The Dark Eden Circus

There is something about a thrill that draws us in. There is something about horror that intrigues us. Why are we attracted to the grim and macabre? It’s in our nature, that’s why. We like to feel our hearts beat faster in an unsafe, murderous environment. We like the rush, the fear. We like the way it physically makes us feel. Our love of horror is bodily, one of reaction. There’s something nihilistic about it, something anarchic. We want to show everyone that death is in our control, not the other way around. It’s a way to give order to the universe, to reign in chaos. As humans, we move towards what is new. And usually, what is new, is different. And what is dark and grim… that’s the difference that draws us in.

Before they tore it down, there was a circus that held the “wonders of the world”. I could still remember the man in the crisp suit and red coat with the tall silk hat. He smiled at me and took my hand in his in a gentle shake. His eyes sparkled a most peculiar blue, and his perfect skin seemed to have an almost doughy look despite his build.

The circus was more crudely, yet more commonly called the “freakhouse”, and the people inside were oddities and “monsters”. Freaks of nature, the critics called them. Not meant to be in a civilized town, they said. Rioters would shout and gossip about it like sinful schoolgirls on a Sabbath afternoon.

I remember begging my father to take me. My mother was almost offended at the idea and retorted with a repulsive reprimand. My father turned on his wife and, with his deep, strong voice, said: “Petra is not a child anymore! She needs to see the real world. We need to teach her to hate the different.”

It was what I’d grown up with. Hate the different. The stupid little boy who had no friends, who sat in the corner of the lunchroom in order to avoid being bullied. The poor little girl who walked around like she was invisible, hiding her face behind her hair, and the scars and bruises on her body behind ragged clothes. The Different ones. The Unlovables. The Untouchables. I learned to hate them all. Especially after my first encounter with the Circus.

In fact the circus was called Darwin’s Peculiarities, A Circus Of Wonder and Fright. Being a little thrill seeker myself, I figured it would be childish and dull. It was anything but. I dressed to the occasion with a new skirt and leather sandals, and my mother pulled my hair into perfectly even dutch braids. My father and I left around eight and it took us twenty minutes to walk across town to get to the circus. As we approached we were greeted by our first oddity.

From the darkness there stepped a man. At first his face was obscured by the dim, but then he shuffled forwards and the feeble light from the Circus sign was enough to illuminate his features. That bluish hue made him all the more pale, but it was clear that he was wearing thick white makeup. Each eye was in the center of a black cross, his mouth was huge and garish red. The hair on his head was greyish and curly, but I figured that in the light of day it would be bubble gum pink. Although it was the face of a clown his clothing was nothing like the stereotypes in children's literature. He wore combat trousers and hobnail boots, topped with a black all-weather jacket. The clown turned slowly to my father and I, unsmiling, and said "Do you want to hear the joke about the little girl who went walking to the circus late at night?"

My heart thudded in my chest, and my peripheral vision darkened. The clown’s hideously frightening face filled my vision. I hated myself for being scared, but there was something about this freak clown that set my nerves on edge.

The clown cocked its head and grinned. And there, behind his overly accentuated lips, I glimpsed nail-like teeth.

The only thing I remembered then, was running to the pier. It was long, even with half of it ripped off. A hurricane came three years ago and took a large part of the bridge with it. They called it Amber Pier named after Amber Paris who built the pier with a group of women dressed as sailors. The clown had really given me a scare. My heart felt like it was behind my teeth and I was shaking like a dead leaf in a stiff windstorm. I stood by the end of the bridge behind the PVC pipe guardrail they had thrown up there and never bothered to fix; no one liked the pier anymore.

I looked out over the water, the waves of the harbor come day and night, creating music better than a orchestratic master. The ocean never tires, never misses a beat, and through brilliant days and darkest nights the percussion of the shore keeps on - a lullaby for anyone and everyone. The boats bob and creak, tugging on their moorings to the piers. Behind them are the sherbet coloured houses that are tall with pointed roofs, clustered in like old friends reassured by their closeness.

