The first boy died on a Tuesday.
They found him behind the last tent with his mouth still open and his tongue cut out. The cut was clean. The blood had soaked into the sawdust in a black circle that the day crew tried to rake over and failed. By Thursday the second boy was gone. By Saturday the carnival had three empty stalls and a smell that the rain would not take. The smell was not just blood. It was the sweet rot that comes when something has been opened and left in the dark long enough for the flies to find it and then leave again because even the flies will not stay.
Danny Cole was twenty-two and he cleaned the midway after dark because the day crew left the gates unlocked and someone had to lock them. He had been told not to walk the last tent when the lights went out. The old woman at the booth said it once, and not as weather. She said the statue does not like to be watched after the music stops. She said the mirrors inside the stalls remember what they are shown. Danny went anyway. The sawdust looked ordinary until he reached the place where the first boy had died. The black circle was still there under the raked wood. It had spread. In the middle of the circle something white was half-buried. It was a tooth. Not a child’s tooth. It was too long.
The laugh started behind him.
It was low and wet and it did not come from a throat. Danny turned. The clown statue stood where the tent flap had been. It was taller than it should have been. The paint on its face had cracked and underneath the cracks were not plaster. They were skin, pale and tight and already splitting again along the lines of the smile. The smile was wider than a man’s smile and the teeth behind it were not teeth. They were too long and they were red at the roots. One hand hung open. The fingers ended in something that was not a glove. The nails had been pulled out and what was left under the skin was bone that had been filed to a point.
Danny ran.
The statue did not run. It walked. Every step left a print in the sawdust that filled with dark blood before the next step covered it. The blood was cold. Danny could smell it even while he was moving. He reached the exit gate and found it chained from the outside. The chain was new. Someone had locked it after he came in. He turned. The statue was already closer. The laugh had not stopped. It was coming from the open mouth and from the cracks in the paint and from somewhere under the canvas of the tent itself. The canvas was moving. Not from wind. From something pushing against it from the inside.
He went left, into the first empty stall. The statue followed. Inside the stall the mirrors that had once faced the customers were still up. Danny saw himself. Then he saw the statue behind him in every mirror at once. In the mirrors the statue’s arms were longer. In the mirrors its hands were already around his throat. He spun. The real statue was still at the entrance, one hand on the canvas, the other lifting.
The hand was not empty.
It held the second boy’s tongue. The tongue was still wet. It dripped onto the sawdust and the drip did not stop. Danny screamed. The sound did not leave the stall. The mirrors took it and sent it back at him from every angle so that he heard his own scream coming from behind the statue and from under the floor and from inside the canvas. The statue stepped inside. The laugh changed. It became the sound of wet canvas tearing and of bone meeting bone. Danny grabbed the nearest pole and swung. The pole struck the statue’s face and the face split. What came out was not stuffing. It was blood, thick and black and already cold, and under the blood the statue was still smiling. The split ran from the corner of the mouth up past the eye. Inside the split the flesh was moving. It was trying to close again.
The hand with the tongue closed around Danny’s wrist. The fingers were cold and the grip was not a grip. It was a bite. Danny felt the skin open. He felt the blood leave him in a rush that soaked his sleeve and then the sawdust and then the statue’s painted shoes. The statue lifted him. In the mirrors he watched his own feet leave the ground. In the mirrors the statue’s mouth opened wider than the face should have allowed. The teeth that were not teeth came down. Danny felt the first one catch on his cheek. He felt the skin give. He felt the second tooth find the corner of his mouth and pull.
Outside the tent the lights of the midway stayed off. Inside the stall the mirrors kept showing the same thing from every angle: a boy whose throat was no longer whole, and a statue whose smile had grown to fit the pieces it was taking. Danny’s blood ran down the statue’s arm and into the cracks in the paint. The paint drank it. The smile grew wider. One of the mirrors cracked. The crack ran from the top of the frame to the bottom and through the crack Danny saw the statue’s other hand reaching for his other wrist. The hand was already bloody. The fingers were already open.
By morning the black circle behind the last tent was larger. The day crew found Danny’s shoes at the edge of it and nothing else. They raked the sawdust again. The rake came up red. One of the men found a tooth in the teeth of the rake. It was long. It was still warm. No one asked where the night cleaner had gone. In the old carnival the ones who know do not need the telling, and the ones who need the telling will not keep the rule.
The statue is still there.
It stands at the back of the last tent with its painted face cracked and its smile wider than it was on Tuesday. The blood under the sawdust has not dried. If you walk the midway after the lights go out you will hear the laugh first. It will be low and wet and it will not come from a throat. By the time you see the statue the mirrors will already be showing you what it has decided to take. The chain on the exit gate will already be locked from the outside. The tooth you find in the sawdust will still be warm.
The carnival does not close.
It only waits for the next boy who stays too late.
