The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (4 page)

“Don’t gloat, dear,” she said. “It doesn’t become you.”

Mind-readers. That’s what you women are. One day one of you needs to teach me the trick.

Later, we rolled up and joined the line of cabs waiting to disgorge their passengers, all of whom were bound for the carnival.

Many bore waybills. Many more had children in tow, all ages, from toddlers in bulky prams to surly teenagers desperate to be anywhere else but where they stood.

Clowns shuffled about, passing out waybills and enduring the blows and kicks of strangers. I recognized one of them from the ferry and led my little band off in the other direction.

Once beyond the wall, we had our choice of walking the mile to the ferry or hiring any of the assorted farm-wagons vying for our business at the edge of the woods. We opted for walking, since the bulk of the crowd did the same.

The lanterns along the way lit up the posters. What had seemed cheap and crude in the harsh light of day was rendered lurid and dramatic in the dark. I heard gasps as we passed the poster proclaiming the terror of the Man of Bones, whistles and hoots as we drew near the Queen of the Elves.

“She’ll catch pneumonia if that’s all she wears,” said Gertriss.

“More likely the rotgut whiskey will get her first,” I said. “Same with Bones there.”

We kept walking, staying in the middle of the throng. Business was going to be brisk for the carnival’s first night.

We slipped aboard the ferry without incident. I didn’t recognize any of the clowns, and they didn’t appear to take note of me. We paid, were pushed and shoved toward the back rail, and after a time the ropes lying in the water picked up and a mastodon trumpeted as it dragged us across the River.

A man close to me cussed and went down to his knees. Gertriss yanked his face around toward her and slapped him hard.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” she said, as casually as if she was commenting on the pleasant evening air. “Next time I’ll slit your ugly throat and dump your ass in the river.”

People laughed. Darla slipped her hand in my pocket, where I’d reached for my two-shot revolver.

“Let’s have a nice quiet evening,” she said. The grimacing man managed to get to his feet before shuffling quickly away.

“It was nothing, boss,” said Gertriss. “Forget about it.”

I shrugged, but kept an eye on the man for the rest of the trip.

When we stepped off the makeshift ferry and onto the other side of the Brown, everything changed.

Lights. The sky was full of lights. It took me a moment to figure out that they’d raised their balloons and hung lanterns along hundreds and hundreds of lines. They turned the sky into a spider’s web, and hung moving, bobbing stars on the strands.

The walkway was flanked with mastodons. Ogres stood among them, bellowing and beating the air with flaming whips. The whips would lash out at anyone who strayed too close. They never struck their targets, but sent them squealing and hopping back for the safety of the crowd.

We surged forward, funneled toward a series of gates manned by clowns, by fire-breathers, by jugglers, by dancing girls. At the gates, coins quickly changed hands, patrons were waved through, and the turnstile closed, ready for the next.

I had a pair of red tickets in my pocket, but I hung onto them and paid for us three to enter, just like the rest. I doubted that Thorkel had marked the tickets he gave me earlier, doubted that the gate staff had orders to tail anyone presenting a special ticket.

Maybe, not so long ago, two other finders doubted the same.

Sometimes peace of mind is worth sixty pence.

Our smiling dancing girl waved us inside. The turnstile arm clicked open, and Dark’s Diverse Delights beckoned us forward.

Chapter Six

The air smelled of fresh-cut hay and beef cooking and mastodon sweat.

The slilth, taller than I’d ever seen it, gamboled about on the bald hills just beyond the carnival’s borders. A few faces turned up toward it, watching it eclipse the fat harvest moon, but most of the crowd paid the walking engine no heed.

Music blared. Half a dozen tents had their own bands set up out front, each trying to out-shout the rest. Barkers barked, exhorting the ambling masses inside their attractions, each bellowed promise of thrills more grandiose than the one before it. Smoke and steam from tiny snack stalls wafted here and there, no two the same, none easily identifiable.

There was an upright riding wheel in the distance, slowly turning against the night, its seats full of gesticulating riders. Other rides bobbed and turned, whirling this way or that, each rise or fall accompanied by screams and hoots.

Clowns wandered through it all, capering and gibbering and enduring whatever abuse the crowd felt they’d earned. I suppose spirits were generally high, because I only saw one clown struck in earnest, and only then after he pinched a man’s nose.

