JavaElemental (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bloodymary) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} carnival,@ 2008-07-02 20:16:00 |
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Well of Worlds
Down the midway, Shaggy saw the rubes betting more, and betting faster, and at the games of skill the competition between young punks winning prizes for their girlfriends began to take on an ugly edge. When they won, their cheers held the ghosts of screams, and when they lost, their eyes were dark and angry, and Shaggy was starting to get a little nervous of it. Deeper still, the animals in Vincente's cages paced and snarled and lashed their tails, and back by the rides, Dana misted through the House of Mirrors, watching as the patrons bumped into clear glass and mugged faces at the mirrors, and though the reflections were always twisted, now the twists seemed even more surreal.
Masque stood in her chilled studio, a tall, half-finished mannequin before her. She was working on the eyes, a picture tacked to the cork board next to her. This piece was to be Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams, but the eyes just wouldn't come out right. She was breast to breast with the ghostly white form, peering into its left eye, working a slender scalpel with quick, delicate swipes. Every few moments or so, she would pause, step back, glare at the picture, then glare at her sculpture. She'd been so proud of herself for getting the nose and cheekbones right, too. Damn the woman's eyes! She went back to work, sleeves dragged up to her elbows, oh-so-carefully shaping the under curve of the socket, hissing between her teeth as she glanced from the picture to the sculpture.
From behind her came a very soft scrape. She paused, turned, scanned the studio. It looked like the red carpet walk at the Oscars. Famous faces and forms filled the room, some finished, some awaiting various touches or costuming. Her breath fogged the air as her gaze swept the brightly-lit room. She turned back to her sculpture, and the scrape came again.
“Dammit.” She flicked the scalpel at the cork board and it stuck blade in, quivering with impact. She turned her frustrated glare on the room. So help her, if it was rats again, she was borrowing Simba from Vincente and turning him loose in here. She took a few steps, snatching up a broom from a corner, and turned on the wax celebrities. The last time there had been rats, John Wayne had lost half his left foot, and it had taken her two weeks to fix it.
She moved in on the statues, batting around their feet and skirts with the broom, grumbling under her breath about rats and Angelica Huston's eyes. There was another soft scrape. This time it sounded distinctly like a foot step.
Masque turned, glares and grumbles fading as she looked around. Her breath came in white puffs, curling around her pale face and up through her blond hair. Her brows furrowed together, lips a flat line. She turned again, coming face to face with Frank N. Furter. She started, and then giggled at her surprise, putting a hand over her chest.
Then Frankie snatched her by the throat.
* * *
Lili stalked the Carnival grounds, cloven hooves striking sparks as they stamped down in the path, serpentine forked tail snapping back and forth. Her black, leathery wings were folded in tight to her back, her scaled red skin gleamed under the Carnival lights, and her eyes, glistening golden without pupil or iris, were narrowed. The air was ripe with the stench of sin and her nose twitched, breathing in the scent like sweet perfume, her black lips pulled back in a smile, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. She was hunting, and not a patron of the Carnival noticed her passing, except possibly as a shiver racing down their puerile monkey spines.
Lili had lived on the apex of the Big Top for a millennium, appointed there by her father to watch and take note, and what had begun as a mission under her own will had ended as an infinite term in prison. Someday soon the trumpets would sound and the armies would rise, the moon would turn black and the seas as blood, and there would be pestilence and famine and war and death, and Lili would still be here, trapped in this cursed Carnival, staring down from the Big Top and taking note of the foolishness of these people.
She had long thought that her father had known this would happen, and had sent her here for punishment. It no longer mattered. There had been a time of rebellion against her imprisonment, and then sullen anger as she sulked atop the tent, and finally, resignation, and she had simply perched there, taking note as ordered. She harbored no hopes of escape, for there's no hope in Hell and so she'd never learned how to do it.
She'd watched the patrons and Carnies come and go, always different and always exactly the same, foolish little simians dressed up as monsters and powers and pretending their efforts made some difference, sad little men and women and children searching for ways out of their self-inflicted miseries, imagining they were suffering when in truth they had but tasted a dab of the true sorrow awaiting them. She had often laughed to herself as she watched some mortal fool claim some sort of salvation from this bastard Carnival, and laughed all the harder when they did not. She particularly enjoyed seeing the patrons tossed into the Labyrinth, although, come to think of it, the House of Mirrors had rendered some fairly gruesome punishments in the past, as well.
It was occasionally quite interesting to sit at the peak of the Big Top and watch. It was frequently humorous to watch the Carnies scrambling to rectify their own errors as they compounded on themselves, stirring up chaos and trouble. Mostly, though, it was boring up on the tent, and there was even less reason to come down. She wasn't let to play with the patrons, and there was hardly ever anything of real consequence to take note of.
But now, finally, at last, there was something of import. The gates had opened, and she had entered, and Lili meant to find her.
* * *
Brick had put paid to the majority of the bottle, and his head was warm and pleasantly fuzzed. The music from the adjoining tent was quite loud, something that was part country jamboree and part jig and seemed to involve a lot of fiddles and harmonicas, and Brick was tapping his foot in time to it. He was considering the merits of wandering over there and seeing if he could locate a pretty woman who needed kept company for the night, when someone sat down next to him.
“Can I get a beer?” Said the new arrival.
Brick glanced idly over at the newcomer, waited a moment for his eyes to focus. He was a tall guy, but then, nearly everyone was tall to Brick, with short dark hair, somewhat mussed, and a five o'clock shadow. He was wearing a Red Sox t-shirt and his jeans had sawdust on them, like he might have fallen earlier. He glanced over at Brick, and Brick felt a pang of recognition.
“I know you.” The words came out slurred. Brick's face wrinkled into a frown.
“Sure you do.” Said the man. “You're the big guy who helped me out in the parking lot.” He offered out his hand. “Roger Brighton.”
“Oh yeah, the cop.”
“Yeah. Hey, I appreciate the help. Looks like you had the same idea I did. Let me buy you a beer.” Roger grinned, a warm, eminently friendly expression.
Brick brightened. “Sure. I'm Brick.”
The two men shook hands, and the bartender turned up with a couple of beers. Roger held his up, slid the other over to Brick. “Cheers!”
“Right on.” Said Brick, and emptied his cup.
* * *
Alice looked the trailer over. It was an antique wooden carnival trailer, the old-fashioned, horse-drawn kind that she'd expect to find Gypsies living in, although the hitch was propped up on an ornate wrought iron stand. It was low-key, varnished wood, moons and stars burned delicately into the wood in a border around its trim, and a small set of steps led up to the door.
“Fortune teller.” Alice contained the sneer that wanted to come with the words. She could count on one hand the number of real oracles she'd ever encountered. Actually, she was pretty sure she could count them on her mangled hand, at that. She could already imagine the wizened hearth witch inside, and her sinuses were bracing for the onslaught of cheap incense while she ran over Tarot card meanings in the back of her mind to make sure the old bat was getting them right.
The clown grunted and gestured for Alice to proceed him. He looked a little uneasy, sharpened teeth peeking out from his blood-colored grin.
Alice glanced him up and down, and then ascended the stairs. She raised her good hand to knock, and a high small voice said, “Come in, Alice.”
“Cheap trick.” Alice muttered to herself and opened the door. She stepped in and stopped.
It looked like Barbie's Dream House had exploded inside the trailer. It was extremely pink, and extremely lacy. There were pink pillows and pink curtains and the walls were painted pink. There were dainty white chairs surrounding a delicate white table, and the cushions on the chairs were pink and dripped lace, and the table cloth was pink lace. There were four chairs around the table, one occupied by a dark-haired eight-year-old, and the other three taken up by a chocolate brown teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann, and a large stuffed rabbit the color of Pepto Bismol.
