Nightmare Carnival

The next evening, he went back. The old man at the entrance charged him a pound for admission. It was warmer than the previous night; the ground was still wet. Music was playing from somewhere: “Fairground Attraction,” that song with the annoying stop-start rhythm. The tents were lit up, but there hardly seemed to be anyone around. The smell of mustard and fried onions hung in the air. Mark paced from tent to tent, looking for the angel. What kind of fair was this? The signs didn’t give much away. One showed a man enfolded in his own silver wings, the next a mass of worms feasting on a small creature. Then he glimpsed the ecstatic face on the side of a pale tent. The sign was a pair of hands: one curled up, the fingers scarred and distorted by fire or birth; the other normal, the fingers elegant and smooth. And a single word in red: HEALING. There was a rank smell in the doorway, but he pushed through the fringe of canvas strips.

A middle-aged woman at a desk looked at him as if he’d come to sign in. “Twenty pounds, love.” That was all the money he had. It was meant to last him the week, but he handed it over. “Just go in and sit down,” she said. The space beyond the desk was dark, but he could make out a wooden chair in front of a murky glass screen. Was this just a video? Feeling they had set up the whole thing just to mock him, Mark sat down. The smell was worse here, a mix of something chemical and something animal. No doubt these tents had rats. He shivered. Some music was playing inside, but he had to strain to hear it. The sound was dreamy but repetitive, like rave music slowed down. The speakers were behind him. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out what was behind the screen. It was dancing.

A human figure, more or less. Apparently naked. Had to be a woman, though her body was so deformed he couldn’t be sure. Her hands were knotted into swollen fists. Her back, even allowing for the clumsy dance movements, was twisted out of shape. She had three shrivelled breasts. No area of her skin was free of scars and blemishes. Her sleek hair partly obscured her face, but he could see the eyes and mouth were too small and completely dark. What was between her legs didn’t even look human. The music was making him feel drowsy, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the terrible dance. And then whatever light there was faded. He reached out to touch the screen, to reassure himself there was glass between him and the dancer, and felt nothing.

A hand gripped his shoulder. “Wake up, it’s over.” The woman from the desk. She’d got the wrong person, it wasn’t over, he had business here. For a moment Mark wondered who he was. “Time to go.” There was nothing behind the screen. When he stood up, his erection made it difficult to walk. He was grateful for the poor light. Had they drugged him? The smell was worse now, or maybe he’d added to it. Nauseated and angry, he stumbled through the canvas strips and out into the park, which wasn’t different enough from the tent to reassure him. His excitement faded fast as he walked, then ran, to the exit and home through the orange-lit streets, heaps of black bags almost blocking his way, the stink of days-old rubbish, the ammonia reek of seagulls and rats from the city dump a quarter-mile away, darkness clotted in broken windows and narrow passages to the trading estates behind the houses. Tears blurred his vision, though he had no idea what he was crying about.

When he got home, his father was watching TV. The living- room smelled of Special Brew. Mark grunted hello and rushed through to the bathroom, which was part of a ground-floor extension. He stripped off clumsily, his hands frozen though it wasn’t cold, and switched on the shower — but before he could get into it, he was on his knees in front of the toilet bowl, rocking back and forth. His mouth filled with sour bile, but he didn’t vomit. At least it gave him an excuse for crying. For bitter reassurance, his left hand crept to the ridge of bone between the shoulder-blade and the ribs. It wasn’t there. He felt with his other hand, then looked in the grimy mirror. It had gone. He didn’t know what to feel. The shower was so hot it stung him all over, left him itching. He went straight to bed and curled up as small as he could, hands on shoulders, face digging into the pillow.