Nightmare Carnival

LAST OF THE FAIR by Joel Lane

Coming home on the number 11 bus, Mark noticed there was a fair in Fox Hollies Park. It wasn’t the usual scrawny local thing with two electric roundabouts and half a ghost train. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rides: just a scattering of tents in a hazy orange light that somehow didn’t reach the centre. There was no sign on the gates. A thin October rain scratched at the canvas walls. Odd time of year for a fair. Blurred images pulled at the corner of his eye: a tangle of snakes, a flying eagle, a woman with an angelic face. He thought of Carmel. Their date that afternoon, in a rough Kings Heath pub, was the first time they’d kissed. Next time, he supposed, they might go to bed. It worried him. Some music was playing in the park, but he couldn’t make it out. The bus passed a shop whose upper windows were broken.

The angel stayed in his mind that night. Her neck was bent back; her expression was ecstatic but not peaceful. Mark thought it was an imitation of a painting he’d seen in the Birmingham art gallery, a Rossetti portrait of a woman experiencing some kind of sacred vision. Again he thought of Carmel — her straight dark hair falling over her pale face, her eyes closed as their tongues met in a silent argument. His hand strayed to the smooth ridge of bone above his left nipple, rising to a crest and then falling back into his side. He’d been wearing a loose shirt, she probably hadn’t seen. And she hadn’t gone to his school, so she wouldn’t know about the names. She’d gone to a better school, was at college now. But she didn’t talk to him like he was an idiot. There was a blend of loneliness and fear in her eyes that made him desperate to touch her.

Mark bit his lip as his hand slipped down to his warm belly, his crotch. The rain tore at the windows, like a dog with a bone that no longer had any flesh to lose. The word “bone” stuck in his head and he couldn’t hold onto himself. Frustrated, he rolled over and thought of a house full of broken glass.

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.

Thoughts of her woke him up. The screen dissolving, her abnormal breath in his face. Three nipples pressing against him. A wet ruin down below. He bit his lip as he came, then reached for a tissue, cleaned himself, then crushed the damp paper in his fist. Waste to be crushed and burned. He could do that, they couldn’t stop him. Now he was whole, he could do what he fucking well liked. She had it coming. The other bitch too, the procurer. He’d go back and end it. No one would blame him. He reached for his lighter, a cheap plastic job from a garage, flicked it on, and stared at the orange flame with its dull blue heart. Then he lit a cigarette and sat in the dark, breathing smoke. Marlboro. Carmel smoked the same brand. It was a sign. Finally he dropped the stub in the ashtray, lay back down, and felt peace creep over him like a blanket.

His father was drinking every night. Sometimes it made him late for work. He needed a woman. That was what you did if you were normal, you loved someone and married them. His mother had left a couple of years ago, gone to live in West Bromwich on her own. Mark didn’t know what was wrong with her. At least there were no more arguments. They used to keep him awake half the night, screaming at each other. Then he’d sleep and dream the house was on fire.

The fair looked like it was packing up. Blank-sided lorries were parked in the central area; some of the tents were already gone, though others were still open for business. Mark wondered what else might be on offer here. Too late to worry about that now. He patted his zip-up jacket, the pockets over his chest: two cans of lighter fluid wrapped in pieces of rag, each a small bomb that could burn down the thing’s tent. That morning at the job centre, as the rain had whipped its grey sheets against the building, he’d remembered the showers after games lessons at school. The staring, the whispering, the awkward silences. And the names. Bonetit. The Phantom. It’s Alive. The rain was still falling, but it was lighter and, for some reason he didn’t understand, slower. The drops around each lamppost seemed to trickle down a glass wall, rather than drop through the air.

The rapturous face on the tent wall was scarred with rain. The board was still outside, and there was a dim light in the doorway. Mark slipped to one side, walking slowly around a parked van, and approached the back of the tent. He felt in his side pocket for the lighter, and put a cigarette in his mouth as a prop. He’d have to be quick. Just as he was about to flick the lighter and whip the first cloth-wrapped can out of his jacket, a dark-haired girl in a blue coat approached the tent and paused for a moment, looking at the sign. Then she walked through the entrance. It was Carmel. She hadn’t seen him.

Mark spat out the unlit cigarette and turned away, running between the lorries at the end of the park and through the gap at the end of the fence, back onto the road. He ran until the pain in his chest made him slow down, struggling for breath. Rain clawed at his face. When he reached the industrial estate near the dump, where seagulls mewed in the dark like airborne cats, he took out one of the cans of lighter fluid and unscrewed the cap, then inhaled the cold fumes. He’d last done that about six years before, not quite a teenager. A wave of nausea hit him and he staggered against the wall, fell to his knees, inhaled again. And again. Slowly, the fear eased. He could see the rain falling, but not feel it on his face.

There was nothing to worry about. He and Carmel would go to bed together, and it would be perfect. Because they would be. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and imagined the two of them making love in the clouds, high above the city’s orange crest of light pollution, their bodies locked in a silent arc, falling together like angels.