A plain crystal ball sat in the center of the table, surrounded by three pink candles that smelled like peppermint, and a plastic tea set. The little girl had paused in the midst of pouring out a Kool-aid tea service to her stuffed animals. She was an adorable little girl, long, dark hair, heart-shaped face, great big brown eyes, and was grinning. She was missing a front tooth, and wearing a pair of pink camouflage jeans, and a pink Dora the Explorer blouse. As if all of that were not enough, the walls were hung in Technicolor tapestries, children's cartoon characters portraying Tarot card scenes and mythological settings.
“Jesus Christ.” Alice said, looking around.
“Language, miss!”
Startled, Alice glanced towards the back of the trailer, spotting a woman sitting in a (pink) recliner in the corner, knitting. The woman seemed quite ordinary at first glance, if somewhat oddly clothed. She was middle-aged, hair pulled back in a shiny black bun, little round glasses perched on a pert nose, and her eyes were black, too large for her face. She was wearing a deep red house dress speckled with black polka dots, and over that, a white apron. She was a chubby, matronly woman, round and cheerful-looking.
“What the hell is something like you doing here?” Alice exclaimed before she could stop herself.
“That's my nanny, Lady Staceybug, silly.” Said the little girl, as she finished pouring out tea. “And I'm Ambrosia, and you're Alice, and that's Violent Clay, behind you. Come in!”
“Staceybug.” Alice repeated dumbly as the clown jostled her out of the way so he could get in.
The woman nodded, smiling. It was a very knowing expression.
“Mr. Bunny and Ann will move so you can sit. You can have their tea. They aren't thirsty.”
Alice didn't hear a word the girl said. She was still staring at Lady Staceybug. When Alice had been small, and first brought into Detroit to be trained as a magus, one of her teachers had been a staid, professorial librarian named Owen. He had been an excellent teacher, despite being neither a magus, himself, nor even human. Oh, he'd looked human enough on top, much as Staceybug did, but Alice had seen him for what he was, just as she could see Staceybug. Owen had been a Volkswagen-sized drone bee minding his pocket-dimension hive of worker bees, carved out of the basement of the Detroit Public Library. It was a major accomplishment to attract an extraplanar entity like Owen to live in Detroit, and in exchange for all the essence of knowledge his worker bees could harvest from Detroit, he had taught the young magi there.
Staceybug wasn't exactly the same thing – Alice doubted she was here harvesting knowledge, for one – but she was close enough to be a cousin. Alice couldn't make out exactly what the pretend woman looked like, but she had the vague sensation of a giant ladybug in pince nez, and the feeling that if she could see them, she'd see tiny little ladybugs crawling everywhere, on everything, sipping gently of . . .
Alice stared, glanced at little Ambrosia, then back at Staceybug. The entity nodded again, smiling pleasantly. Sipping gently of children's dreams, then, and storing the essence away as food for Staceybug's version of a hive.
Jesus. Soul-eaters and outlanders, vampires and undead clowns, magi and fae . . . what the hell else could possibly be living in this damn Carnival? Alice glanced around the trailer, drifting towards a chair and setting Mr. Bunny aside so she could sit. Violent Clay stayed at the door, glowering at the room in general.
The deeper she got into the Carnival, the worse the news got. Bad enough when she thought Junior might have made his way into a place of magic. Worse, when she got here and saw the Carnival for herself, tasted the pulsating power of the place. Alice couldn't begin to conceive of how dreadfully bad it would be if Junior managed to sink his hooks all the way into the Carnival, and draw from its power. It would be like a perpetual motion machine, generating energy for the Skindancer. Junior wouldn't just be an abyssal entity anymore, he'd nearly be a god in his own right, with a place like this under his thumb.
This Carnival wasn't just any magic circus, Alice abruptly realized. Dr. Celestine's Carnival of Souls was a Well of Worlds. She'd read about them. Hell, Owen had taught her about them, sites in the world where reality had worn thin and quantum possibilities leaked through to become corporeal themselves, where gods and devils were birthed on a regular basis. Anything was possible in a Well of Worlds, and the power they encompassed was nigh infinite.
If Junior got a hold of the Carnival of Souls . . . Alice wasn't a woman given to fear, but her blood ran icy cold at the thought. Even the Shadow, usually full of whispers and plots, had fallen silent.
“Alice?”
“I'm sorry, what?” Alice started, glancing at the little girl.
Ambrosia held up a deck of Tarot Cards. Daphne Duck posed as the Empress on the top card. “Want your fortune read?” She grinned, as though she'd just asked if Alice wanted to play jacks.
“Sure. Why the hell not.” Alice said, still numb from her epiphany.
“Oh, goody. This should be fun.” Ambrosia clapped her hands and started laying out the cards.
* * *
Frank N. Furter's make-up was running. Actually, his whole face was running. As Masque dangled from his vise-like grip on her throat, one of his glassy eyeballs oozed out of the socket and rolled briefly down his cheek before dropping to the tile floor with a soft plinking noise. His arm oozed and dripped but was no less strong, and Masque's fingers sank into the wax flesh as she tried to hold herself up. The wax was hot under her hands, and she could feel her own fingers softening, loosing shape in the heat baking out of the dummy. She kicked her feet, one slipper flying away as she gurgled and choked.
Frankie's sexy leer was melting, one side sliding down to his jaw as his face ran, and then plopped off, revealing the plastic skeleton underneath. The skeleton, too, was softening. Masque kicked and struggled as her eyes bugged and her vision dimmed. Frankie's fingers had sunk through her wax throat to the real flesh underneath. He pulled her closer and she struck out, her fist sinking into his chest and sticking. She kicked and her feet stuck in his torso, one after the other. She had a flash of memory, her father reading her a bedtime story, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and in her terror, she giggled.
The raspy giggle cut off as slender wisps like strings whipped out of Frankie's chest and wrapped around her arm. They burned, even through her wax, and more whips flew out, snagging her legs, burning and hissing. The wax on Frankie's chest began to bubble, and his bustiere smoldered. Something was pushing through, something slimy and gray and worm-like, and more cilia whipped out of the wax, flying around Masque's head, pulling her wig astray. She felt the tension in the lines as the creature used its grip on her to pull itself free of the wax, towards her.
* * *
There was a pyramid of shot glasses sitting on the bar in front of Brick and Roger, and the booze was flowing mightily. Not just for the two men, either. The level of drunkenness in the beer tent had reached epic proportions, and there was a crowd gathered around the cop and the strong man, cheering them on as they went shot for shot. Brick finished the slurred punchline on the joke he was telling, and Roger choked on his shot, laughing out perfectly good whiskey.
Brick pounded him on the back, knocking him off his stool by accident, and Roger continued to laugh as he sat on his ass, looking up at Brick.
“You're not so tough!” Roger exclaimed. “I bet I could whip you arm wrestling.”
“Oh, fuck that.” Brick said, laughing too. “You're on.”
“Clear a spot!” Roger roared, staggering up. “Shorty here wants his ass kicked!”
A moment later, a table had been cleared for the two men, and the crowd was hooting and cheering so loudly they drowned out the music. Money exchanged hands and bets were shouted back and forth. Brick and Roger practically had to carry each other to the table, and they more fell onto the benches opposite each other than sat, but they managed to get their arms up on the rough wood and facing each other.
“Did I tell you the one about the two penguins walking into the bar?” Brick asked, holding his hand out and grinning.
“Nah.” Roger grabbed his hand, bracing his elbow.
“The third one said, 'Man, you'd have thought the second penguin would have ducked!'”
“That was awful.”
“But you're laughing – Okay, ready? I'll try not to put you in the hospital.”
Roger's face took on a thoughtful cast as the crowd chanted to three. Brick grunted and flexed, and Roger's arm didn't budge an inch.
“What the fuck -- ?”