Darla walked on my right and Gertriss on my left. Darla was all smiles. Gertriss was anything but.

“What do you think, ladies?” I asked.

“Charming,” said Darla, smiling. “In a sinister, evil fashion, of course.”

“Not sure yet,” said Gertriss. “We need to split up. See the sideshows.”

“You’ll attract too much attention, going off alone,” I said.

“Chauvinist. But you’re probably right.” Gertriss glanced around, focused on a bespectacled young man wearing a bowler hat at least a size too large, and grabbed him by his elbow.

“What’s your name, brown eyes?” she asked, putting a lot of purr into it.

He took in the sight of her, and his face went beet red. “Um,” he said. “Er.”

She smiled and stepped in close. “Breathe now,” she said, slipping her arm around him. “Your name.”

“Orville,” he said, with the urgency of a drowning man grabbing at dry land. “Orville, um, Watson.”

Darla had to hide her guffaws behind her hand.

“That’s a nice name, Orville. My name is Gertriss. This is my uncle Marty,” she said, nodding to me. “He won’t let me see the side-shows by myself, which is mean of him. It would be awfully sweet of you to take me. Will you do that, Orville? Take me to a few side-shows? Keep me safe?”

I bit back a chortle of my own. Gertriss was carrying enough firepower to take down a charging Troll. In a fight between one of Buttercup’s stuffed toy bears and Orville, I’d be hard pressed not to bet on the toy bear.

“Are you a young man of manners and comportment, Mr. Watson?” I asked, fixing him in my best Army drill sergeant glare. “Will you treat my niece with utmost respect and flawless consideration?”

Gertriss put her hand on Orville’s shallow chest. He gobbled out a heartfelt if slightly incoherent promise to keep her safe and unsullied.

“I suppose it’s all right then,” I said. “Meet back at the gate in two hours. Or else.”

I made a slicing motion across my throat. Gertriss hauled him off before he could bolt. Darla burst into laughter.

“Men truly are simple creatures,” I said, as Darla took my arm. “All save me, of course. I was immune to your artful wiles.”

I picked out a side-show tent and steered us toward it.

“She’s worried about Evis,” Darla said. Evis is my best friend. Sure he’s a halfdead, a walking abomination if you believe the Church, but he has good taste in beer and enjoys a fine cigar and I never heard a priest say anything that made a lick of sense anyway. Evis is also Gertriss’s best friend, although in a wholly different sense.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought they were past all that.”

“So did she. But now she says he’s avoiding her. Cutting dates short. Ducking her altogether, at times.”

I frowned. The barker saw us approach and waved us ahead. “That doesn’t sound like Evis,” I said.

“Step right up, folks!” cried the barker, a short fat man in a bright yellow suit and matching orange hat. “Do you dare confront the mystery that is Clara and Clota, the two-headed woman?”

“I know a guy with two heads, back home,” I said, flipping him a copper. “Maybe we should introduce them.”

He laughed and waved us inside.

Clara and Clota shared one torso, three arms, three legs, and the same distinctly abrasive personality. Halfway through their song and dance act, Clara started cussing Clora and soon three fists were flying and three feet were kicking. Darla and I sought the exit as a pair of clowns grabbed each head by its hair and yanked the faces apart.

Darla shivered. “That was disgusting,” she murmured.

Next we sought out the Man of Bones. His tent was filled with a sweet, cloying mist which glowed in the lanterns aimed up from the floor. Music swelled, the effect only slightly marred by the musician’s inability to keep a tempo, and finally the Man of Bones himself stepped into the light.

People gasped. Give Bones that. In the swirling mist and the dark, cleverly applied paint did manage to project the illusion of bones in motion. Unless you looked too close, or too long.

The gasps soon gave way to guffaws, and when the first thrown bottle sailed onto the stage, the living skeleton made a very vital gesture and stomped off into the shadows.

Malus the Magnificent was next. He made his girl appear, then float, then vanish, and I was pleased to hear only the faintest of well-cushioned thuds from beneath the stage as she made her magical exit. Malus produced a rabbit from his hat, changed water to confetti, and caused a man’s handkerchief to hang dancing in the air. By the time the handkerchief danced, though, his audience realized no more barely-clothed young women would be taking the stage and most wandered away, Darla and I among them.

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.