Carnival Souls

The Monster in the Basement

With every step Lira took down the dark staircase, her violin gained ten pounds. An acidic feeling of dread ate away at her stomach, slowly spreading to her other organs. She hadn't been to the dungeons since the first and last time she had refused to play for Bebinn. There was a dark spot in her memory of that experience, a black hole that had sucked away her memory. The only thing that remained was the paralyzing fear that returned whenever she tried to recall those three days.

The stairs leading to the dungeons were hidden behind one of the funhouse mirrors. Lira had pressed her hand against several warped panes of glass until this one had given way and she stepped through to a shadowed landing. There were sconces bolted to the wall every few feet, but the candles didn't do anything better than sputter drops of light and wax.

Thirty-six downward steps brought her to an earthen hallway that tunneled away into the ground. Her breathing echoed back to her as if she was a scuba diver, rattling and distorted. She hoped desperately this wasn't where Bebinn stored the children.

After a bend in the tunnel, the hallway opened wider. Doors and cells lined the store walls at regular intervals. It was deathly quiet.

Lira has to stifle a fit of nervous giggles. Deathly quiet in a place where everything was dead, she thought. She started forward quickly. Bebinn had told her to knock on the last door on the right. Halfway done the hall she heard a noise: the dull scrape of metal on stone.

It was coming from the cell ahead on her left. Lira's heart jumped into her throat. Even after all the years here, she was still afraid of what lurked in the dark. She crept forward and drew even with the bars, taking comfort in the fact that they stood between her and whatever monster they were containing. But when she peered into the gloom of the cell, she didn't see a monster; she saw the forest spirit she had thought was dead.

The spirit turned her head at the sound of Lira's gasp, struggling to lift her head against the weight of the metal collar that chained her to the wall. Long black scars scoured her shoulders and back where Bebinn's fury had grabbed her. Bruises bloomed around her face like the flowers that had once bloomed on her vines, which now lay withered at her feet. No new vines wrapped around her; her body was naked and bare. She was dying slowly.

Lira stared, her mouth hanging open stupidly, trying to think of something to say. A promise to help, to free her, even to sneak down food and water, whatever she needed to survive. But they both new she couldn't do that, so the spirit looked on her with dead eyes before turning away. Lira stayed a moment longer and then hurried down the hall.

#

Inside, the earthen room was lit by several braziers though the fire was curiously quite and smokeless. In the middle of the room a circular pool of water lay still like the surface of a dark moon. A length of coarse rope snaked out of the water and knotted itself to a metal stake driven into the ground. Bebinn was in the corner speaking to a tiny girl with wide brown eyes and dark, silken hair dressed in a pretty yellow sari.

The carnival master looked around at the sound of Lira's entrance and a smile lit up her face. The hair at the nape of Lira's neck prickled. The smile wasn't one from her usual arsenal. It seemed almost genuine, which made Lira all the more nervous.

"Ah good, you're here," she said. "Well, come closer don't be shy."

Lydia smiled encouragingly from behind Bebinn's back. She was missing one of her lower teeth. The gap gave her young, sweet face even more child-like innocence. "Lydia will be helping us with our experiments. Tonight she will just be observing. Go on, dear." Lydia went to sit on a stool in the corner. A bundle of blue thread was clutched in her hands.