneaking up behind me, or balloons. Especially balloons.”

Thorkel sneered. “I remember. Surely you remember that lifting gas is dangerous. Employ that weapon, or the ones at the edge of the trees, and you’ll kill your precious glowing child.” He shook his cane at me. The balloon behind him left the ground, slowly straining skyward. The lines that would soon lift the gondola into the night followed, uncoiling as they rose.

“No matter,” he said. “Too late.”

It was hard to hear, above all the carnival noise. But I’d been listening, while we talked, and though it was faint, Buttercup’s familiar banshee keening was audible, and growing louder by the moment.

“Wrong again,” I said. “Truth is, I’m just in time. You wanted to know what the glowing child is, you bastard? Well I’ll tell you. She’s a banshee, older than you and your sad little puppet show, and that sound you’re just beginning to hear is her banshee wail, and let me tell you one thing, Mr. Thorkel, that furious little banshee is calling for
you.
”

I pulled the pin. I whirled and threw the grenade at the nearest of the monsters. Darla unloaded on Thorkel until I caught her around her waist and threw her to the ground, covering her body with mine as best I could.

The grenade went off at the precise instant the gunners spotted the rising balloon and sawed the gaudy thing in half. The lifting gas caught, filling the sky with a great burst of rolling fire, and then the flaming envelope came wafting down on half a dozen tents, setting them all instantly alight.

Monsters bellowed. The gondola, which had risen perhaps a foot off the ground, fell back with a thud and the breaking of timbers. Bits of burning balloon wafted down like Hell’s own snow.

I rolled to my knees. Darla put her elbows on the dirt and emptied another revolver into Thorkel. I snatched up Toadsticker and swung at a clown, who yelped and charged away, dropping his club as he ran.

“Boy!” came a shout. Mama Hog emerged from the billows of smoke, her bloody cleaver dripping in her hand. “Boy, where are you?”

“Over here,” I shouted. Thorkel moved toward my voice. He wasn’t walking too well. Darla swapped her spent guns for new and kept firing, but Thorkel didn’t fall.

“I hear Buttercup!” shouted Mama.

The grenade left my ears ringing. But I too could hear Buttercup’s song now, louder than before, plain enough to sound over the hungry crackle of burning tents.

“Buttercup!” I yelled. “It’s safe. Come on home.”

She heard me. I know she did. Because her cry suddenly rose up, clear and loud enough to sound from horizon to horizon, from deep to high, from Heaven to Hell, and all points in between.

There came a shattering, as if a thousand tall mirrors broke together.

There came a silence, as though every throat alive paused to take in a breath.

Buttercup appeared, floating through the roof of the gondola, coming to light with her right foot resting daintily on its highest, sharpest point.

She glowed. She glowed and she smiled and she raised her favorite skull aloft, and then the Dark Carnival came alive with smashings and screams and howls.

Slim came ambling out of the smoke. His railroad steel was bent nearly double. He flung it down and moved to stand by Mama.

“I have slain things vile and unclean,” he said, Troll voice booming. “I need only sing ten more death songs, and my soul is cleansed of evil.”

“See that thing with the ruined face?” I said. “Called itself the carnival master?”

“I see it,” said Slim.

“Do me a favor and hammer it into the dirt.” I raised my voice so the few clowns who remained could hear. “Then do the same with the rest of them, if they’re still here.”

Slim nodded and headed for Thorkel. Clowns scattered.

Buttercup floated from her perch, sailing to land in front of Darla and me.

She giggled and spun while her skull whispered nonsense.

Wild laughter sounded from the sky. Something low and fast soared above us, leaving rolling billows of smoke in its wake. Something else troubled the smoke-filled sky, passing above with a sound like the beating of ten thousand small wings.

Cannons fired, one-two-three. A single round hurtled past overhead, whistling as it flew, scattering the many wings. The rotary guns barked, sending tracers arcing across the sky. The witch howled in fury from above, and Mama Hog turned her face upward.

“I calls you out,” shrieked Mama. “Get down here and fight!”

The airborne witch howled with laughter in reply.

Slim reached Thorkel’s wobbling frame, steadied the wiggling thing with one massive Troll hand, and brought a fist down square and hard.

The circus master simply flew apart. Slim grunted and stomped the empty clothes a few times.

“Unworthy of a song,” observed the Troll. “Behind you.”

I turned. Gertriss ran up to join us, Sara and Victor and a halfdead I didn’t know gliding at her side. Each of the vamps carried a long gun, and I was glad at the sight of them.

“We cut the mastodons loose,” Gertriss said, grinning. “They’re gone. Won’t be another stampede.”

The witch dipped low and hurled a handful of snakes at Mama. Gunfire erupted from everyone save Slim and me, but the witch flew on, cackling merrily.

Mama aimed a few kicks at the snakes and cussed.

The dancing light from a dozen fires turned the carnival into something out of a Church painting depicting Hell. Debris lay everywhere. Dead clowns lay sprawled about, some on their backs, their brightly painted faces glistening in the flames.

Worse, things gathered in the shadows. Eyes glowed and blinked. Shapes moved, shuffling about, finding suitable nooks or crannies in which to hide or prepare to charge.

The column of flying things began to circle us, moving through the ruined carnival like a tornado formed of hissing wind and black scraps of rags. I caught a glimpse of the many-legged spider, saw all eight of its bulbous black eyes glinting in the light of the fires.

“Any chance we can get to the cannons and the gunners?” I asked.

Victor shook his head no. “The situation has deteriorated,” he said. “There is a beast roaming the midway. Large. Reptilian. Are you familiar with the fossil record, Mr. Markhat?”

