Nightmare Carnival

No? Well, I’ll tell you. One was that they were let out a little bit earlier than normal. It was still twilight, and though sometimes ghouls were known to leave the warrens during that time, rarely were children permitted to come up so early. That night, however, the Maggot had sent word that there was to be a meeting in the charnel house — an emergency meeting, to arrange a ritual called an Extinction Rite, which the children did not understand, but which seemed to put the adults in a dreadfully dull mood. The children had to be got out of the way. There might have been some discussion about the wisdom of this decision, but ghouls are by nature a calm and reclusive folk, so no one worried that anything untoward would happen.

The other unusual thing about that night, obviously, was the Cold Water Fair.

The Cold Water Fair had been held for years and years, and it was a way for Hob’s Landing to celebrate its relationship with the Chesapeake Bay, and to commemorate the time the Leviathan rose to devour the town, but was turned away with some clever thinking and some good advice. This was the first time the fair was held on this side of Hob’s Landing. In previous years it had been held on the northern side of the town, out of sight of the cemetery. But someone had bought some land and got grumpy about the fair being on it, so now they were holding it right at the bottom of the hill instead.

The ghoul children had never seen anything so wonderful! Imagine living your life in the warrens, underground, where everything was stone and darkness and cold earth. Whenever you came up to play, you could see the stars, you could see the light on the water, and you could even see the lights from town, which looked like flakes of gold. But this! Never anything like this. The fair was like a smear of bright paint: candy-colored pastels in the blue wash of air. A great illuminated wheel turned slowly in the middle of it, holding swinging gondola cars full of people.

“A Ferris wheel!” shouts a buzz-cut boy who had been crying only a few minutes ago. His face is still ruddy, but his eyes shine with something else, now: something better.

Yes, you’re exactly right. A Ferris wheel! They had never even seen one before. Can you imagine that?

There were gaudy tents arranged all around it, like a little village. It was full of amazing new smells: cotton candy, roasting peanuts, hot cider. The high screams of children blew up to the little ghouls like a wind from a beautiful tomb. They stood transfixed at the fence, those grubby little things, with their hands wrapped around the bars and their faces pressed between.

They wondered, briefly, if this had anything to do with the Extinction Rite the adults kept talking about.

“Do you think they scream like that all the time?” Slipwicket asked.

Wormcake said, “Of course they do. It’s a fair. It’s made just for screaming.”

In fact, children, he had no idea if this was true. But he liked to pretend he was smarter than everybody else, even way back then.

The children laugh. I glance at Mr. Wormcake, to gauge his reaction to what is probably a scripted joke, but his false mouth, blood pasted to his skull, reveals nothing.

Slipwicket released the longest, saddest sigh you have ever heard. It would have made you cry, it was so forlorn. He said, “Oh, how I would love to go to a place made only for screams.” Uncle Digby is laying it on thick here, his metal hands cupping the glass jar of his head, his voice warbling with barely contained sorrow. The kids eat it up.

“Well, we can’t,” said Stubblegut. “We have to stay inside the fence.”

Stubblegut was the most boring ghoul you ever saw. You could always depend on him to say something dull and dreadful. He was morose, always complaining, and he never wanted to try anything new. He was certain to grow up to be somebody’s father, that most tedious of creatures. Sometimes the others would talk about ditching him as a friend, but they could never bring themselves to do it. They were good boys, and they knew you were supposed to stay loyal to your friends — even the boring ones.

“Come along,” Stubblegut said. “Let’s play skullpocket.”