The Dreaming Dark--Ch. 04

Circuitous logic, a circus, a siren, seduction, and other serious stuff.

 

iv

               

                In the history of bad moves, there are a few that stand out against the backdrop, a few raised specks in the spectrum. Nailing the man who thought it might be groovy if we were all nice to each other to a tree. Fighting a war in which millions died because your woman ditched you for another man with bigger city walls. Capturing people who looked different, carting them across the ocean, and selling them off to be worked to death. My own faux-pas might not have bore the same weight, but it certainly did not appear as though I might get the chance to make a larger one.

                The eight-year old with the gaping smile and the burning eyes seemed rather sure of that.

                It’s odd what one manages to capture in the moment before they’re certain they’re about to die. Little details stick out in a way that they generally don’t. Perhaps it’s the brain’s last desperate wish for stimulus, trying to shove as much living into the last moment of life as will possibly fit. Perhaps its just a sort of clarity of the moment which comes when all of the following moments are written off as a foregone conclusion. Whatever it was, it let me see Mad Elaine’s little kingdom in a brand new light.

                The candelabras of wrought silver were possessed of decidedly human features here and there: the long line of a spine in the base, humanoid feet standing on tiptoe, long sweeping arches of arms, and flames which danced like wriggling fingers. The stole about the little monarch’s shoulders, the scrap of cloth that I could have sworn I’d seen moving, was indeed mobile enough to be counted as a living thing. Even the throne itself had a few identifiably human bits and bobs…like the eye which opened in the left armrest. It was blue. How a disembodied eye managed to pack so much pity into its featureless staring.

                The little tyrant pressed a hand to the side of her face, her smile refusing to slacken even a single inch. “Now I’m having trouble.” She tapped her fingers against the pallid cheek, as if deep in thought. “Shall you be a roan or a dapple?”

                Daedalus caught my eye and gave me a look; a slight widening of his eyes. This is your chance, nodder, he seemed to say. He jerked his head in her direction, as though he expected me to answer her.

                I thought. How could I save my skin…or rather keep it human rather than pony-shaped. If I didn’t answer quickly, it wouldn’t matter how clever the response was. I’d still be her plaything, and Daedalus wouldn’t be able to help me.

                Think, damn it. Chalk this one up as another thing that college had utterly failed to prepare me for. Rhetoric I had in spades. I’d read plenty, and always been rather voracious in my absorption of knowledge. There had to be something I could draw upon to save me from this evil queen.

                It slowly dawned on me.

                “Yes, milady.”

                Elaine narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, staring in a manner that suggested incomprehension. “What?”

                “You asked me a question, milady. I answered.”

                “Yes isn’t an answer.” Her smile began to fade, the skin beginning to fuse once more along the bloody lines which had spread to bisect her cheeks and reveal the cannibal maw behind them.

                I spread my arms to my sides as though I could do nothing further, as if I had offered the best I had. “I must protest, it is indeed an answer.”

                “But it isn’t the right answer.”

                Daedalus had begun to smile again. I had a feeling that this time that was a good sign and I pressed on. “But if you knew the right answer, why would you ask one such as myself, milady?”

                “Because I couldn’t decide.”

                “And I have.”

                “On what?”

                “The wrong answer.”

                “But I wanted the right one.” She thrust her lips out in a small, obscene little pout.

                “Then you aren’t asking the right question.”

                The little girl’s nose wrinkled and she folded her arms across her chest, the mantle about her shoulders rustling softly in something which too closely resembled a sigh. “What was the question?”

                “A good one.”

                “Let’s go back.”

                “I think that might be a good idea, milady.”

                She turned her attention back toward my guide, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Daedalus, where were we?”

                Daedalus looked at the floor and pointed to his feet. “About here, milady.”

                Mad Elaine sat down once more upon her throne, her face once more cherubic and childish as she sat back against the living piece of furniture. The candelabra flickered as they released a collective breath that I did not know they had the ability to hold.

                “Ah, yes. I remember.” She tapped her tiny temple with her index finger. “You were asking about the Bazaar.”

                Daedalus and I turned to face each other, and with the timing which cannot be gained by tireless practice but rather only with dumb luck, chorused “Ah.” Nodding, as though that settled things, we turned back toward the mad little tyrant and waited for her to go on, our attention focused, our faces expectant.

                My heart was still very much in my throat.

                Elaine pursed her lips. “I have a way which will take you in that direction, but it’s sort of dangerous.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, not terribly. Better than taking your chance with the watchdogs or passing through the sewers. You like the circus, don’t you, Daedalus?”

