The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) by Frank Tuttle Page A

one was long and interspersed with cries of “no, no, no.” There was a flash of light from inside the midway, briefly illuminating the rows of tents. The screaming man had time for one last wordless shout, and then he too fell silent.
    “Two,” said Gertriss.
    The riding wheel flared to life. A man climbed it, leaping from seat to seat, finding handholds in the rusty iron frame. If he cried out, we never heard it.
    Something leaped onto the wheel below him. At first I thought it a man, but when it began to climb, it used too many legs. It scuttled up the wheel effortlessly, leaped on the climbing man’s back, and after a moment of stillness it flung his limp body to the ground and climbed down after it, moving like some monstrous eager spider.
    “Three.”
    “I’ve seen enough,” I whispered. “We’re leaving, and I’m not coming back without cannons and the Army.”
    Darla’s face relaxed. “Oh,” she said. “How will we get back across the river?”
    I shrugged. “What, you don’t have a boat in your purse, purely by accident?”
    “Hell boss, we’ll swim if we have to,” said Gertriss. Wild cackling sounded from the midway, and a man cried out. I caught a brief glimpse of a squat form astride an honest-to-Angels flying broom, and then Vallata the swamp witch swooped down upon her prey. I’m guessing he didn’t fare any better than the snake we’d just watched her swallow whole. “That’s four.”
    “Let’s go.”
    The words were barely out of my mouth before I heard a shout behind us, and realized we weren’t alone.
    A man charged down the path, bellowing and stumbling. He bore a sword in his right hand and a bottle in his left and he was on us and past before I recognized the tall, rangy figure and the booming, hoarse voice.
    “Damn it,” I said. I stood and I raised my gun but it was over before I could act.
    The first bolt took him in the gut. He dropped his bottle, fell and rolled. I saw the patch of new blood glisten in the moonlight.
    He got up. He got up and took another step, but I heard crossbows throw, too many to count.
    Bertold Ordwald went down to his knees, gurgled, and collapsed in a limp, dead heap.
    Darla pulled me down. We waited, listening for the silky hiss of bolts flying past.
    None came. In a moment, half a dozen clowns emerged from the shadows and converged on the corpse.
    “Oh shit,” whispered Gertriss. She wasn’t looking at our former client, or the clowns. I followed her gaze.
    Atop the empty riding wheel, a child-like figure glowed, dancing.
    Buttercup.
    Darla rose to a crouch, her hand over her mouth. Gertriss cussed again.
    The witch’s broom rose from the tents, arcing toward Buttercup.
    The scuttling spider-thing leaped back onto the frame and began creeping toward her.
    “They can’t hurt her,” I said. “She’s a banshee.”
    “Buttercup, come here, ” said Darla, in a loud whisper. “Come here at once.”
    The tiny banshee leaped and twirled. The spider-thing was halfway up the wheel, climbing the underside of the frame, out of Buttercup’s sight. The witch circled her, cackling and spiraling closer.
    A veritable cloud of small flying things rose up like the shadow of a whirlwind from amid the tents. Bats, they were, but flocking like blackbirds.
    Down along the midway, the sixth man screamed and died.
    Buttercup went still. I was too far away to see, but I imagined her face turning somber, the glowing nimbus about her intensifying.
    She howled.
    The witch veered off, diving for the tents. The spider-thing spasmed and fell, legs clutching and twitching all the way down.
    The bats, or whatever they were, formed a funnel cloud with Buttercup at its center.
    Her scream rose up and up. The mastodons bellowed. They reared up and waved their front legs and brought them down with cracks of dull earthy thunder. Lights winked out along the midway. The carousel darkened and went still.
    Still, Buttercup howled.
    Pine limbs broke a stone’s throw away.