First came a drop in temperature: the warm winds of summer gave way to chill autumn gusts, bringing with it a whiff of distant popcorn and cotton candy which drifted on the heels of shedding leaves.
Then it was the posters, awash in lurid colours of red and yellow: the Human Torso, a man consisting of a head and chest, placed on a cushion like a pearl; the Strong Man, with a long, sharp moustache and bulging biceps; the Webbed Creature from the Deep who carried a barely-clad woman. All kinds of Technicolor monsters leering out from their paper prisons. Posters which were stapled on telephone poles and hung in the windows of the laundromat, behind the bars of the convenience store, on the dingy walls of the vacuum repair shop. The whites of the images’ eyes carried a yellow tinge and they seemed to stare at you as you walked past. “Professor Pandemonium’s Carnival of Chaos” read the slogan beneath an image of a rabid wolf’s outstretched, slavering jaws. “One night only.”
Finally, we saw the resurrection of a tent on the outskirts of town: striped in red and white, bigger than a church. It seemed to cast a long shadow.
The carnival had come to town.
I was fifteen at the time, a boy big for my age, but my brain still had a ways to go. On the day of the carnival, I went with my grandfather, a grizzled old man of beard and sinew, and tattooed skin sleeves of skulls and roses. Since it was a gray day of mist and drizzle, no one else wanted to go and he said he’d come along to keep me company.
We gave our tickets to a gaunt man whose face was covered in white make-up. The make-up was so thick, his face looked like a macabre death mask with empty holes for eyes emerging from it. I couldn’t help but stare.
Inside the gates, the calliope’s music ran slowly, in a jerky manner, like that of a music box winding down. The carnival’s games seemed odd and dark. The barkers called to us. “Come here, boy,” one called, who was wearing a red-stained shirt, like that of a butcher. He balanced a glass bottle with murky water on his palm, containing a fist-sized, round piece of meat. “Don’t you want to win a heart in a jar?”
Another held cages with cane toads that croaked. The man himself had a broad, frog-like face. “Cold-blooded pets,” he called. “Step right up for a cold-blooded pet.”
We moved past the hawkers selling scorpions on sticks and crickets leashed by a red string. An automaton, which looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy wearing a swath of red cloth wrapped around its lacquered wooden head, was encased in glass. It had a sign overhead that said “Truth-teller. Ask your questions.” I peered at it through the glass and shrank back as it swivelled on its base and clacked open its jaws.
Finally, I saw a game I was familiar with — target shooting with a BB gun. I fired off three shots, but the balloons, the size of tomatoes with a cartoon devil’s face printed on them, remained unpopped.
Grandpa held out his gnarled hand for the gun. “Here, kid. Let me show you how it’s done.” He aimed the BB gun and shot the blue balloon in the top right corner. Then in quick succession, he shot the green balloon in the top left corner and red balloon dead centre. He handed the gun back to the game operator.
“Grew up on a farm. Learned to shoot an acorn from between a squirrel’s paws.” He let me pick out a prize. I chose a big, plastic sword with a blue glass jewel in its hilt, as though it were forged by barbarian. I tied it within its sheath to my back.
We made our way through the make-shift rows of the carnival stalls, passing tables of strange curiosities of many limbs and heads. We walked by a poster reading “Madame Le Fou, Palm Reader and Fortune-Teller.”
Grandpa gave me a wink. “Let’s see what she has to say about you,” he said.
I pushed back the red velvet curtain, the fringed tassels dragging on the floor. Madame Le Fou sat at a table which was covered in black linen. She wore heavy make-up with kohl-rimmed eyes and violent, red-stained lips. “What is your name, boy?” she asked.
“Kane,” I replied.
The corners of Madame Le Fou’s lips turned up and she held out her hand. Grandpa reached into his back pocket and gave her a five-dollar bill. She tucked it into the waistband of her skirt before she gazed into her crystal ball, tracing her scarlet nails over its surface. She furrowed her brow. “Tonight, you will face the challenge of a life-time. You will either learn to meet this challenge …” the crystal ball magnified further her widened eyes.
“Or what?” I asked in a hushed voice. I saw nothing in the crystal aside from her reflection.
Madame Le Fou looked up at me with a ghost-white face, the candle light illuminating her fear. “Or you will die.”
Grandpa snorted. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling on my arm.
We wandered around the rest of the carnival until we reached the red-and-white striped tent at the center of the fairgrounds. A painting on a wooden easel stood beside the tent’s entrance. Like the posters around town, it read “Professor Pandemonium’s Carnival of Chaos.” The professor’s darkly-cast, hypnotic face was in the centre of the painting. He was surrounded by ugly, dog-like demons, jaws bared, with yellow eyes, wormy red veins escaping from their irises.
We took a seat upon the bleachers. People jostled around us to get a seat. I waved to one of our neighbours, Mr. Lawson, who used to work behind the meat counter at the grocery store before his old knee injury flared up and he went on disability. He now walked with a cane. I nodded at couple of kids from school, John and Aaron, nice kids, but we didn’t run in the same circles. I didn’t run in any circles. I kept to myself and didn’t have any close friends.
The lights dimmed. A drum-roll sounded. There was a bang and a puff of smoke and spot-light turned to the centre of the ring where a man appeared from the ether. He was a compact man with a head of gleaming dark hair, his face adorned by a sharply trimmed moustache and goatee. He wore a red double-breasted jacket, black breeches with knee-high riding boots, and a matching black top hat. He looked like the debonair devil himself, holding a coiled leather whip.
The audience went silent. The ring leader opened his arms. “Welcome, everyone, to the Carnival of Chaos. I am your host, Professor Pandemonium.” He gave a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Tonight, I will show you the wicked wonders of the world. Tonight, on the autumn equinox, when the night grows longer than the day, when the boundaries of fantasy and reality blur and weaken and break, on this night, lives will lengthen and lives will be lost.”