“Hospital.” Roger said, musing, as Brick strained to put his arm down.
“Dude, seriously!”
“That solves a lot of problems, actually.” Roger said, voice quiet. “See, they closed this damn place up. Can't get any more food in with the joint closed.”
Brick put his weight into it, paying no mind to Roger's mutter. Fuck, I must be really shit-faced. Roger's arm wasn't even shaking. It wasn't moving at all.
“But if someone had to go out to go to the hospital . . .” Roger was studying the table as the crowd chanted and cheered, drowning his words out. He glanced up at Brick, who had gone red-faced. “You're straining pretty hard, there, big guy. Why don't you just have a heart attack?”
Brick met the cop's eyes. “What -- ?” Then a mule kicked him in the chest. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Brick caught his breath, dropping Roger's hand to grab his chest, eyes bugging, face going white.
“Oh shit!” Roger stood abruptly. “Man, are you all right? Someone call 9-1-1!” The crowd hushed as Brick toppled off the bench, clutching his chest. “Come on! Call an ambulance!”
Chaos erupted, and Roger grinned.
* * *
The little girl shuffled the cards. They were too big for her hands, but that didn't slow her down. Her small hands were as dexterous as an old Vegas card sharp, shuffling and folding with lightning speed and rippling rhythm. She split and folded them together, split and folded, split and folded, the cards slapping each other with a sound like an ace in bike spokes on a hot summer day. She shoved the crystal ball aside and slapped the cards down in front of Alice.
“Cut them, please.” Her face was serene, smiling. “Mr. James always says 'Cut 'em like they owe you money'.” She giggled.
Alice glanced down at the cards. They were very plain, the backs a bright blue diamond design. She picked up half the cards and set them aside, piling the rest on top.
“Good.” Ambrosia picked the deck up and started dealing them out face-up, in a Celtic cross. Looney Tunes characters graced the fronts in lurid candy colors. The Queen of Wands, played by a red-headed bit of Merrie Melodies cheesecake, sat in the center of the spread, reversed.
Alice glanced over the spread. She spotted the seven of wands and the ace of swords, the ten of swords and the Death card, the Devil, several pentacles, Justice, and the Fool.
“Hmm.” Said Ambrosia, glancing up at Alice. “That's a mess.” She shuffled the cards back together. “Danger, death, misery, and failure. Discovery and friendship. A challenge you aren't up to, and your winning Lotto numbers are fifteen, twelve, thirty-two, and twenty-five.”
“Excuse me?”
“Want me to write them down? I wouldn't want you to miss out on the money.” Ambrosia pulled out a crayon and a scribble pad and wrote the numbers down.
“Money?” Alice stared at her.
“That's why you're here, right? Money? Someone paid you?”
“Well, yeah --”
“Right.” She ripped off the page and handed it over. “Well, I'm paying you to go away. You're a storm crow. Go away before you hurt someone. That's the jackpot, by the way, I promise.” She crossed her heart.
Alice stared down at the numbers, scrawled in large blue crayon. “But --”
“You aren't going to go on about duty or something are you? No one believes you when you say it.” Ambrosia's large, dark gaze was directed over Alice's shoulder, at nothing in particular. “You only want one thing.”
Alice had the feeling the little girl wasn't talking to her anymore.
“You make her strong, sure, but what do you get out of it?” Ambrosia asked. “I know. You think you'll manage to talk her into it? If you do, get her out of here before it happens. I don't want that here. We've got enough of it as it is.”
Alice glanced over her shoulder, seeing the clown with his uneasy grin at the door, and nothing else. Who was the little brat talking to? Not . . . the Shadow? “What are you going on about, kid?”
Ambrosia looked back at Alice, and smiled, sad. “You think you're in charge of her, don't you?”
“I --”
“Grown-ups are so stupid.” Ambrosia put her cards away with the utmost disgust, the kind of frustrated ire that only an eight-year-old can summon. “You think souls are what she wants? Souls are small change, Alice, you know that. A dime a dozen.”
“Plug and play hardware.” Alice heard herself say. She'd used the line before.
“Right. There's so much worse she can take. So much worse, and you give it away like it means nothing.”
“Ambrosia.” The clown's rusty voice startled them both.
The little girl glanced up at Violent Clay. “Is it your turn next?” She grinned her gap-toothed grin.
“Where's the thing from the parking lot?”
Ambrosia blinked. “Is that what you wanted? You better hurry. It's in the beer tent, killing Brick.” She burst into tears, shuddering all over. “It's killing Brick!”
Staceybug was suddenly at Ambrosia's side, sweeping the little girl up. “Shh, shhh! It'll be okay, sweetums.” Ambrosia wailed, a high, horrified sound, squirming around to bury her face in Staceybug's shoulder. “You had better hurry, Clay, dear.”
The clown was already turning, jerking the door open. Alice jumped up, knocking the chair over in her haste, jogging the table and splashing Kool-aid tea everywhere. She darted out behind the clown, Ambrosia's paper wadded up in her injured hand.
* * *
The creature pulled itself out of Frankie's chest with a thick, wet glopping sound and swung between them, more tentacular cilia whipping out to encircle Masque, pulling itself to her stomach. Frankie staggered and fell, splashing on the floor, sending wax up in a flesh-colored shower. Masque, throat freed, managed a gagging scream as the leech pulled itself up to her chest. She batted at the squirming thing, eyes bugging as a mouth opened on the leech, a wide, vaginal circle full of sharp little teeth. Her scream spiraled upwards as she seized the creature, pulling on it. It writhed in her melted grasp and she couldn't get a good grip. She careened back towards Angelica, reaching out and snagging the scalpel in the cork board.
The scalpel fell to the floor as the softened wax of her fingers peeled back, oozing. Wild-eyed, she beat at the leech with the revealed stump of her right arm, the thing's mouth opening and closing, dilating wide and narrow like a cat's pupil, teeth snapping together as it dragged itself up to her face.
“Aimee? Aimee, what's – Jesus!”
Masque heard the voice, recognized it, and suddenly Mr. James' flunky Hank had an arm around her, one big fist gripping the leech and jerking it away. Cilia snapped with guitar-like twangs and he flung it. It hit the ground and rolled, and as Masque fell to her knees, gasping for breath, Hank strode to the leech and stomped it viciously, greasy sludge squittering out from under his heavy work boot. His boot hit the ground twice more, stomping the thing into oblivion, as Masque huddled on her knees, remainders of her hands up over her face, pearly white tears rolling down her wax mask face.
“Jesus, what was that, Aimee, are you all right?”
He turned to look at her, and she shoved herself up in a raw panic, knowing her faux flesh had run, knowing her mask was destroyed, and she fled through the studio to the safety of her room, slamming the door behind her.
Hank stood, confused, one foot still in the puddle of twitching, dying goo on the floor, staring at the door. “Aimee?” He called. He went to the door, leaving slimed footsteps behind him, and knocked softly. “Aimee?” He could hear her weeping behind the door, and sighed to himself. Gals, he thought, shaking his head. As though he would care about her face, as long as she was all right.
* * *
The beer tent was a mad house. Half the patrons hadn't even noticed the struggle Violent Clay was pushing his way towards. Alice followed behind him, doing her own fair share of elbowing and pushing to get through. The music had been cranked up to jet engine levels, and she could still hear the shouting over that.
Alice's mind was racing. On the way here, there had been four fist fights, one of which was an old janitor beating the piss of out of a teen over an unopened green coke bottle on the ground. There had been a slender man buying a stack of elephant ears from a stand. The stack had been as tall as Alice. Two woman had been slapping each other at a merchandising stall over a faux Prada purse, both with a death grip on the tearing leather. Three stoners had been laying in the lee of a tent, just laying there, one in his own filth, barely breathing, joint in the dirt between them, forgotten, as they stared dustily up into the Carnival lights. In the beer tent, the party atmosphere was frantic, hysterical.
