The Crimson Carnival: Chapter VI, A Smoke Break From The Nightmare

--- Gregory Fischer ---

The first thing he did was pull out a cigarette and light it, needing the smoke after everything he’d seen in the last half hour. (Especially now that I’ve got three kids to babysit…)

After inhaling as deeply as he could he took a look at the two teens. “Names?”

“W-what?” The girl blinked before her eyes went wide behind her glasses. “Oh, uh, I’m Melanie and this is Louis.”

“Gregory… Fischer.” He nodded.

“And, uh, the kid?” Louis asked, eyes darting towards the child that was currently petting Mr. Peabody.

“I… don’t actually know…” He admitted, feeling kind of awkward in the fact that he hadn’t thought to ask. (I really am shit with kids…) “I found them out there, and was helping them find their sister before all of this.”

“Oh… Um…” Melanie turned towards the lost child with a smile. “Hi, my names Melanie. What’s yours?”

The child stared at her for a moment, slowly blinking as they considered the question with a growing frown. “My name is… Ferris?”

“Like a ferris wheel?” Melanie smiled.

The child -Ferris- smiled back. “Yeah!”

Off to his side, Louis quietly asked him, “Is Ferris a boy name or a girl name?”

“Boy… I think?” He honestly wasn’t sure what the child was, Ferris being a bit too young and pudgy to tell through their clown costume. (Not like it really matters.)

He shook his head before turning back to Louis. “Anyway, how’d you two end up here?”

“We were just checking out the carnival that popped up outside of town?” Louis frowned, looking a bit confused. “How did you end up here?”

“Boss sent me to investigate something.” He vaguely answered, more than used to needing to for his ‘jobs’ prior to joining the Library. “Didn’t give me a whole lot of details on the why.”

“That… sounds suspicious as hell.” The teen told him.

“I’m aware.” He just didn’t care. “You two being locals, you have any idea what’s happening here?”

“No. Like he said, the carnival just appeared outside of our town and the three of us…” Melanie trailed off, before pulling her blue hoodie closed.

“The carnival appeared and we were checking it out… got lost from how big this place apparently is and then… stuff happened.” Louis finished for his friend.

He took in a breath before letting it out, watching a small cloud of smoke rise as he tried very hard not to think about how often he’d had ‘stuff’ happen to him and his.

“What about you?” Louis asked, breaking the awkward silence. “You’re clearly… someone with that arm of yours… are you like the CIA or something?”

“Or maybe you’re one of those Asylum guys?” Melanie tried.

(The fuck is a CIA? And why would I work for a mental asylum?) He was smart enough to keep those questions in his head, even as they led to the follow up of. (How far out did Briar ship me?)

“I’ve told you that Asylum junk is a conspiracy theory. Probably just people filming a movie or something.” Louis sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We’re surrounded by monsters which is what those Asylum people are supposed to be dealing with!” Melanie scoffed. “You can’t say my stuff is fake anymore!”

Louis threw his hands up. “Fine magic is real! It’s not like that fact helps us at all!”

(He thought magic was fake? How far out in the boonies am I?!) Even if these two were strangers he felt obligated as a Practitioner to tell them that, “It’s a lot more helpful than you think.” As he snapped his fingers and conjured a small bit of flame in his hand.

“Magic!!!” The female teen squealed at a pitch that had him promptly regretting his decision as she shook her friend. “What else can you do?!”

He grimaced. “Not as much as I’d like… Something is screwing with my magic and only letting me do the bare basics.”

“So this carnival is affecting other magic users!” Melanie grinned as if that was somehow a good thing.

He decided for morale’s sake he wasn’t going to correct her, or explain that his problem was actually his boss’s fault.

“Okay… Magic…” Louis took a deep breath, as the teen clearly adjusted his world view to something a little more… (realistic.) “That’ll… that’ll help us with the clowns… right?”

He thought about it for a moment before saying that, “I can probably take… two or three on at a time with the way I am.” (Though that’d probably be pushing my limits right now…)

“Alright, that’s… that’s more than I could…” The teen confessed, looking a bit relieved even as he deflated.

“Still better to avoid a fight if we can.” He told them before pulling out the map of the carnival and spreading it out on the ground. Which while detailing a lot of the park, didn’t actually reveal where the edge of the carnival was. “The problem is I’m not entirely sure how to get out of this place.”