                We’d been doing so well, schooling our features into interested deference. But the single word, “circus” brought my guide’s false-face down. The life drained from his polite little smile, turning down at the corners and threatening to wilt into an honest to god frown. Circus. Apparently it was a trigger of some sort, attached perhaps to a fundamental loathing for carnival rides and elephants. Perhaps a man in a sequined jacket had murdered his sweet-heart on the eve of their betrothal. Or maybe he was just plain allergic to fun.

                “Through Three-Ring, then, Elaine?”

                The crazed sprite on the throne nodded like an enraptured school-girl. “Mmmhmmm.” One hand dipped into the folds of the mantle to produce my pitiful little cellphone once more. She flipped it open, and began to happily stab a finger at the buttons.

                “My thanks, milady Elaine.” Daedalus bowed, though it was a hollow gesture devoid of even the saddest scrap of deference. I aped his bow as he turned on his heel, already beginning the stalk back the way we’d down the tattered red carpet

                “You remember the way out, of course.” Not a question. Not a by a long shot. Only amusement turned up at the end of the statement. I did not care for it overmuch.

                I caught up with my guide at the stairs at the end of hell’s throne-room. He didn’t turn to see that I’d arrived to dog his heels. Again, I swam with questions. We’d gotten permission to travel the passage toward the Bazaar, through the place called Three-Ring. But we were headed out toward Gaslight once more. What the hell sort of sense did that make? And if Daedalus had such an obvious aversion to the place, why were we headed that way? And why was he counting steps?

                At some point he’d produced a battered silver lighter. One of the hinged Zippo jobs with the ridiculous flame. It cast a little bit of illumination, enough to make out the steps and keep most of the hungry darkness at bay. He was whispering the numbers beneath his breath as he climbed, never slowing until he reached one hundred and I was already feeling my thighs scream. I silently wondered how this man managed to take all of this strangeness coupled with physical exertion day after day after day. It wouldn’t be the last time. He paused on the hundredth step.

                “One hundred and eight or one hundred and eighteen?”

                I must’ve looked especially stupid because my guide rolled his eyes. “The stairs. How many?”

                In my experience, the number of stairs was never really so very important when compared to where they led. But then, in my experience thrones didn’t have eyes, nor did eight-year olds wield uncontested power in a basement beneath an amorphous townhouse in the middle of a quietly non-descript street. I was willing to take the leap.

                “One hundred and eight.”

                “You’re sure?” He laid a hand on my shoulder and loomed over me, peering downward through the blackness. I could only barely make out his features, though I’m fairly sure his expression was a severe one. The minute flame against the darkness gave him a lurid, vaguely necrotic cast to his skin.

                I thought about it. How sure was I? Would I stake my life on it? Did I really remember correctly. Do you? I mean really?

                Yes, you, dear reader.

                How sure are you? It’s a little detail, but it might’ve been the difference between getting where we needed to go, and dying any number of hellacious deaths. So, for all intents and purposes, that little detail was my life.

                I didn’t think for long. Rather, taking the advice of countless exam proctors strongly to heart, I went with my gut. “Yeah. One hundred and eight.”

                Daedalus turned and took the last eight steps two at a time. The staircase stretched on ahead of him. When I’d caught up he turned around. “Close your eyes,” he ordered.

                I did as I was told. Hell, I did one better. I turned around on the hundred and seventh step, mirroring his movement. We waited. Time ticked by. The flame of the little lighter went out. I heard Daedalus shuffle behind me, and took it as I sign to open my eyes. When I did, my guide was wrenching open a pair of canted double doors that had not been there a moment ago.

                I could feel it this time. We’d left Gaslight and its child-like overlord behind. And that was before the doors opened and let the multicolored light spill over the stairs like an upturned can of fluorescent paint.

                Think back for me. Indulge me.

                Remember your first trip to the circus. A county fair, a carnival; work with me. Remember the striped tent, the brightly lit midway, the tents of sideshow oddities. Perhaps there was a band playing in some far corner of the sprawl of light and levity. Think back to the smell of popcorn and cotton candy, the pulsing excitement which drummed at the place where your ribs meet in the center of your chest. The sheer spectacle of it all. The excitement which thrummed through the air like a breathing thing.

                Got it?

                Wrong.   

                Beyond the eclipsing line of my guide’s top-hat, beyond our little wooden doorway, a sprawl of muted light spread out like a blanket of sickly, light-polluted stars. In the shadows which separated those stars, buildings had been erected, slapdash lean-tos and stalls circling a much-abused pavilion tent of gigantic proportions. Lights winked their cyclopean eyes as they flickered on the verge of death, tapdancing on the edge of oblivion.