The clown shoved through the final circle and found Brick laying on the ground, the bar tender kneeling over him, eyes huge, face pale. “He stopped breathing!” He yelled over to someone else, then froze as the clown's shadow fell over him.
Alice shoved Violent Clay. “Find the fucker! It's still here!” Clay turned to glare at the woman. “It's doing this! Find it!” She waved around at the tent with her mangled hand, still clutching Ambrosia's paper. “I got this guy.”
Alice dropped down to one knee as the clown stepped over the prone man, shoving on into the crowd. “What's wrong?”
“Heart attack – we called an ambulance!”
Alice put her hand over the man's chest, up to his throat to check his pulse. “No heart beat.” She glanced around, patting her pockets and coming up empty for anything useful. She was great at gashes, bullet wounds, broken bones, and most other fight-oriented first aid, but she didn't know a damn thing about heart attacks. She'd seen a lot of ER a few years ago, though, while recovering from a broken knee, and it seemed like those guys were always nailing patients with the shock paddles when their hearts stopped. Alice wasn't a healer, but she could manage an electric shock. She stuffed Ambrosia's note paper in her pocket and planted both hands over the man's heart, and pushed down.
For a split second, her bones were visible through her skin, and the scab on her wounded hand smoked. She hissed in pain, and pushed down again, bones black shadows under yellow flesh, fresh blood from the scab hissing and popping. The man jerked and groaned.
Alice pulled her hands back, fingers trailing smoke, and found a thready pulse at his throat. His eyes rolled open briefly, focused on her, and he whispered, “The fucking cop.”
“What?” Alice exclaimed, but he'd passed out again. “Keep an eye on him.” She told the bar tender, pushing herself up and shoving into the crowd after Violent Clay. Cop? What cop? she wondered, following a trail of aggrieved-looking drunks left in the clown's wake. As she passed by, some guy yelled at another, “Did you push me? Did you fucking push me, asshole?” and slammed his fist into another man's face, his expression a dark twist of wrath.
There was more going on here than just the Skindancer, Alice realized. Something else was going wrong in the Carnival, aggravating Junior's work. All that was going to do was feed Junior more juice, and the last thing Alice wanted to deal with was an even more powerful Skindancer. She broke out of the crowd, back into the fairway, and stopped, running her hands through her hair. She had to figure out what the other problem was and put a stop to it, and quickly. Let the clown tangle with Junior for awhile, keep them both busy. Alice had to sort out this second fiasco.
Where to start, though? In this lunatic place, it could be literally anything. She turned, and a hand descended on her shoulder, spinning her the rest of the way around. She looked up into the hissing face of a demoness.
“Shit!” She tried to twist back, but the demoness had her in steel vise grip.
She leaned in close to Alice, forked tongue swirling over black lips. “Are you Alice? Black Alice?” The demoness snapped her wings open, mantling over her shoulders, tail lashing back and forth as she grinned. Alice looked down, and realized the demoness was holding something in her talons. She was holding --
-- a scrap book and pen?
“Can I get your autograph?” The demoness asked. “I'm a huge fan of your work.” She handed the book to Alice, who accepted it, stupid with amazement.
Alice looked down at the scrapbook. It was opened to a page lined with yellowed news clippings detailing the Great Galveston Hurricane in Texas in 1900. Alice stared at the hundred-year-old news clippings. She knew the storm. She'd seen a thing about it on the Weather Channel once. Some reports said 12,000 people had died in the storm and resulting floods, making it the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
On the right hand page, above an article, was a sepia-toned news picture showing several survivors huddling together in front of a heaping mass of ruins. One of the survivors was a smiling little girl with curling hair, wearing a pinafore dress. Alice recognized the girl immediately. That's me, she thought. That's me, over a hundred years ago. Jesus.
“Amazing, how you pulled that off. A whole hurricane. I could never manage anything that big. And over eight thousand dead. I can't imagine the power it generated! That's real quality, there.” The demoness continued to gush praise as Alice signed the book and handed it back. “Are you here to take the Carnival? My father will love this. And I get to be here to see it! This is great!”
Alice looked up at the demoness, at a loss for words. “Um. Right. Take the Carnival.”
“Can I help? I'd love to see how you do it first hand.”
“Trade secrets, you know.” Alice managed.
The demoness' face fell. “I suppose you're right. Still, I guess I get a front row seat, don't I?” She pointed away to the Big Top. “I'll be up there if you change your mind. Thanks for the autograph!”
“No problem.” Alice watched as the demoness turned away, tail flipping back and forth as she headed back towards the Big Top. “What the fuck.” She said softly to herself. She had no memory whatsoever of any hurricane, resulting power gathered, nothing, and yet there had been her picture.
She turned in a slow circle, hands holding her hair back, staring at the Carnival, and watched a large man, all painted up gold, stride by. She stopped, her astonished train of thought derailing as she noted that the man wasn't painted gold, he was made of gold. One glance told Alice he was one of the Freak Master's creatures.
The Freak Master's creatures. The Freak Master, BB Wolfe, the soul eater, and his dark minions, patterned after the Seven Deadly Sins. The Sins, like greed, wrath, gluttony, envy . . . “Oh, fuck.” Alice said, remembering the fights and oddities she'd seen on the way here. “Fuck me.” The last place in this miserable shithole she wanted go, and she was suddenly positive that the Sins were the things aggravating the Skindancer's work. She let her hands drop, her hair falling into her face as she patted down her pockets for her cigarettes. She came out with her battered pack of Camels, her lighter, and Ambrosia's piece of paper, crumbled up in her maimed hand.
Alice stared at her hand, at the page. This goddamn job had already cost her half a fortune. Two fingers off her shooting hand, a whole bag of gear, her car, not to mention the cost of the gas to get here. She was in the hole on this job whether she charged for expenses or not, and here she was, holding what an eight-year-old oracle claimed were the winning Lotto numbers. Hell, if they were the winning numbers for her home state, that was more than what the Father of Blood was paying. Alice could skip on out of this insane Carnival with its uncomfortable revelations and psychotic employees, head home. She could make her house payment for the next two years and still afford to set up her own workshop, become a master magus in her own right instead of just a journeyman, and still have money left over to screw around. This whole damn place could go straight to hell. It wasn't her territory after all. What did she really care if some abyssal demigod took the Well over and used it to . . .
. . . devour the whole world . . . eventually . . .
“Not my problem.” Alice said, smoothing the paper out to look at the crayon numbers. “Not my problem, man.”
Indeed. You've seen enough, and we've more than enough to do in Detroit, without troubling ourselves here, as well. And just imagine how much easier Detroit will be to manage, now that you've seen the Freak Master's minions. It would be easy enough to create our own.
“Right.” Alice said, softly, remembering Ambrosia's big, dark, serious eyes. You're a storm crow, the girl had said. Go before you hurt someone. “Right.” What else had the kid said? Something about challenges she wasn't up to? Being talked into something? She glanced down at the paper again.
She wadded the paper up and pitched it into the trash. “Motherfucker.” She spat, while the Shadow hissed angrily in the back of her head. “Hey, you. You there.” She snagged an employee headed back to his booth. “Which way is the Freak Show from here?”
“That way. Take a left.”
“Great. Thanks.” She lit up a cigarette, heading in the direction the carnie had pointed out. “Dammit, I'm stupid.” She sighed, and caught a whiff of something burning. She glanced at her cigarette, and then stopped, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the golden ticket. The admittance hole had already been punched by the Ticket Master. As she watched, the gold melted out of a second pip in a perfect circle. Alice glanced tiredly around at the Carnival. “I am so fucked.” She jammed the damned ticket back in her pocket, and struck off in the direction of the Freak Show.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I won't be, I won't be your hero.
