by Ian Hunter

You have to promise not to tell my little sister, Lottie.

And you really have to promise not to say anything to Mom. Okay ?

She knows all about it, but she would get really upset remembering, and I

would get it on the neck.

As usual.

Okay ?

This is what happened.

When the carnival came to town.

* * *

I could see the carnival from my bedroom window, in the fields between the

town and the distant hills. There were tents of different sizes, surrounded by thin

ribbons of different coloured lights. If I really listened I could hear music and

sometimes the sound of screams and squeals, but no laughter. I think I was too far

away to hear laughter. Sometimes I imagined I could smell things too. Burgers and

hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy. The carnival must have come in the night

because no-one saw them arrive, or heard them either, and they must have made some

noise to get all those tents up, but it didn’t matter. We woke up and they were here,

for one week only.

* * *

The rain was falling lightly the first night we went.. All the rides and ticket

booths were lit up with really bright lights which looked like angry insects hovering

above us. Dad said the rain had a lot to do with it. Made us feel bad and that’s why we

didn’t like the carnival. He said we would have felt a lot different if the sun had been

shining, but I don’t know about that.

It wasn’t the usual stuff we got fed up with. The side shows where you have to

toss things, or throw things. Knock something down. Get something into something

else. You never win, Mom says. They’re all rigged.

It was the bigger things. The rides. The attractions. There was something

about them.

Something wrong.

Maybe it was the carousel. It went really fast, whipping round and round,

making everything a blur. I think that’s why the horses seemed to change in

front of me. It was just a trick of the light, or rain dripping into my eyes, but the

wooden horses seemed to have bulging eyes, foaming mouths which parted to show

gritted teeth. I was getting dizzy just watching them. The riders seemed to be really

struggling to hold on, clinging to the horses with their hands. Arms wrapped around

necks, legs wrapped around bodies. When it finally stopped, the people stumbled to

the ground, looking dizzy, like they were astronauts back on earth and had forgotten

how to walk. One girl leaned over a fence and was sick.

Lottie was desperate for a ride, but Mom told her she was too young, and too

small, and she would end up being sick too, if she went on it.

I pointed to the HORROR HOUSE, but Dad said these things always looked

good from the outside with huge paintings of monsters and vampires. Inside it was a

different story. Glow-in-the-dark skulls and dangling threads which were supposed to

be spider webs. A waste of money, he told me, but I still wanted to go on, even by

myself.

So I did.

I sat in a car that was painted to look like a big blob of blood with pointy teeth

and evil, stretched eyes. The car in front turned a corner and crashed through two

doors into darkness. I heard screams and swallowed hard. Mom and Lottie waved at

me and Dad shouted something about staying in the car, no matter how scarey things

got. Yeah, right. Then I clattered into the dark.

A green, glowing skull jerked out at me, eyes dangling on springs. The

car rattled on. I was sure I caught glimpses of the car up ahead, and there were more

screams. The dark seemed to press in on me and I kept looking round and round,

waiting for the next scare. Something touched my head. My hands shot up and

whatever it was, was gone. Threads, probably. There was a coffin up ahead, standing

upright and the lid opened as I got closer. I leaned back in the car, wanting to slip

under the seat, anything to get away from that coffin. Although I seemed to be taking

ages to reach it, and the lid seemed to be taking ages to open. Then the car lurched

forward and the lid swung open. I laughed. The horrible thing was me, reflected in a

slim, dirty mirror inside the coffin. Then there was the blast of air and a giant hiss and

I was outside. Mom and Dad were waiting for me. Lottie was licking a candy apple. I

climbed out of the car, with a smile on my face, trying to look cool rather than

disappointed. A skull, threads and a coffin with a mirror inside. Some ghost train.

Of course, Lottie wanted Dad to win a Powerpuff Girls doll that wasn’t like a

real Powerpuff Girls doll. The eyes were wrong. Or the costume, or the hair. Cheap

fakes, Mom said, but Dad tried, and lost and lost, and Lottie wouldn’t stop crying. So

I wandered off and went into the hall of mirrors by myself. It wasn’t really a hall, just

a big tent with a twisting corridor of mirrors. You turned a corner and wham ! You

were tall and thin, or small and round. There was no-one behind me, and I could hear

adults up ahead when I turned round and saw a mirror in front and one behind and I

had thousands and thousands of reflections which I couldn’t see properly because I

was in the way.

Boy, was I glad I was in the way.

I dodged round my own reflection and saw myself for a second or two. Not

even that. My reflections got smaller and smaller. Older and older until I was just a

grinning skeleton. It must have been a trick of the light, or something, but I was sure

the skeleton was getting closer and closer, moving up the line of reflections towards

me.

I ran outside

Lottie wanted to go on the Helter Skelter, but mom said she was too young.

Besides, it seemed to be closed. A crowd had gathered around some little kid who was

having hysterics, saying that there was something inside the Helter Skelter and it had

grabbed his legs when he was climbing up the stairs to the top.

