The Freakshow
The Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow has come to the quiet town of Pleasant Hills, Tennessee. But this is no ordinary sideshow and these are not the usual "freaks" on display. As the unsuspecting townsfolk gather for an evening of strange spectacle, the slaughter is set to begin . . .
1008130856
The Freakshow
The Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow has come to the quiet town of Pleasant Hills, Tennessee. But this is no ordinary sideshow and these are not the usual "freaks" on display. As the unsuspecting townsfolk gather for an evening of strange spectacle, the slaughter is set to begin . . .
15.95 In Stock
The Freakshow

The Freakshow

by Bryan Smith
The Freakshow

The Freakshow

by Bryan Smith

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$15.95 
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Overview

The Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow has come to the quiet town of Pleasant Hills, Tennessee. But this is no ordinary sideshow and these are not the usual "freaks" on display. As the unsuspecting townsfolk gather for an evening of strange spectacle, the slaughter is set to begin . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781941918494
Publisher: Grindhouse Press
Publication date: 06/23/2019
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.55(d)

Read an Excerpt

The Freakshow


By Bryan Smith

Dorchester Publishing

Copyright © 2007 Bryan Smith
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8439-5827-0


Chapter One

Mike Garrett held his breath and waited for the sounds of the tall man's echoing footsteps to fade.

CLIP ... CLOP.

Clip ... clop.

The sound triggered a childhood memory of standing on a sidewalk and watching a lone horse walk down the middle of Main Street near the end of the Dandridge High homecoming parade. And that thought triggered a flood of painful memories of his youth in his doomed hometown. A year ago, everyone in Dandridge died when terrorists detonated a dirty bomb, an inexplicable attack on an ordinary, sleepy town essentially in the middle of nowhere. There had been rumors ever since that the dirty bomb story was purely a government fabrication, a handy cover for something else they couldn't explain-and a way to exploit the lingering post-9/11 paranoia that still gripped the heartland. Mike had moved to nearby Pleasant Hills only months prior to the tragedy, and his dreams since had been haunted by nightmarish visions of walking corpses and leering, radiation-scarred mutants straight out of a 1950s sci-fi Z-movie.

His therapist chalked the recurring nightmares up to "survivior's guilt." Which made a lot of sense, actually, but knowing this on a rational level had little effect on thenightly torture sessions his fragmented sleep had become. None of the drugs prescribed by his psychiatrist had done any damned good, either. He'd felt at the end of his rope for months now, desperate, about to give up any hope of knowing peace again.

But now the true reason for the endless nightmares seemed clear.

Though the ceaseless stream of horrifying images likely had been initiated by the terrible angst he'd experienced in the wake of his hometown's bizarre demise, he was sure their continuation was a kind of precognition. Some primitive part of his mind, a part accessible only in the murky depths of sleep, had sensed that a similar doom was coming to Pleasant Hills. For all he knew, what was happening now was precisely what had really happened in Dandridge.

He shuddered and barely managed to rein in a whine as the images flashed through his mind in rapid-fire fashion, jerky, like the jump cuts in a faux-edgy rock video-the grand entrance of the Ringmaster under the big top, music swelling and blaring as the crowded bleachers rock with applause ... the subsequent arrival of many hideously deformed "freaks" (as they called themselves) ... those strange, leering clown-things ... a brief but dazzling display of acrobatics, ending in the decapitation of a "normal" (by comparison) man ... the shocked silence of the still crowd ... the freaks rushing into the bleachers, tearing into the spectators, killing and mutilating them in swift, shocking fashion ... the disembowelment of Chuck Follett, his best friend since grade school, ropes of intestines spilling on the metal bleacher seats as Chuck's eyes flash pained disbelief ... then that sense of being swept away by the screaming, fleeing crowd ...

And since then, hiding wherever he could, frantically ducking here and there like a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, cowering and cringing every time he heard another scream ...

... Clip ... clop ...

... Clip ... clop ...

The tall man's footsteps sounded far away now. Mike at last let out a big breath. He palmed a sheen of sweat from his forehead, wiped it on his jeans, and began to emerge from his hiding place. He gripped the edge of the platform above his head with shaking fingers, waited until he had a firmer grip, then began to slowly rise. His head rose above the level of the platform. He looked left, then right, and let out another sigh.

The midway was empty.

The tall man was gone.

Mike made an involuntary sound that was somewhere between a strangled sob and mad laughter. He lifted a partition board, stepped out of the Punch & Judy booth, and moved carefully into the middle of the deserted midway. Each side of the midway was lined with concession and amusement booths. Their garishly painted façades seemed to leer at him like materialized phantoms from his nightmares.

Mike felt an abrupt welling of tears at the corners of his eyes. It was horrible, what had happened. Of course it was. But it was also kind of funny, if only in a purely insane way. Because he was awake now. The world around him, despite its phantasmagorical qualities, was real, tactile. The ground beneath his feet was real ground. Solid. Definitely not something that would turn to quicksand with his next step. His heaving breath, proof of life and bodily function, fogged the fall air.