I won't be your superman.
Everything I did was for you, everything you said was a lie.
My pain, your gain, who's your hero today?
-- Hero, Pop Evil
Down the midway, Shaggy saw the rubes betting more, and betting faster, and at the games of skill the competition between young punks winning prizes for their girlfriends began to take on an ugly edge. When they won, their cheers held the ghosts of screams, and when they lost, their eyes were dark and angry, and Shaggy was starting to get a little nervous of it. Deeper still, the animals in Vincente's cages paced and snarled and lashed their tails, and back by the rides, Dana misted through the House of Mirrors, watching as the patrons bumped into clear glass and mugged faces at the mirrors, and though the reflections were always twisted, now the twists seemed even more surreal.
Masque stood in her chilled studio, a tall, half-finished mannequin before her. She was working on the eyes, a picture tacked to the cork board next to her. This piece was to be Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams, but the eyes just wouldn't come out right. She was breast to breast with the ghostly white form, peering into its left eye, working a slender scalpel with quick, delicate swipes. Every few moments or so, she would pause, step back, glare at the picture, then glare at her sculpture. She'd been so proud of herself for getting the nose and cheekbones right, too. Damn the woman's eyes! She went back to work, sleeves dragged up to her elbows, oh-so-carefully shaping the under curve of the socket, hissing between her teeth as she glanced from the picture to the sculpture.
From behind her came a very soft scrape. She paused, turned, scanned the studio. It looked like the red carpet walk at the Oscars. Famous faces and forms filled the room, some finished, some awaiting various touches or costuming. Her breath fogged the air as her gaze swept the brightly-lit room. She turned back to her sculpture, and the scrape came again.
“Dammit.” She flicked the scalpel at the cork board and it stuck blade in, quivering with impact. She turned her frustrated glare on the room. So help her, if it was rats again, she was borrowing Simba from Vincente and turning him loose in here. She took a few steps, snatching up a broom from a corner, and turned on the wax celebrities. The last time there had been rats, John Wayne had lost half his left foot, and it had taken her two weeks to fix it.
She moved in on the statues, batting around their feet and skirts with the broom, grumbling under her breath about rats and Angelica Huston's eyes. There was another soft scrape. This time it sounded distinctly like a foot step.
Masque turned, glares and grumbles fading as she looked around. Her breath came in white puffs, curling around her pale face and up through her blond hair. Her brows furrowed together, lips a flat line. She turned again, coming face to face with Frank N. Furter. She started, and then giggled at her surprise, putting a hand over her chest.
Then Frankie snatched her by the throat.
Lili stalked the Carnival grounds, cloven hooves striking sparks as they stamped down in the path, serpentine forked tail snapping back and forth. Her black, leathery wings were folded in tight to her back, her scaled red skin gleamed under the Carnival lights, and her eyes, glistening golden without pupil or iris, were narrowed. The air was ripe with the stench of sin and her nose twitched, breathing in the scent like sweet perfume, her black lips pulled back in a smile, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. She was hunting, and not a patron of the Carnival noticed her passing, except possibly as a shiver racing down their puerile monkey spines.
Lili had lived on the apex of the Big Top for a millennium, appointed there by her father to watch and take note, and what had begun as a mission under her own will had ended as an infinite term in prison. Someday soon the trumpets would sound and the armies would rise, the moon would turn black and the seas as blood, and there would be pestilence and famine and war and death, and Lili would still be here, trapped in this cursed Carnival, staring down from the Big Top and taking note of the foolishness of these people.
She had long thought that her father had known this would happen, and had sent her here for punishment. It no longer mattered. There had been a time of rebellion against her imprisonment, and then sullen anger as she sulked atop the tent, and finally, resignation, and she had simply perched there, taking note as ordered. She harbored no hopes of escape, for there's no hope in Hell and so she'd never learned how to do it.
She'd watched the patrons and Carnies come and go, always different and always exactly the same, foolish little simians dressed up as monsters and powers and pretending their efforts made some difference, sad little men and women and children searching for ways out of their self-inflicted miseries, imagining they were suffering when in truth they had but tasted a dab of the true sorrow awaiting them. She had often laughed to herself as she watched some mortal fool claim some sort of salvation from this bastard Carnival, and laughed all the harder when they did not. She particularly enjoyed seeing the patrons tossed into the Labyrinth, although, come to think of it, the House of Mirrors had rendered some fairly gruesome punishments in the past, as well.
It was occasionally quite interesting to sit at the peak of the Big Top and watch. It was frequently humorous to watch the Carnies scrambling to rectify their own errors as they compounded on themselves, stirring up chaos and trouble. Mostly, though, it was boring up on the tent, and there was even less reason to come down. She wasn't let to play with the patrons, and there was hardly ever anything of real consequence to take note of.
But now, finally, at last, there was something of import. The gates had opened, and she had entered, and Lili meant to find her.
Brick had put paid to the majority of the bottle, and his head was warm and pleasantly fuzzed. The music from the adjoining tent was quite loud, something that was part country jamboree and part jig and seemed to involve a lot of fiddles and harmonicas, and Brick was tapping his foot in time to it. He was considering the merits of wandering over there and seeing if he could locate a pretty woman who needed kept company for the night, when someone sat down next to him.
“Can I get a beer?” Said the new arrival.
Brick glanced idly over at the newcomer, waited a moment for his eyes to focus. He was a tall guy, but then, nearly everyone was tall to Brick, with short dark hair, somewhat mussed, and a five o'clock shadow. He was wearing a Red Sox t-shirt and his jeans had sawdust on them, like he might have fallen earlier. He glanced over at Brick, and Brick felt a pang of recognition.
“I know you.” The words came out slurred. Brick's face wrinkled into a frown.
“Sure you do.” Said the man. “You're the big guy who helped me out in the parking lot.” He offered out his hand. “Roger Brighton.”
“Oh yeah, the cop.”
“Yeah. Hey, I appreciate the help. Looks like you had the same idea I did. Let me buy you a beer.” Roger grinned, a warm, eminently friendly expression.
Brick brightened. “Sure. I'm Brick.”
The two men shook hands, and the bartender turned up with a couple of beers. Roger held his up, slid the other over to Brick. “Cheers!”
“Right on.” Said Brick, and emptied his cup.
Alice looked the trailer over. It was an antique wooden carnival trailer, the old-fashioned, horse-drawn kind that she'd expect to find Gypsies living in, although the hitch was propped up on an ornate wrought iron stand. It was low-key, varnished wood, moons and stars burned delicately into the wood in a border around its trim, and a small set of steps led up to the door.
“Fortune teller.” Alice contained the sneer that wanted to come with the words. She could count on one hand the number of real oracles she'd ever encountered. Actually, she was pretty sure she could count them on her mangled hand, at that. She could already imagine the wizened hearth witch inside, and her sinuses were bracing for the onslaught of cheap incense while she ran over Tarot card meanings in the back of her mind to make sure the old bat was getting them right.
The clown grunted and gestured for Alice to proceed him. He looked a little uneasy, sharpened teeth peeking out from his blood-colored grin.
Alice glanced him up and down, and then ascended the stairs. She raised her good hand to knock, and a high small voice said, “Come in, Alice.”
“Cheap trick.” Alice muttered to herself and opened the door. She stepped in and stopped.
It looked like Barbie's Dream House had exploded inside the trailer. It was extremely pink, and extremely lacy. There were pink pillows and pink curtains and the walls were painted pink. There were dainty white chairs surrounding a delicate white table, and the cushions on the chairs were pink and dripped lace, and the table cloth was pink lace. There were four chairs around the table, one occupied by a dark-haired eight-year-old, and the other three taken up by a chocolate brown teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann, and a large stuffed rabbit the color of Pepto Bismol.