“Think one of you could sneak back there and summon the gunners and the cannon, clear the midway, get us?”

The unfamiliar halfdead nodded and stepped forward. She drew back her hood. Her hair was as white as her bloodless skin.

“Give me five minutes,” she said. She handed her long gun off to Sara. “I’ll move faster without it.”

Then she was gone, darting through the ring of monsters without raising so much as a grunt.

“Five minutes there, five back,” I said. Things in the dark rustled and whispered. “Everybody to the gondola. Put your backs to it. You’ve got to hold them off for ten minutes. Piece of cake.”

We moved. Things moved with us, none ready to pounce just yet, but I knew that moment wouldn’t be long off.

Ten minutes. We didn’t have ten minutes. We didn’t have enough guns or enough Trolls or enough magic swords to hold the entire Dark Carnival at bay.

I put away my revolver, found the banshee-hair rope, slid it through my belt loops.

Darla saw. “No,” she said. “No, hon, you don’t have to. We can hold them back. Guns and cannons. On the way. You don’t have to go in there.”

“Buttercup,” I called. She came to me, did a pirouette, and held up her skull as if for me to kiss.

“I need to get inside that place,” I said. I shoved at the gondola’s ornate door, but it was locked, and probably ensorcelled as well. “Can you take me inside?”

Buttercup took my hand.

“I have to,” I said before Darla could speak again. “This isn’t over until the carnival is dead. They’ll just keep coming back.”

“Let the Corps handle it,” said Darla. “They’re coming. You said yourself they’d smash the place to dust and cinders. Let them.”

“And what if some Army sorcerer finds out about Buttercup?” I said. “They’d come for her, hon. You know they would. I have to end this now. So we can go home. All of us. Here. Hold this. Pull hard if the monsters attack.”

I put the free end of the rope in Darla’s hand and kissed her cheek.

“You smell like smoke,” I said. “But I love you anyway.”

Buttercup yanked, and away we went.

Silence.

And darkness. Not complete dark. Not like in the tunnels. More akin to the dark you’d find in a big old empty room, if a single dim stub of a candle gave off its last few flickers of light.

Buttercup began to glow. I reached down and felt for the rope. It was taut, reaching from my waist to the dark, carved wood panels that covered the walls. The rope met the wall and vanished into it, passing through it as easily as Buttercup and I just did.

Darla gave the rope a cautious tug. I tugged back.

Then I drew Toadsticker, and took a pair of steps toward the center of the chamber.

A tiny speck of light, gold as the dawn or a fresh-minted crown coin, appeared before me. Buttercup planted her feet and yanked at my hand. Her skull began to whisper and chant.

I stopped. The speck of light grew, and with it a voice emerged, as faint as the light was small.

A figure began to form. The golden light became hair. The hair found a head. The head gained a neck, and a torso, and limbs.

It was a child. A radiant boy child. Translucent and white, save for the golden hair and the golden eyes. He was dressed in an old-timey lace-collared smock, and short britches, tight leggings and little buckled shoes. He glowed like Buttercup, and I knew without question he was dead, long ago dead.

His gold hair was curly. I imagine Mama would call it tousled.

The voice grew louder, and became the sing-song voice of a child at play.

The words were foreign. I lowered Toadsticker.

“I will not strike a child,” I said. “Even one past harm.”

Buttercup held her skull up, put it as close to my ear as she could. It whispered, and then I understood the child’s words.

“Round and round goes the wheel,

Hear the little people squeal!

The horsies turn, the music plays,

No one leaves! Every one stays!”

The ghost-child glowed brighter. On the floor around him, other things took shape.

A man in a tall black hat marched forward while the clockwork key in his back slowly turned. As he walked, his toy cane rose and fell, striking the floor with a click.

A skeletal figure crawled behind the toy in the top hat. Its bones rattled and shook, moved by means of some wind-up clockwork mechanism.

A clockwork witch astride a tin broom rolled past both. A mechanical cackle sounded from her.

While I watched, the whole carnival took shape, outlined in glows and shimmers. The carousel was there, turning by itself, playing a faint, discordant song. The riding wheel spun beside it, seats filled with dolls, springs and gears whirling and clicking as it turned.

Clowns walked amid it all, keys turning in their backs, their movements stiff and aimless.

I thought of Berthold Ordwald falling, arrows in his throat.

Of Alfreda, pale and bruised, weeping the black tears of a corpse.

“A toy,” I said. “All this, because of a toy?”

The radiant boy looked about, his bright gold eyes turning as though he’d heard me speak, but couldn’t find the source.

He spoke, and a moment later the skull whispered.

“When can I go out?”
it said.
“I’m tired of playing! Tired of this room! I want to go outside and play with Maya and Siri!”

“He doesn’t know he’s dead.”

“I don’t like this game!”
The child kicked at the toy circus master, but the doll avoided his foot and waggled its cane at him accusingly.
“You’re mean! I don’t like you!”

I sank into a crouch. Toadsticker weighed heavy in my hand.

The toys gained solidity as I watched them. The taint of magic deep in my soul whispered to me.

“Toys,” I muttered. “They’re just toys.” Sorcerous toys, I knew. From the time of arcane summer.

“Who’s there?”
shouted the child.
“Nurse, is that you? Why won’t you open the door? I want to go out!”

“I’m sorry, kid,” I said. I was sure he couldn’t understand Kingdom, even if he could make out my words. “I wish I could help you. I truly do.”

I shivered. Maybe it was the magic speaking, the ghost of the huldra putting images in my head again. Or maybe it was my imagination.

Either way, I saw the kid standing in the middle of the room, crying. Heard the last refrain of an angry adult voice. Heard the slamming of the door, and the throwing of a bolt.