Katherine Dunn: Nightmare Carnival

Edited by Ellen Datlow

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NIGHTMARE CARNIVAL © 2014 ELLEN DATLOW

Introduction © 2014 by Katherine Dunn. Preface © 2014 by Ellen Datlow. “Scapegoats” © 2014 by

N. Lee Wood. “The Firebrand” © 2014 by Priya Sharma. “Work, Hook, Shoot, Rip” © 2014 by Nick Mamatas. “And the Carnival Leaves Town” © 2014 by A. C. Wise. “Corpse Rose” © 2014 by Terry Dowling. “Last of the Fair” © 2014 by Joel Lane. “A Small Part in the Pantomime” © 2014 by Glen Hirshberg. “Hibbler’s Minions” © 2014 by Jeffrey Ford. “Swan Song and Then Some” © 2014 by Dennis Danvers. “The Lion Cage” © 2014 by Genevieve Valentine. “The Darkest Part” © 2014 by Stephen Graham Jones. “The Popping Fields” © 2014 by Robert Shearman. “Skullpocket” © 2014 by Nathan Ballingrud. “The Mysteries” © 2014 by Livia Llewellyn. “Screaming Elk, MT” © 2014 by Laird Barron. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Dark Horse Books® and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.

Some say the carnival is gone now, drowned out by decency and digital magic. But don’t you believe it. Carnival doesn’t die. It morphs and fractures and flares again. It flickers and sometimes rots, but it is rooted in ancient nightmares and it feeds on their immortality. It masquerades as giddy fun but the carnival is about fear, which is eternal. True, in some regions the old freak shows have receded into myth, and the simp twisters have safety harnesses. But the shrill music still cloaks a high and endless scream. The dark is still there behind the swirling lights. And that dark is what we need.

The midway teeters over an abyss, and the abyss draws us. The high wire and trapeze freeze our breath, and the rides taunt our blood-deep fear of falling. The fire-eaters snatch us back to a time when we had to flee the burning. The beasts remind us that we are smallish, ill-equipped predators, but eminently edible prey.

And we are prey to each other. The booths and spieling barkers lure us to booby-trapped tests of skill or luck or destiny. Their sleazy glitter is far more seductive than the humdrum camouflage of the dangerous day-to-day.

We defend ourselves feebly, declaring it’s all smoke and mirrors, tricks and cons that don’t fool us. We’re onto them. But we end up falling for lies, and doubting the astounding truth.

If our innermost terrors are incarnate in the midway, there is also hope. The acrobats, the fliers, the sword swallowers and torch jugglers defy gravity and anatomy. The freaks trigger our horror of the alien within, but they, and their nimble cohort, are beyond us. They possess an uncanny superlative, an eerie defiance of normality, physics, and frailty. They flout perils that overwhelm us.

We watch, amazed, and grapple with our fears. The carnival lets us do that in what passes for safety. And when the calliope moves on, what remains are torn tickets, spilled popcorn, and strange stories shifting on the night wind. The stories stay with us, and they grow.

Crows probably croak whole sagas of snakes and hawks, cats and shotguns. Mice sing each other to sleep with images of traps and talons, sly escapes and tragic endings. Long ago, in some cliff notch above a shifting sea, our grandmother — great to the umpteenth power — hunched to tell the little ones what to fear. These scary fables are the original carnival of the mind.

Every generation spins its own tales, fresh smoke signals from our smoldering fears. Like the cackling Ghost Tunnels, the Cyclone rides, and the snake charmers, the stories raise our hackles and acquaint us with the physical sensations of dread, creeping horror, and the shock of terror. This experience is essential for our survival. We absorb the stories and learn how fear feels, so when those sweeping emotions come at us out of life we are not paralyzed by them, but can react. If the stranger’s smile takes on a peculiar twist, we step back and walk away. When the siren shrieks in the dark, we rise and run.

So welcome this collection of extremely useful stories from the Nightmare Carnival. Strap yourself in and buckle up. You’re in for a wild ride.

I’ve got a confession: I never went to a carnival when I was growing up. I was, however, taken by my parents to the circus on a regular basis — the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which was held annually at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. I loved the acrobats, the jugglers, the tightrope walkers, the animals, the smell of popcorn, the cotton candy. Always hated the clowns. I wasn’t afraid of them; I just didn’t think they were funny and disliked that their humor was usually ridicule, or being mean to each other. In the late 1950s there were still freak shows attached to the circus, but my parents never took me around to see them. The only “freak” show I’ve ever attended is the ongoing Coney Island Circus Sideshow, which has human blockheads, fire-eaters, sword swallowers, contortionists, and other people who can perform crazy feats.