His voice held such command, but I didn’t understand all that he had said. The giant belching organ in the right of the tent began to play by itself, no musician at its helm, a melody ominous and menacing.
The music abrupted halted. The Professor reached into his pocket and threw something upon the ground. When the smoke cleared, the Professor stood outside a blue-lit dome which seemed to be made from light and energy. A loud bang and a flash of light, and within the dome, a monster appeared. It must have been a man in a costume, but the costume looked real. It was the size of a rhino, with foot-long spikes down the spine and a heavy, dog-like head with weighty jaws and large, glowing eyes. It growled and pawed at the ground.
The organ began playing again. With each crash of a discordant chord, another explosion, another flash of light, and inside the dome, another monster appeared. A giant, slug-like mass nestled on a tangle of eight, spidery legs. A dragon’s head on a snake’s body; the flames from its breath licked the dome but remained contained within.
The audience gasped. The Professor held a hand towards these horrific creatures. “These are the monsters of my imagination. Tonight, the boundary into reality will break, and the fantasy will be made real.” He said some strange words, a spell perhaps. “Fantasy ad realitatem. Arise, my children. Ab ortu solis usque ad occasum, carpe noctem.”
My grandfather muttered the translation. “Fantasy to reality. From sunset to sunrise, seize the night.”
Above us, the tent flap to the sky was pulled open and the moonlight shone upon the dome. With an electric sizzle, the blue light of the dome sank to the ground, forming a circular outline of light on the floor. The monsters stood before us uncaged.
The dog demon was the first to attack. Bounding into the bleachers, the audience scattered, screaming. Mr. Lawson, cane in hand, arose from the metal bench and stumbled. The dog demon was upon him, jaws clamped around his shoulder, tearing his arm from his body, blood dripping from its massive jaws. It crunched Mr. Lawson’s head as though it were an egg before dragging the remains through the portal of blue light in the centre of the floor. Grampa grabbed me and we started running as the flames of the dragon scorched overhead, setting the striped tent on fire.
My chest ached as we sprinted down the aisles which had, in the dark, turned into a maze. The wooden truth-teller turned and clacked its jaws as we raced past. Its turban was the same colour as the flames. A look came over Grandpa’s face and he turned to face the automaton. “Why is this happening?”
The automaton’s eyes lit up. It said in a melodious, mechanical voice, “The Professor has sold his soul to live forever. But he must pay a price. One year for one life. The monsters drag the souls to hell, and for each, the professor gets another year on earth.” The eyes went dark.
Grandpa banged on the glass. “Well, how can we defeat them?”
The automaton’s eyes lit up and it clacked his jaws. ”By turning fantasy into reality.”
“What? How?” screamed my grandfather, but a flame shot out and the glass case holding the automaton exploded. The truth-teller was set on fire.
We ran through the carnival stalls, each one along our path going up in flames as the dragon monster pursued us. Screams seemed to surround us as we dashed past the target shooting game. Grandpa yanked me to a stop.
“Hold on a minute,” he said. “The night when fantasy will be made real.” He grabbed a BB gun. “Let’s try it out.” He concentrated for a moment, trying to remember the words “Fantasy ad realitatem.” The gun seemed to grow heavier in his hands, and the BBs that he had held clenched in his fist, when he opened his hand, had turned into bullets.
I pulled out the plastic sword from its sheath, still carried on my back. Grandpa repeated the words, “Fantasy ad realitatem.” The plastic blade gleamed into sharpened steel. It grew heavy in my hands and I awkwardly tried to hold it in a way where it would cut my opponent instead of myself.
A flash of flame as the dragon monster slithered closer. Grandpa turned and shot off two bullets in quick succession. Two small glints of light as the bullets ricocheted off the armoured scales. I held the blade and hacked at the dragon’s tail. Grandpa grabbed me by the neck of my t-shirt as the flame shot towards me. He dragged me under a table. I held the sword close to my chest.
As the dragon monster screeched, Grandpa put a hand on my shoulder. “Fantasy ad realitatem,” he said. My veins felt like they were set on fire. We got out from under the table and I held out the sword, the blue from the jewel’s hilt glowing in the night air. The awkward weight of the sword turned familiar, as though it were a steely extension of my arm. Amazed, I spun the sword first with my right hand, then with my left, the edge of the blade reflecting the moonlight.
I held the sword in front of me as the flame bore down. The dragon’s fire split into two, deflecting it away from me. It attacked, baring its teeth with outstretched jaws. I lunged, and with both hands around the hilt, plunged the sword upward through the top of the dragon’s open mouth. With a last, blistering groan, the dragon fell heavily upon its side.
The rays of the distant dawn released tendrils of light throughout the carnival. The dragon’s body started sizzling when touched by the light. It disappeared into cinders. We raced back to the remains of the striped tent.
Again, I held out the sword. I felt the white-hot hatred of Professor Pandemonium’s glare as he leapt through blue portal in the floor. His two remaining monsters followed, squeezing through the shrinking portal, each dragging with it a twisted and broken body. The portal disappeared as the sunlight grew stronger. The sword grew lighter in my hands as it turned back into a toy.
Thirteen souls were lost that night. Thirteen years on earth gained, stretching longer that life that was based on blood, on innocent souls. Now, thirteen years have gusted by, and the autumn winds are gathering again. I can smell the carnival in the distance. The powers of the blade, they lasted for only that one night. But since then I’ve trained with the best fencers and swordsmen and sharp shooters in the country. When the lurid posters go back up and carnival comes back to town …
I know the words.
I’ll be armed.
I’ll be ready.
This time, he won’t escape.