Louis frowned looking the map over. “Can’t we just pick a direction and run?”

He shook his head and told him that, “There’s some kind of spatial enchantment on these grounds, keeps you from getting anywhere without a map.” before noticing something had changed about the map. “These red spots weren’t here before…”

“Did you… get blood on it?” Melanie asked, her hands drifting to a couple of red spots on her own clothes.

“Even if I did, new spots wouldn’t be showing up…” He pointed at one such spot forming.

The teenager tilted her head. “What does it mean?”

Setting the question to the side for a moment, he continued to search the map for where they might be before finding what looked like a burned out tent near a street covered in…“It is blood… just not ours…”

“What do you… oh…” Melanie swallowed, going pale.

Louis looked between them. “What is it?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“The red dots are where people have died. The map has a sympathetic connection to the carnival and is changing as the grounds do.” He explained, his eyes scanning the map once more as he wondered, (why did they leave something like this where anyone could find it?)

He recalled what the clowns in the hall had said, (Right… This is all a game to them isn’t it?)

That was both good and bad for them. Good because it meant that they weren’t taking them seriously. Bad because this meant the monsters were actively hunting them for sport, rather than going off of some instinct or need to do so. (Meaning they won’t be giving up any time soon…)

Melanie pointed to something on the map. “What’s this crown?”

“I don’t know… but there’s a path of red growing wherever it moves.” Which couldn’t mean anything good. “See if you can find any other marks like it.”

“Uh, there’s a rose over here by this… theater?” Louis added pointing to a different section of the map. “There’s also not much blood over here… compared to the rest of the map at least…”

He noticed another part of the map faintly moving. “There’s something going on with the haunted house… and a fire emblem? Fire is definitely something I can handle.”

“But that’s where we were when…” Melanie trailed off.

“I… I don’t think that place’ll be very safe.” Louis cut in before he could ask ‘when what happened’ giving him a good enough idea of what the answer was. “See there’s a whole circle of blood around that place.”

He wanted to say there was none inside it, but at the same time he didn’t see much red on any of the buildings. (Meaning a lack of blood doesn’t mean much.)

Suddenly a paw tapped a part of the map, causing him to frown at the dog that had wandered over, ready to shoo it off with a glare. (You’re supposed to be comforting Ferris.)

“Hey, there’s two there.”

“What?” He frowned, turning his attention towards Melanie.

“There’s two emblems there. A Jester’s cap and… a hat with a whip?” Melanie explained, pointing to a space near the circus tent.

“Meaning there’s two there…” Assuming that the emblems represented the more dangerous of the monsters… (Then that’ll be a problem…)

“And maybe something important.” Melanie added. “I mean, if there are two there then there’s got to be a reason right?”

“Or they could just be friends?” Louis argued with a shake of his head. “Look I’m pretty sure these things are bad news… I still say we should try our luck at just running to the edge of the map.”

“Maybe… or maybe we need to beat one of these emblem guys to get out of here?” Melanie pointed out. “If this place is magic, maybe we need a magic key to leave, like how you can’t leave a level in a video game until you beat the boss?”

Louis gave the other teen a dry look. “I don’t think that’s how it works Mel…”

“If it isn’t we -or rather I- could always beat the answer out of whoever we corner.” He threw out as he grabbed another cigarette. (With the way these things tend to go that’s probably how this is going to end either way…)

“That… might work.” Louis admitted, before frowning. “Can you take one of them though? With your… magic acting up I mean?”

“I’ve done more with less.” He shrugged, lighting his smoke before taking a deep breath. “Either way, before we figure out what we’re going to do, we need to see if we can find anything of use in this place. I doubt there’ll be anything to really change our route, but we might still find something useful.”

Both of the teens gave the door a wary look, before Louis asked, “Is that safe?”

“Safer than the trip we’re going to have to make to get out of this mess.” He reminded the pair as he packed the map away.

“Point…” Louis grimaced, before trying the door.

“Remember to be quiet, and yell only if you see a clown out there.” He told the teens as they left the closet, leaving him alone with Ferris and Mr. Peabody.

Part of him wanted to go scavenge the building with the kids, or maybe see if Briar's book had changed in any way that might help him but upon seeing the little lost child still sitting there petting the dog he realized, (Shit. I’m going to have to comfort the kid…)

Deciding to just rip the bandage off, he took a seat next to the kid and asked, “So… how’re you holding up?”