I turned around to a subtle noise and there in the shadow right behind the lamppost on the pier was the sickeningly familiar figure of the clown. I squeezed my eyes shut. It’s just a dream, Petra. It couldn’t have followed you that fast. “Look at me.” A wet, smooth voice filled my ears, leaking into my head.

I tried to resist, but I found myself opening my eyes staring into the clown’s. They were silvery and shone most peculiarly even though there was no light shining on them. “Show me your silvery tears, the ones on the skin of your heart.” His mouth moved too slowly, too fluidly, almost causing a delay in his speech, yet the words came as quickly as a mountain stream. “Show me your rainbow tears, the ones that come when you see the sunshine through the storm. Show me the tears that are cried beneath what the rest of the world can see, what the eyes miss yet love renders visible. The bravest thing you will ever do, sweet love, is to show me your tears, for what is tearing you apart cannot be a part of you, but something to be healed in the gentle ways of our kind.”

“No,” I said. But I found myself crying, while several emotions raged in my head: sadness, anger, betrayal, happiness, confusion. “How are you doing this?”

“I know what you feel, and tears can be everything,” said the clown. “Do you know what you should do?”

“What?” I asked, his eyes began to spin like a kaleidoscope, shapes and lights switching and spinning and whirling. I felt dizzy and heavy and cold, like I was underwater.

All of a sudden his voice became hoarse and raspy, filled with harsh, malevolent madness. “You should kill yourself. I’ve tried four times, but the bastards keep saving me. Here…” I felt a cold point press against my neck. “I can do it for you, just say the word.”

“No,” I said. I looked away from his eyes, his tongue was out of his mouth and wrapped around my body as thick and as sinewy as a python. The saliva burned my skin, but in his mouth, around his snake-like tongue were teeth as large and as sharp as lions’. I looked down and saw a long thin knife at my throat.

“One word,” the clown whispered. His voice seemed to come from everywhere.

“No!” I cried out. The point punctured my skin as my body spasmed. I screamed. The clown screamed, he fell back the snake-like tongue retracting into his horrible mouth. He fell to his back crying hysterically.

Two men in crisp white suits suddenly appeared and hefted the sobbing clown to his feet and wrapped a rope around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. One grinned and cuffed the thing across the face and began to shove it down the pier back towards the circus, while the clown wailed the whole time. “I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t hurt the little girl, I didn’t mean to I didn’t know! I’m so sorry!” On the last word, his voice rose to a shriek and he fell back into feverish, body wrenching sobs as he was roughly lead back to the blinking circus, now a beacon of horror in my life.

I felt my chin with a shaking hand and it came away red. The knife had been very sharp. I heard a voice in the fog. My father. I took a step and my sandaled foot kicked the knife that had almost killed me. I looked at it, hesitated and then picked it up, ripping the hem off of my ruined skirt off, wrapped it gently, and put it in the waistband of my underwear. I had just pulled my skirt back down when my father burst out of the fog and wrapped me in a hug. “Are you okay? Did it hurt you? What happened?”

“I got a little scared and ran away,” I told him.

“As soon as you took off the freak disappeared. My eyes followed you as you ran away and when I turned back to look at the clown, it was gone,” my father said.

“It was on the pier with me. It ruined my dress,” I told him. I turned and showed him the rips and tears from where the acidic saliva had burned through my skirt.

“I don’t know what they are going to do to that… monster, but it should be nothing less than death.”

“Dad, he didn’t hurt me,” I lied.

“What’s that then?” he pointed to my chin.

“I ran into the light pole,” I said quickly.

“Doesn’t look like it,” my father replied his eyebrows quirking.

“Uh… there was a… a nail. It was sticking out on the one over there.”

My father still didn’t look convinced, but the topic was dropped and he fretted over my clothes and the whole ordeal, threatening to sue the circus. He tried to, all the same, but somehow the circus won the trial and stayed in business. It was some sorcery, my father had said. It was all he ever said about it. I wasn’t there, my father wouldn’t let me go, nor did he tell me anything about it. I never wanted to go to that circus again, and I swore never to, but I was wrong.