A plain crystal ball sat in the center of the table, surrounded by three pink candles that smelled like peppermint, and a plastic tea set. The little girl had paused in the midst of pouring out a Kool-aid tea service to her stuffed animals. She was an adorable little girl, long, dark hair, heart-shaped face, great big brown eyes, and was grinning. She was missing a front tooth, and wearing a pair of pink camouflage jeans, and a pink Dora the Explorer blouse. As if all of that were not enough, the walls were hung in Technicolor tapestries, children's cartoon characters portraying Tarot card scenes and mythological settings.
“Jesus Christ.” Alice said, looking around.
“Language, miss!”
Startled, Alice glanced towards the back of the trailer, spotting a woman sitting in a (pink) recliner in the corner, knitting. The woman seemed quite ordinary at first glance, if somewhat oddly clothed. She was middle-aged, hair pulled back in a shiny black bun, little round glasses perched on a pert nose, and her eyes were black, too large for her face. She was wearing a deep red house dress speckled with black polka dots, and over that, a white apron. She was a chubby, matronly woman, round and cheerful-looking.
“What the hell is something like you doing here?” Alice exclaimed before she could stop herself.
“That's my nanny, Lady Staceybug, silly.” Said the little girl, as she finished pouring out tea. “And I'm Ambrosia, and you're Alice, and that's Violent Clay, behind you. Come in!”
“Staceybug.” Alice repeated dumbly as the clown jostled her out of the way so he could get in.
The woman nodded, smiling. It was a very knowing expression.
“Mr. Bunny and Ann will move so you can sit. You can have their tea. They aren't thirsty.”
Alice didn't hear a word the girl said. She was still staring at Lady Staceybug. When Alice had been small, and first brought into Detroit to be trained as a magus, one of her teachers had been a staid, professorial librarian named Owen. He had been an excellent teacher, despite being neither a magus, himself, nor even human. Oh, he'd looked human enough on top, much as Staceybug did, but Alice had seen him for what he was, just as she could see Staceybug. Owen had been a Volkswagen-sized drone bee minding his pocket-dimension hive of worker bees, carved out of the basement of the Detroit Public Library. It was a major accomplishment to attract an extraplanar entity like Owen to live in Detroit, and in exchange for all the essence of knowledge his worker bees could harvest from Detroit, he had taught the young magi there.
Staceybug wasn't exactly the same thing – Alice doubted she was here harvesting knowledge, for one – but she was close enough to be a cousin. Alice couldn't make out exactly what the pretend woman looked like, but she had the vague sensation of a giant ladybug in pince nez, and the feeling that if she could see them, she'd see tiny little ladybugs crawling everywhere, on everything, sipping gently of . . .
Alice stared, glanced at little Ambrosia, then back at Staceybug. The entity nodded again, smiling pleasantly. Sipping gently of children's dreams, then, and storing the essence away as food for Staceybug's version of a hive.
Jesus. Soul-eaters and outlanders, vampires and undead clowns, magi and fae . . . what the hell else could possibly be living in this damn Carnival? Alice glanced around the trailer, drifting towards a chair and setting Mr. Bunny aside so she could sit. Violent Clay stayed at the door, glowering at the room in general.
The deeper she got into the Carnival, the worse the news got. Bad enough when she thought Junior might have made his way into a place of magic. Worse, when she got here and saw the Carnival for herself, tasted the pulsating power of the place. Alice couldn't begin to conceive of how dreadfully bad it would be if Junior managed to sink his hooks all the way into the Carnival, and draw from its power. It would be like a perpetual motion machine, generating energy for the Skindancer. Junior wouldn't just be an abyssal entity anymore, he'd nearly be a god in his own right, with a place like this under his thumb.
This Carnival wasn't just any magic circus, Alice abruptly realized. Dr. Celestine's Carnival of Souls was a Well of Worlds. She'd read about them. Hell, Owen had taught her about them, sites in the world where reality had worn thin and quantum possibilities leaked through to become corporeal themselves, where gods and devils were birthed on a regular basis. Anything was possible in a Well of Worlds, and the power they encompassed was nigh infinite.
If Junior got a hold of the Carnival of Souls . . . Alice wasn't a woman given to fear, but her blood ran icy cold at the thought. Even the Shadow, usually full of whispers and plots, had fallen silent.
“Alice?”
“I'm sorry, what?” Alice started, glancing at the little girl.
Ambrosia held up a deck of Tarot Cards. Daphne Duck posed as the Empress on the top card. “Want your fortune read?” She grinned, as though she'd just asked if Alice wanted to play jacks.
“Sure. Why the hell not.” Alice said, still numb from her epiphany.
“Oh, goody. This should be fun.” Ambrosia clapped her hands and started laying out the cards.
Frank N. Furter's make-up was running. Actually, his whole face was running. As Masque dangled from his vise-like grip on her throat, one of his glassy eyeballs oozed out of the socket and rolled briefly down his cheek before dropping to the tile floor with a soft plinking noise. His arm oozed and dripped but was no less strong, and Masque's fingers sank into the wax flesh as she tried to hold herself up. The wax was hot under her hands, and she could feel her own fingers softening, loosing shape in the heat baking out of the dummy. She kicked her feet, one slipper flying away as she gurgled and choked.
Frankie's sexy leer was melting, one side sliding down to his jaw as his face ran, and then plopped off, revealing the plastic skeleton underneath. The skeleton, too, was softening. Masque kicked and struggled as her eyes bugged and her vision dimmed. Frankie's fingers had sunk through her wax throat to the real flesh underneath. He pulled her closer and she struck out, her fist sinking into his chest and sticking. She kicked and her feet stuck in his torso, one after the other. She had a flash of memory, her father reading her a bedtime story, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and in her terror, she giggled.
The raspy giggle cut off as slender wisps like strings whipped out of Frankie's chest and wrapped around her arm. They burned, even through her wax, and more whips flew out, snagging her legs, burning and hissing. The wax on Frankie's chest began to bubble, and his bustiere smoldered. Something was pushing through, something slimy and gray and worm-like, and more cilia whipped out of the wax, flying around Masque's head, pulling her wig astray. She felt the tension in the lines as the creature used its grip on her to pull itself free of the wax, towards her.
There was a pyramid of shot glasses sitting on the bar in front of Brick and Roger, and the booze was flowing mightily. Not just for the two men, either. The level of drunkenness in the beer tent had reached epic proportions, and there was a crowd gathered around the cop and the strong man, cheering them on as they went shot for shot. Brick finished the slurred punchline on the joke he was telling, and Roger choked on his shot, laughing out perfectly good whiskey.
Brick pounded him on the back, knocking him off his stool by accident, and Roger continued to laugh as he sat on his ass, looking up at Brick.
“You're not so tough!” Roger exclaimed. “I bet I could whip you arm wrestling.”
“Oh, fuck that.” Brick said, laughing too. “You're on.”
“Clear a spot!” Roger roared, staggering up. “Shorty here wants his ass kicked!”
A moment later, a table had been cleared for the two men, and the crowd was hooting and cheering so loudly they drowned out the music. Money exchanged hands and bets were shouted back and forth. Brick and Roger practically had to carry each other to the table, and they more fell onto the benches opposite each other than sat, but they managed to get their arms up on the rough wood and facing each other.
“Did I tell you the one about the two penguins walking into the bar?” Brick asked, holding his hand out and grinning.
“Nah.” Roger grabbed his hand, bracing his elbow.
“The third one said, 'Man, you'd have thought the second penguin would have ducked!'”
“That was awful.”
“But you're laughing – Okay, ready? I'll try not to put you in the hospital.”
Roger's face took on a thoughtful cast as the crowd chanted to three. Brick grunted and flexed, and Roger's arm didn't budge an inch.
“What the fuck -- ?”