                “Three-Ring,” Daedalus said, gesturing with a hand, a frown creasing his features. “F*****g hate this place.”

                Strong words for a man who drank while husks stumbled about just outside, or considered a place like Gaslight “friendly territory.” I peered out, searching for what I seemed to be missing. The place was a little spooky, sure. But what wasn’t here? I could’ve asked, I suppose. But then, my luck with getting a straight answer out of my guide was showing a disturbing trend in the direction of bad. I kept my mouth shut.

                Daedalus got moving, walking out of the door and leaving the staircase behind. He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. He turned back for a moment as I made to follow. “We’re just passing through. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t make eye-contact.” He paused, looking me up and down and pursing his lips. “Probably best if you don’t think too loud, either.”

                Did I think loudly? Could I think softly? Was it because I asked so many questions? Or perhaps because I didn’t actually ask so many questions? I beetled my brow and squinted after him as he led the way into the outskirts of the rundown midway. I couldn’t help but follow. Unless of course I wanted to take my chances with the stairway to Mad Elaine’s court.

                So I followed.

                From our vantage point, I hadn’t gotten much of a look at the place, just a vague overview of the area. A deserted circus-ground or carnival lit with about quarter as many half-dead bulbs as were necessary to truly banish the darkness. Nothing terribly dangerous. Not overtly, in any case. Nothing skittered through the shadows. Nothing loomed from the midway’s stalls. Hell, no one was even on the dirt paths except for Daedalus and I.

                 That in and of itself struck me as somewhat odd. District 13 had been crawling with people. Zombies. Whatever. Gaslight had a few scurrying citizens. None had stuck around long enough to chat, but Elaine’s court had not had the hollow, empty feel this place was giving me. But Daedalus had told me not to talk with anyone. And that begged the question: where were all these people I was not supposed to talk to?

                I braved to break the stillness, lifting my voice hardly above a whisper and making my best attempt at levity. “Maybe they’re closed for the season?”

                Somewhere in the depths of the circus-ground, a carnival organ began to play. Its warped and dissonant reel flitted through the dirt trails like an ill wind, breathing life into the darkness. Daedalus turned and fixed me with a glare which might’ve peeled paint. The lights which had been flickering so recently brightened, burning so hard that the air about them flashed steam. Lights illuminated a bank of midway signs. And above it all, there came the sound of feet. Hundreds of them. And they were getting closer.

                “Aren’t you people supposed to wear helmets?”

                My mouth shut with a muted click of teeth. That had gone significantly worse than I’d hoped.

                Faces appeared in the midway booths, carnies done up in outfits that made them look like a b*****d-blend of old-timey gypsies and rag-clad rockstars. Their eyes, staring and glassy, did not move as they shouted as only carnival barkers can, hawking their wares and touting games of skill and chance.

                “Read your palm? Your cards? Your mind?”

                “Hurray, hurray, step right up and spin the Wheel of Fate.”

                “You, there. With the face! Buy a pint of Snake-Oil!”

                “C’mere, laddie-buck, come and arm-wrestle Thor. Well, he may not be Thor, but you will before you’ve finished, what-o?”

                Daedalus didn’t turn to look, only shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and turned back toward the path which stretched deeper into the glowing hive the locals called Three-Ring. I had to jog a few steps in order to catch up, or else risk getting left behind.

                Not bloody likely.

                When I caught up, I did my best to stammer out an apology. Daedalus turned with a thin-lipped little smile, waving away the first syllable to escape my mouth as though he were shooing away a cloud of smoke. “No, no. Not to worry, nodder. I mean, how were you supposed to know not to talk after I expressly told you not to? And what have you harmed? I mean, we only have to cross through the big top and find the exit gate on the other side to get to the Bazaar? How hard could it possibly be now that the entire damned Ward knows we’re here?” His tone was sugary and all the more vile for it, like melted candy scraped from a sidewalk. I raised my hands as if to surrender.

                “You told me not to talk to anyone. I didn’t see anyone.”

                “I’m an anyone!” he shot back.

                “Well, damn it!” I groped for an adequate response, settling finally on, “I’m new here!”

                Daedalus’ lips set into a dangerous little sneer. “And if you don’t start getting smart, you won’t be here for long. Now come on.” He hunched down into his shoulders once more, as though he had to physically push through the teeming pool of the barker’s shouted come-ons. I trailed in his wake, somewhere between angry and apologetic.