“I don’t know…” The kid mumbled.

(Because of course the child can answer a question you can’t half the time.) He scolded himself, as they fell into an awkward silence.

“Do… Do you think big sis is safe?” Ferris asked after a moment.

(Probably not…) He was emotionally competent enough to not tell the kid that. (Damn it… The kid lost their parents and now their sister… This whole situation is fucked…)

He ran a hand down his face, before exhaling and letting out a small cloud of smoke. As he watched it rise into the air before fading against the ceiling, he got an idea for something he and his fellow ‘Smokers’ used to do.

“Hey, watch this.” He told the kid, before inhaling deeply.

With the deft practice of someone trying to kill time during hours of monotonous boredom, he blew out a smoke ring before shooting several smaller rings through it.

A glance to his side, showed that Ferris was watching him.

He killed off his current cigarette, before blowing out more smoke and waving his hands through the air as he used a few well timed huffs and puffs to shape it into a jellyfish floating through the air.

“Whoa…” An awed Ferris said.

With a grin, he repeated this trick a dozen times as with just a touch of magic he was able to make several little jellyfish float through the air a lot longer than the smoke alone would allow. (If I had all my magic I could do some really impressive stuff with this smoke.)

As was the most impressive trick he knew without real magic was… (Well, let’s hope I can still do this…)

He inhaled as much as his lungs could hold, which despite being a chain smoker would surprise many. After moving into a crouch in the center of the room he began exhaling as he both stood and spun in place, using his hands to twist the air around and keep the stream in shape before letting out a larger shape that with a few well placed tugs on the air created a ferocious face out of the smoke.

Moving quickly he took another quick puff of his cigarette before putting a hand in front of his mouth and breathing out. An act that -if he got the angle right- made it look like the smoke dragon was breathing out a torrent of smoke from Ferris’s point of view.

“Wow!” The kid clapped in amazement, before letting out a cough.

(Shit.) “Sorry… Probably shouldn’t have done that in such a small space.” He grimaced, waving away as much of the smoke as he could as he realized just how smokey the closet was getting. “Let’s get you out of here…”

As he moved to help the kid up he noticed something moving in his peripheral vision before his head snapped to find Melanie and Louis watching from the doorway. (Good… Thought a clown had snuck up on us again.)

“Um, we found a first aid kit.” Melanie told him, holding up a red box with a white cross on it. “Hopefully, we won’t need it but, uh, better to have it?”

“Definitely better to have it.” He agreed, as he helped Ferris out of the closet. (Especially with how much of a snafu all of this has become.)

“Was that your magic?!” Melanie suddenly blurted.

He gave the girl a confused look.

“Sorry, it’s just… I’ve always believed in magic but… I didn’t have proof it was real until…” The excited teenager gestured towards him.

Fischer nodded in understanding, getting that feeling from back when he’d learned to make his first few sparks. “Trust me, if I had my magic I would’ve done something a lot more impressive.”

“That was just a parlor trick me and the other Smokers used to play around with back in the war.” He let out a sigh as he remembered fond times with his unit. “Had so much time between missions and we weren’t really allowed to bring too much into the field, so we were always trying to find ways of killing time. And given how the only thing we all had on us were smokes, it became something of a competition to make the most complicated shows possible. That dragon settled things in my favor before… things happened.”

“Oh…” Melanie mumbled, as Louis elbowed her.

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t the best time but… I don’t want to forget about it.” (Not again…) A lot of his nicer memories were covered in fog after so long dealing with his… issues. With a bittersweet smile he explained that he “Used to love it so much that I turned it into this whole thing with my magic.”

“You could make a lot of money if you could put on shows like that one.” Louis told him. “I mean, even if that wasn’t magic it was really cool.”

“Magic only would’ve made it cooler!” Melanie added with an excited nod.

He let out a bitter chuckle. “Yeah, and in a way I guess I have made a career out of it… and my fire, and ash…” (Probably would’ve hated putting shows on a hell of a lot less though.)

“Oh…” The girl trailed off.

After a moment, Louis piped up, “Uh, is your book supposed to be glowing like that?”

“My book?” He frowned, before noticing that the book was faintly glowing.

Hoping that this was Briar offering them an emergency evac he opened the book, and found himself staring at a new page.