“Hospital.” Roger said, musing, as Brick strained to put his arm down.
“Dude, seriously!”
“That solves a lot of problems, actually.” Roger said, voice quiet. “See, they closed this damn place up. Can't get any more food in with the joint closed.”
Brick put his weight into it, paying no mind to Roger's mutter. Fuck, I must be really shit-faced. Roger's arm wasn't even shaking. It wasn't moving at all.
“But if someone had to go out to go to the hospital . . .” Roger was studying the table as the crowd chanted and cheered, drowning his words out. He glanced up at Brick, who had gone red-faced. “You're straining pretty hard, there, big guy. Why don't you just have a heart attack?”
Brick met the cop's eyes. “What -- ?” Then a mule kicked him in the chest. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Brick caught his breath, dropping Roger's hand to grab his chest, eyes bugging, face going white.
“Oh shit!” Roger stood abruptly. “Man, are you all right? Someone call 9-1-1!” The crowd hushed as Brick toppled off the bench, clutching his chest. “Come on! Call an ambulance!”
Chaos erupted, and Roger grinned.
The little girl shuffled the cards. They were too big for her hands, but that didn't slow her down. Her small hands were as dexterous as an old Vegas card sharp, shuffling and folding with lightning speed and rippling rhythm. She split and folded them together, split and folded, split and folded, the cards slapping each other with a sound like an ace in bike spokes on a hot summer day. She shoved the crystal ball aside and slapped the cards down in front of Alice.
“Cut them, please.” Her face was serene, smiling. “Mr. James always says 'Cut 'em like they owe you money'.” She giggled.
Alice glanced down at the cards. They were very plain, the backs a bright blue diamond design. She picked up half the cards and set them aside, piling the rest on top.
“Good.” Ambrosia picked the deck up and started dealing them out face-up, in a Celtic cross. Looney Tunes characters graced the fronts in lurid candy colors. The Queen of Wands, played by a red-headed bit of Merrie Melodies cheesecake, sat in the center of the spread, reversed.
Alice glanced over the spread. She spotted the seven of wands and the ace of swords, the ten of swords and the Death card, the Devil, several pentacles, Justice, and the Fool.
“Hmm.” Said Ambrosia, glancing up at Alice. “That's a mess.” She shuffled the cards back together. “Danger, death, misery, and failure. Discovery and friendship. A challenge you aren't up to, and your winning Lotto numbers are fifteen, twelve, thirty-two, and twenty-five.”
“Excuse me?”
“Want me to write them down? I wouldn't want you to miss out on the money.” Ambrosia pulled out a crayon and a scribble pad and wrote the numbers down.
“Money?” Alice stared at her.
“That's why you're here, right? Money? Someone paid you?”
“Well, yeah --”
“Right.” She ripped off the page and handed it over. “Well, I'm paying you to go away. You're a storm crow. Go away before you hurt someone. That's the jackpot, by the way, I promise.” She crossed her heart.
Alice stared down at the numbers, scrawled in large blue crayon. “But --”
“You aren't going to go on about duty or something are you? No one believes you when you say it.” Ambrosia's large, dark gaze was directed over Alice's shoulder, at nothing in particular. “You only want one thing.”
Alice had the feeling the little girl wasn't talking to her anymore.
“You make her strong, sure, but what do you get out of it?” Ambrosia asked. “I know. You think you'll manage to talk her into it? If you do, get her out of here before it happens. I don't want that here. We've got enough of it as it is.”
Alice glanced over her shoulder, seeing the clown with his uneasy grin at the door, and nothing else. Who was the little brat talking to? Not . . . the Shadow? “What are you going on about, kid?”
Ambrosia looked back at Alice, and smiled, sad. “You think you're in charge of her, don't you?”
“I --”
“Grown-ups are so stupid.” Ambrosia put her cards away with the utmost disgust, the kind of frustrated ire that only an eight-year-old can summon. “You think souls are what she wants? Souls are small change, Alice, you know that. A dime a dozen.”
“Plug and play hardware.” Alice heard herself say. She'd used the line before.
“Right. There's so much worse she can take. So much worse, and you give it away like it means nothing.”
“Ambrosia.” The clown's rusty voice startled them both.
The little girl glanced up at Violent Clay. “Is it your turn next?” She grinned her gap-toothed grin.
“Where's the thing from the parking lot?”
Ambrosia blinked. “Is that what you wanted? You better hurry. It's in the beer tent, killing Brick.” She burst into tears, shuddering all over. “It's killing Brick!”
Staceybug was suddenly at Ambrosia's side, sweeping the little girl up. “Shh, shhh! It'll be okay, sweetums.” Ambrosia wailed, a high, horrified sound, squirming around to bury her face in Staceybug's shoulder. “You had better hurry, Clay, dear.”
The clown was already turning, jerking the door open. Alice jumped up, knocking the chair over in her haste, jogging the table and splashing Kool-aid tea everywhere. She darted out behind the clown, Ambrosia's paper wadded up in her injured hand.
The creature pulled itself out of Frankie's chest with a thick, wet glopping sound and swung between them, more tentacular cilia whipping out to encircle Masque, pulling itself to her stomach. Frankie staggered and fell, splashing on the floor, sending wax up in a flesh-colored shower. Masque, throat freed, managed a gagging scream as the leech pulled itself up to her chest. She batted at the squirming thing, eyes bugging as a mouth opened on the leech, a wide, vaginal circle full of sharp little teeth. Her scream spiraled upwards as she seized the creature, pulling on it. It writhed in her melted grasp and she couldn't get a good grip. She careened back towards Angelica, reaching out and snagging the scalpel in the cork board.
The scalpel fell to the floor as the softened wax of her fingers peeled back, oozing. Wild-eyed, she beat at the leech with the revealed stump of her right arm, the thing's mouth opening and closing, dilating wide and narrow like a cat's pupil, teeth snapping together as it dragged itself up to her face.
“Aimee? Aimee, what's – Jesus!”
Masque heard the voice, recognized it, and suddenly Mr. James' flunky Hank had an arm around her, one big fist gripping the leech and jerking it away. Cilia snapped with guitar-like twangs and he flung it. It hit the ground and rolled, and as Masque fell to her knees, gasping for breath, Hank strode to the leech and stomped it viciously, greasy sludge squittering out from under his heavy work boot. His boot hit the ground twice more, stomping the thing into oblivion, as Masque huddled on her knees, remainders of her hands up over her face, pearly white tears rolling down her wax mask face.
“Jesus, what was that, Aimee, are you all right?”
He turned to look at her, and she shoved herself up in a raw panic, knowing her faux flesh had run, knowing her mask was destroyed, and she fled through the studio to the safety of her room, slamming the door behind her.
Hank stood, confused, one foot still in the puddle of twitching, dying goo on the floor, staring at the door. “Aimee?” He called. He went to the door, leaving slimed footsteps behind him, and knocked softly. “Aimee?” He could hear her weeping behind the door, and sighed to himself. Gals, he thought, shaking his head. As though he would care about her face, as long as she was all right.
The beer tent was a mad house. Half the patrons hadn't even noticed the struggle Violent Clay was pushing his way towards. Alice followed behind him, doing her own fair share of elbowing and pushing to get through. The music had been cranked up to jet engine levels, and she could still hear the shouting over that.
Alice's mind was racing. On the way here, there had been four fist fights, one of which was an old janitor beating the piss of out of a teen over an unopened green coke bottle on the ground. There had been a slender man buying a stack of elephant ears from a stand. The stack had been as tall as Alice. Two woman had been slapping each other at a merchandising stall over a faux Prada purse, both with a death grip on the tearing leather. Three stoners had been laying in the lee of a tent, just laying there, one in his own filth, barely breathing, joint in the dirt between them, forgotten, as they stared dustily up into the Carnival lights. In the beer tent, the party atmosphere was frantic, hysterical.