                He’d told me not to look at anyone as well, but since I’d already blown our cover, I figured there was no harm in looking at what the place offered. I mean, I hadn’t been to a carnival since I’d been a kid. And that seemed like a ridiculously long time ago, growing longer by the moment. So I looked over the stalls, as the gypsy-rockstars all vied for my attention. They were standard midway fare. Fortune-tellers, games to test the body, mind, and if the sign for the strange balancing game involving an archaic looking set of scales and a slender plume that might’ve been a swan’s primary flight feather could be believed, the soul. Unlike the last carnival I’d attended, this place was not just a slick of gilt and glitz over a ramshackle foundation. The hucksters weren’t smeared in grease-paint, stalls looked freshly painted, and no one had vomited beside the corn-dog stand.

                That might’ve been the midwife to my first niggling doubt.

                Daedalus seemed to be making a serious point of not making eye-contact with anyone, even as several of the vendors we passed called him out by name. Instead, he extended one hand, palm out, blocking them out and hunching deeper into his shoulders. Perhaps I should’ve learned from his example.

                “Nodder,” came a silky and decidedly feminine voice from my left. “Over here, nodder.” It was fast becoming my name in this odd place, and so I turned to see who might be calling to me. Her voice alone might’ve been what gave me pause. Though when I laid eyes on her, I may as well have been the rat to her cobra.

                She was dressed in the same outlandish collection of rags and motley as the other barkers, though her skin was a deep olive rather than their deathless pallor. Her hair fell in ebon ringlets just past her shoulders. At the corners of her lips, faint lines curled upward; a mouth accustomed to smiling. She crooked a finger, and I found my legs responding to her summons before I could even will them to move.

                She sat behind the counter of a booth painted a color of scarlet that more than likely found its mirror in my cheeks as I made my approach. No sign, no name, no obvious props. Nothing gave any indication as to what its purpose might’ve been. Only the siren behind the counter. When I’d all but run headlong into the scarred surface, the siren stood, leaning over her counter to offer a pixie’s smile which crinkled along her turned-up nose.

                “What brings you to Three-Ring, nodder?”

                A just question. Honestly I might’ve asked myself the same and been unable to answer it. It seemed as though I’d just been running after the man who’d served as my guide. Even now, the sight of him rapidly disappearing into the depths of the midway set a nervous quivering in my gut. Or perhaps that was only the nearness of the smiling goddess.

                “I’m here with someone.”

                She pressed her lips together in a pout which begged to be kissed away. “Someone?”

                “A man,” I was quick to recant. “A guide.”

                “Someone I might know?”

                “Daedalus.”

                Her eyes lit with some secret mischief to which I was not party. It pained me to know the last. “Daedalus. Old dog. I’m Calypso.”

                The English major in the back of my mind, the little place where College was rapidly taking residence, began to ring with alarm bells. Where did I know that name? The way Calypso bent over her counter, her lips pressed together in that alluring little pout did nothing to help me remember. Her blouse was left open enough to make my brain go hazy with the view. 

                No. Think. Or die.

                “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m selling?”

                Honestly? “I was--”

                “But?”

                “I’m afraid to ask.”

                Her laugh was like melt water over river stones. It made me grin like an idiot. I was in love. I was screwed.

                “I grant wishes.”

                “Wishes?”

                “Mmmhmmm,” she purred, leaning closer. “So tell me, nodder, what does your heart desire?”

                My body reacted before my brain could catch up, and I felt myself leaning in to claim those yielding mulberry lips. I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything before.

                My heart, at some point in the exchange, had crawled into the back of my throat and pumped all of the moisture out of my mouth. I fought to swallow it back down, but it was busy sending what blood remained into my cheeks. They burnt as I stood before the goddess, losing a battle against myself as I fought to recall from where I knew her name.

                In an instant, it clicked. Freshman year, if I could be trusted (by this point, it was becoming more and more obvious that I couldn‘t). “The Hero,” a rhetoric class that’d consumed three hours a week in discussions of golden-age champions like Achilles, Arthur, Odysseus…s**t. Calypso. The witch.

                Figures. Women like her didn’t speak to men like me. Not unless they were barbed.

                Recognition must’ve flashed over my face because she started to pour on the sugar again, no longer letting me drift forward of my own volition. Instead, she reached upward, curling her slim fingers into my hair. Her touch set me aflame; my body refused to heed my warnings about the witch with the “I have you” smile.

                Daedalus was nowhere to be found. I cast about as Calypso’s lips drew closer to mine, and oblivion closed in. Nothing was coming to save me. I was alone. I was helpless.

                She paused, a hair’s-breadth from my lips, her breath like a desert sirocco against my own. “Tell me you want this.”