Cool, I thought, and asked for a shot, but mom said the rain was getting

worse and it would be too slippy. I would probably shoot off one of the bends and

break my neck.

Then we noticed Lottie had disappeared. We couldn’t see her anywhere, and it

was getting really dark, and the rain was falling like heavier now. People were

beginning to run home. We shouted out Lottie ! Lottie ! Dad said we should split up

and look for her. Mom said that was a stupid idea and we would all get lost. Then we

saw her, standing outside a stall with a sign on top.

MR MARVELLO'S FANTASTIC FACES.

I groaned. I might have guessed it. It was a face-painting stall. Lottie always

likes having her face painted. Cats and tigers and rabbits and baby stuff like that.

Mum and Dad ran up behind her. Lottie pointed. She wanted her face

painted.

Not tonight, Mom told her. It was closed.

There was a sign.

DUE TO UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES
MR. MARVELLO WILL ONLY BE APPREARING
ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE CARNIVAL

Lottie went into her usual routine. Crying. Shouting. Jumping up and down.

She would have rolled around in the muddy puddles, but she wasn’t that stupid.

Dad promised to bring her back on the last night. That stopped her crying, but

Mom said no, and she started crying again, so Mom changed her mind and Lottie was

quiet again. Mom looked at me and put a finger to her lips. I got the message. Don’t

mention the carnival, or face-painting. Lottie would forget about it.

Then we went home.

* * *

But Lottie didn’t forget. She asked every day about the carnival and Mister

Marvy. She told all her friends, and suddenly they were all going too.

No rides, Mom told us that night, and no more stalls. Dad had spent a fortune

trying to win a Powerpuff Girls doll for Lottie, she reminded us. We were going to the

face painting stall and that was all.

There was a queue when we got there, most of them Lottie’s friends with a

grown up holding their hand. A little boy stepped down from the stool with a butterfly

on his face. It was amazing, the best butterfly I had ever seen. It covered his whole

face and his eyes and nose and mouth were part of the overall pattern. I looked at Mr

Marvello. He was an old guy. There was something wrong with his face. A muscle in

his right cheek seemed to jerk all the time and his eyes were bulging, and slightly

mad-looking, like his brain didn’t want to be inside that body, because it was old and

getting worn out.

Mom pointed at the old man’s shaking hands, telling Dad he would have

someone’s eye out with that brush. We watched Mr Marvello paint another face, with

another butterfly. It seemed to be all he could paint. The same shape and detail but in

different colours, fantastic colours.

Finally it was my sister’s turn. Mom was really anxious as she watched but

Lottie didn’t get a brush in her eye. She thanked the old man and skipped away,

waving her hands by her sides and standing on tip-toes, saying she was a butterfly and

wanted to fly. Even I had to admit it was the best face painting I had ever seen.

That’s why she was howling later when Mom said it had to come off before

she went to bed. Otherwise there would be paint all over the pillows and the

bedclothes. Dad found the camera and took several pictures of her and promised to

buy frames for them so she could hang them in her room. It took ages for Mom to

get the butterfly off her face. She had to use tons of cotton wool and almost a full

bottle of baby lotion before Lottie was back to her grotty self.

I went to bed and sat in the dark beside the window, watching the carnival

pack up. The coloured lights came down, followed by the tents. Soon they were gone

and the field was empty, like they had never been there at all.

* * *

The phone rang early next morning. It rang and rang until we all woke up but

Mom got to it first. Then I heard the whole thing crash on the floor and the sound of

Mom running upstairs and rushing into Lottie’s room. Dad and I followed and saw

her cradling Lottie, who was dazed and half-asleep. Mom was crying. Dad asked her

what was wrong, but Mom just shook her head and rocked Lottie in her arms, until

she squeezed free and began to ask for breakfast.

* * *

I heard all about it at school.

About the faces.

Of all the boys and girls who had gone to bed with butterflies on their

faces.

They were dead.

Every one of them.

And their faces were gone.

No mouths, noses, eyelids, eyebrows. Anything. Even spots. All gone.

There was only smooth skin left behind. Smooth skin and hair on top. They

reckoned the children had suffocated without mouths or nostrils, but a few had turned

over in their sleep and there was paint on their pillows, and not much left of that side

of their head. The butterflies had pulled themselves free by tearing the faces down to

the bone.

* * *

Next day, Lottie said she had dreamed about giant butterflies at her

window, banging against the glass so loud it had woken her up, but she was sure it

was still a dream. They were the most beautiful butterflies she had ever seen, she said,

but when they turned away they seemed to have faces on the other side and then the

faces flew away into the night, so she knew it was a dream because butterflies weren’t

like that, were they ?

I looked at Mom. She had turned white and had to grip the table to stop from

falling over.

That’s why I don’t want you to mention any of this to her. Ever. Or my

sister, or I’ll be the one who gets it.

As usual.

© Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter is a member of Clyde Valley Writers' Group.