The clown shoved through the final circle and found Brick laying on the ground, the bar tender kneeling over him, eyes huge, face pale. “He stopped breathing!” He yelled over to someone else, then froze as the clown's shadow fell over him.
Alice shoved Violent Clay. “Find the fucker! It's still here!” Clay turned to glare at the woman. “It's doing this! Find it!” She waved around at the tent with her mangled hand, still clutching Ambrosia's paper. “I got this guy.”
Alice dropped down to one knee as the clown stepped over the prone man, shoving on into the crowd. “What's wrong?”
“Heart attack – we called an ambulance!”
Alice put her hand over the man's chest, up to his throat to check his pulse. “No heart beat.” She glanced around, patting her pockets and coming up empty for anything useful. She was great at gashes, bullet wounds, broken bones, and most other fight-oriented first aid, but she didn't know a damn thing about heart attacks. She'd seen a lot of ER a few years ago, though, while recovering from a broken knee, and it seemed like those guys were always nailing patients with the shock paddles when their hearts stopped. Alice wasn't a healer, but she could manage an electric shock. She stuffed Ambrosia's note paper in her pocket and planted both hands over the man's heart, and pushed down.
For a split second, her bones were visible through her skin, and the scab on her wounded hand smoked. She hissed in pain, and pushed down again, bones black shadows under yellow flesh, fresh blood from the scab hissing and popping. The man jerked and groaned.
Alice pulled her hands back, fingers trailing smoke, and found a thready pulse at his throat. His eyes rolled open briefly, focused on her, and he whispered, “The fucking cop.”
“What?” Alice exclaimed, but he'd passed out again. “Keep an eye on him.” She told the bar tender, pushing herself up and shoving into the crowd after Violent Clay. Cop? What cop? she wondered, following a trail of aggrieved-looking drunks left in the clown's wake. As she passed by, some guy yelled at another, “Did you push me? Did you fucking push me, asshole?” and slammed his fist into another man's face, his expression a dark twist of wrath.
There was more going on here than just the Skindancer, Alice realized. Something else was going wrong in the Carnival, aggravating Junior's work. All that was going to do was feed Junior more juice, and the last thing Alice wanted to deal with was an even more powerful Skindancer. She broke out of the crowd, back into the fairway, and stopped, running her hands through her hair. She had to figure out what the other problem was and put a stop to it, and quickly. Let the clown tangle with Junior for awhile, keep them both busy. Alice had to sort out this second fiasco.
Where to start, though? In this lunatic place, it could be literally anything. She turned, and a hand descended on her shoulder, spinning her the rest of the way around. She looked up into the hissing face of a demoness.
“Shit!” She tried to twist back, but the demoness had her in steel vise grip.
She leaned in close to Alice, forked tongue swirling over black lips. “Are you Alice? Black Alice?” The demoness snapped her wings open, mantling over her shoulders, tail lashing back and forth as she grinned. Alice looked down, and realized the demoness was holding something in her talons. She was holding --
-- a scrap book and pen?
“Can I get your autograph?” The demoness asked. “I'm a huge fan of your work.” She handed the book to Alice, who accepted it, stupid with amazement.
Alice looked down at the scrapbook. It was opened to a page lined with yellowed news clippings detailing the Great Galveston Hurricane in Texas in 1900. Alice stared at the hundred-year-old news clippings. She knew the storm. She'd seen a thing about it on the Weather Channel once. Some reports said 12,000 people had died in the storm and resulting floods, making it the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
On the right hand page, above an article, was a sepia-toned news picture showing several survivors huddling together in front of a heaping mass of ruins. One of the survivors was a smiling little girl with curling hair, wearing a pinafore dress. Alice recognized the girl immediately. That's me, she thought. That's me, over a hundred years ago. Jesus.
“Amazing, how you pulled that off. A whole hurricane. I could never manage anything that big. And over eight thousand dead. I can't imagine the power it generated! That's real quality, there.” The demoness continued to gush praise as Alice signed the book and handed it back. “Are you here to take the Carnival? My father will love this. And I get to be here to see it! This is great!”
Alice looked up at the demoness, at a loss for words. “Um. Right. Take the Carnival.”
“Can I help? I'd love to see how you do it first hand.”
“Trade secrets, you know.” Alice managed.
The demoness' face fell. “I suppose you're right. Still, I guess I get a front row seat, don't I?” She pointed away to the Big Top. “I'll be up there if you change your mind. Thanks for the autograph!”
“No problem.” Alice watched as the demoness turned away, tail flipping back and forth as she headed back towards the Big Top. “What the fuck.” She said softly to herself. She had no memory whatsoever of any hurricane, resulting power gathered, nothing, and yet there had been her picture.
She turned in a slow circle, hands holding her hair back, staring at the Carnival, and watched a large man, all painted up gold, stride by. She stopped, her astonished train of thought derailing as she noted that the man wasn't painted gold, he was made of gold. One glance told Alice he was one of the Freak Master's creatures.
The Freak Master's creatures. The Freak Master, BB Wolfe, the soul eater, and his dark minions, patterned after the Seven Deadly Sins. The Sins, like greed, wrath, gluttony, envy . . . “Oh, fuck.” Alice said, remembering the fights and oddities she'd seen on the way here. “Fuck me.” The last place in this miserable shithole she wanted go, and she was suddenly positive that the Sins were the things aggravating the Skindancer's work. She let her hands drop, her hair falling into her face as she patted down her pockets for her cigarettes. She came out with her battered pack of Camels, her lighter, and Ambrosia's piece of paper, crumbled up in her maimed hand.
Alice stared at her hand, at the page. This goddamn job had already cost her half a fortune. Two fingers off her shooting hand, a whole bag of gear, her car, not to mention the cost of the gas to get here. She was in the hole on this job whether she charged for expenses or not, and here she was, holding what an eight-year-old oracle claimed were the winning Lotto numbers. Hell, if they were the winning numbers for her home state, that was more than what the Father of Blood was paying. Alice could skip on out of this insane Carnival with its uncomfortable revelations and psychotic employees, head home. She could make her house payment for the next two years and still afford to set up her own workshop, become a master magus in her own right instead of just a journeyman, and still have money left over to screw around. This whole damn place could go straight to hell. It wasn't her territory after all. What did she really care if some abyssal demigod took the Well over and used it to . . .
. . . devour the whole world . . . eventually . . .
“Not my problem.” Alice said, smoothing the paper out to look at the crayon numbers. “Not my problem, man.”
Indeed. You've seen enough, and we've more than enough to do in Detroit, without troubling ourselves here, as well. And just imagine how much easier Detroit will be to manage, now that you've seen the Freak Master's minions. It would be easy enough to create our own.
“Right.” Alice said, softly, remembering Ambrosia's big, dark, serious eyes. You're a storm crow, the girl had said. Go before you hurt someone. “Right.” What else had the kid said? Something about challenges she wasn't up to? Being talked into something? She glanced down at the paper again.
She wadded the paper up and pitched it into the trash. “Motherfucker.” She spat, while the Shadow hissed angrily in the back of her head. “Hey, you. You there.” She snagged an employee headed back to his booth. “Which way is the Freak Show from here?”
“That way. Take a left.”
“Great. Thanks.” She lit up a cigarette, heading in the direction the carnie had pointed out. “Dammit, I'm stupid.” She sighed, and caught a whiff of something burning. She glanced at her cigarette, and then stopped, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the golden ticket. The admittance hole had already been punched by the Ticket Master. As she watched, the gold melted out of a second pip in a perfect circle. Alice glanced tiredly around at the Carnival. “I am so fucked.” She jammed the damned ticket back in her pocket, and struck off in the direction of the Freak Show.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