                I didn’t. God, I didn’t. “I want this.”

                Candy will never be so sweet; feathers, so soft. She had no right to taste that good.

                And then we had parted; I faintly registered pain. A soft cry of protest echoed between my ears, even as the space beneath my ribcage went colder than permafrost on the winter equinox. I crumpled to the dirt, face-down.

                Muffled conversation soared overhead; sounds and syllables. No words. None that I could recognize in my semi-torpor. Male and female voices raised.

                “Wake him up, b***h-queen.”

                “You know the deal, Daedalus.” Hers was honey over razorblades.

                Something heavy hit something solid. A soft, feminine gasp of pain. “Don’t think I was asking Calypso.”

                “Are you jealous, love?”

                “I ain’t your love. Wake the nodder up or you’ll be out more than a tear.”

                The dirt filled my nostrils; my mouth. Hard to breathe. Getting dark. Wood splintered.

                “Mirth will hear about this,” the woman spat.

                “Don’t care. Do it.”

                I was lifted from the dirt, and thrust across the table once more. Calypso, dark and flawless, had been replaced by a sharp-featured creature of smoke and ash and viper’s fangs. She leaned in close and I tasted something bitter and uncomfortably warm slip between my lips. Slowly that warmth suffused my limbs as Daedalus lifted me from the counter, holding me by the collar of my t-shirt, letting me dangle like a rag doll from his clenched fist.

                The booth went dark, seeming to disappear and taking the thing that had worn the skin of Calypso with it. Daedalus sat and watched it until I managed to stumble onto my feet.

                “What--?” I managed to croak as I righted myself.

                “Bad news.”

                “Yeah.”

                “Shake it off. Gotta get moving.”

                “Was that--,” I started as I began to walk in my guide and savior’s wake. He led me through the midway and toward the twisted big top at the center of what was quickly becoming my least favorite Ward. Granted, the fact that everything that I met seemed to want to kill me was quickly becoming a given, but generally they didn’t look like that.

                “A succubus. Kind of. Take your life with a kiss, then demand you pay to have it returned. Like I said, bad news.”

                “S**t. Uh, thanks for--”

                “Hey,” Daedalus shrugged his shoulders, never breaking stride, “we’ve all been there.”

                I decided to leave that one alone. Instead, I focused on my breathing and keeping one foot steadily falling in front of the other. “Mirth. She said Mirth would hear about this.”

                “That’s why we’re moving.”

                “More bad news?”

                “Doesn’t come in many other flavors.”

                “I’m noticing.”

                Seems that just about everything we’d met so far was, in some capacity, trying to kill us. If not outright, then through deception, or in the case of the midget monarch of Gaslight, transmutation. How the hell Daedalus had managed to survive so long was absolutely beyond me. Had he done this bit alone to begin with? Who had gotten him out of his fixes?

                The big-top loomed ahead, patched canvas and candy-cane stripes. The ticket-booth was empty, though the carnival organ still played its spasming reel from just inside the open flap. It set a creeping unease crawling up my spine, poising my adrenal glands upon the brink. Whatever was inside would certainly not be as friendly as the she-demon in the kissing booth.

                Daedalus was muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “f*****g hate this place.” But he didn’t even hesitate. He drew a breath and stepped under the canvas flap into the darkness that waited beyond. I’d been out of Daedalus’ sight twice. Both times, I’d nearly died a horrible (well, perhaps not so horrible in the case of Calypso) death. I followed.

                The big top was darker than hell. Even the light which should’ve followed us from the strings of lights hanging above the midway failed to reveal even the barest details. In fact, as I craned over my shoulder for the reassuring little triangle of light which should’ve heralded the way out, I found that it had vanished in the light-eating darkness. My stomach did a slow somersault as the music grew louder and a single spotlight illuminated a thin ring in the center of the blackness that had become my world.

                “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!” a high and manic voice laced through the air. The man who stepped into the light was dressed in denim coveralls over a candy-striped shirt. His hair was a red haystack, and it seemed to writhe as he gestured about himself with the jerky intensity of a hypoglycemic epileptic. “Welcome, one and all, to Three-Ring!” His grease-paint pallor made the too-red and too-wide of his smile all the more grotesque as he bared his teeth in a rictus grin. “Welcome to my world.” His eyes, empty and opaque, settled squarely on us.

                “F**k.” Daedalus breathed it like a prayer.

                “Mirth?”

                “Mirth.”

               The clown in the center ring somersaulted out of the ring of light and the organ struck up newtune; an oom-pah nightmare as the lights came up and revealed Hell’s own circus.