And yet, even in his wakefulness, he could not escape the country of nightmares. It felt like the universe was taunting him. Perhaps he'd done something unspeakably awful in a former life, and this was God's way of punishing him. He laughed again, and now the tears spilled forth, etching trails of glittering wetness down his cheeks.

He clenched his fists, digging the fingernails he'd forgotten to trim for too long into the soft flesh of his palms, digging until the flesh yielded beneath the pressure. Blood welled in the grooves. More proof of life. The self-inflicted pain he felt now reminded him of how tenuous life was at the moment. He had to get a grip. Had to stop tittering like a fucking madman. Because if he kept it up, the sound would surely draw the tall man back in this direction.

And he did not want that.

Oh, no.

He had to get out of here. Now.

Obviously. What wasn't so obvious was the most efficient way of doing that. The grounds of the Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow were laid out as if there had been some dark design behind the haphazard, sprawling placement of the midways and the tents housing the various grotesque attractions, a design calculated to confuse and disorient. Oh, hell, no "as if" about it. Given what he'd seen and experienced so far, the sinister intent was obvious.

The taint of evil was all around him. Not just in the amusement booths and tents, but in the very air he was breathing. The air was cold. Too cold by far for late September in Tennessee. The grounds of the carnival had its own atmosphere, an alien intrusion that displaced the Tennessee warmth so completely Mike could almost believe he'd been transported to some other entirely different (and terrible) realm the moment he'd stepped through the entrance after buying his ticket. Come to think of it, that didn't seem out of the question. Not at fucking all.

... Clip ... clop ...

Mike swallowed a rising scream.

He's coming back!

Clip-clop.

The sound was coming from the right. Mike glanced in that direction and thought he saw a hint of long shadow at the far end of the midway. In another moment or two, the ghastly ringmaster of this hellish parody of a real carnival would come around a corner and see him. Mike knew he'd be as good as dead if the tall man saw him. Or worse. Worse was a definite possibility here. He'd seen the awful proof of that up close, hadn't he?

He had two choices. He could either duck back behind the Punch & Judy booth, or he could sprint into the deeper darkness to the left. He imagined hiding again behind the rickety booth while waiting for the tall man to clomp slowly by, with only the deranged-looking faces of the abandoned hand puppets for company. He shivered again at the memory of the puppets' strangely angular and fleshy faces, their eyes gleaming so fiercely in the moonlight, hinting at sentience and life. It should have been an absurd notion, but for Mike the line between the absurd and reality had blurred to near meaninglessness.

CLIP-CLOP.

So close.

Cold sweat streamed down Mike's face as he began backing away from the growing shadow, and away from the Punch & Judy booth. He saw the tall man's cartoonish top hat appear over the top of the tent at the far end of the midway and willed his feet to move faster. He stumbled, but somehow managed to maintain his balance. He knew the sensible thing would be to turn around and really put on a burst of speed, but a whispering voice of paranoia made him believe the tall man would be on him in a heartbeat if he turned his back on him.

His heel dipped into a small hole in the ground and he pitched backward. His arms pinwheeled wildly, but this time he'd been put too badly off balance. He hit the ground and let out a cry. A fresh burst of nervefrying terror followed immediately on the heels of the involuntary squeal.

A sound emanated from the far end of the midway.

An insane, echoing laugh.

Another involuntary cry slipped through his terror-constricted vocal cords. The cry was followed by the helplessly repeated words "Oh god ohgodohgod" as he scooted backward.

Now another voice spoke in the darkness. A breathy whisper that nonetheless filled the night. This is what the tall man said: "Sweet, sweet, lovely meat, how I love to eat human meat!"

The insane laughter came again, louder this time, filling all the dark corners of the midway. The sound rang in Mike's ears like a relentless tolling of some hellish bell. The sound that came from his own mouth now was more of a whimper than a cry. He sounded like a whipped and terrified dog.

Like something defeated.

Something within him rebelled at the thought, a last hidden reservoir of strength and courage he hadn't suspected he possessed. His body went still. He took a steadying breath and got to his feet. He stared for a moment at the now clearly visible form of the tall man at the far end of the midway.

The lean outline of the ringmaster's body looked from this distance like something sketched quickly with a pencil. He stood more than twenty feet tall, and at first Mike had thought he walked on stilts. But that couldn't be the case. His legs were too obviously flexible, and there was none of the stiffness Mike associated with a stilt-walker. That the tall ringmaster was no ordinary man had been clear almost from the beginning, and now Mike was nearly certain he wasn't even human. What sort of creature he might be, Mike couldn't fathom. The ringmaster, along with all the other bizarre beings and ghastly events he'd witnessed over the last several hours, was something beyond his admittedly feeble store of knowledge of things supernatural.

CLIP-CLOP.

CLIP-CLOP.

The tall man (or thing, his cracking mind insisted) strode rapidly down the midway, closing the gap between them at an alarming rate. But now he was running rather than walking; a weirdly gangly, loose-limbed jog. CLIPCLOPCLIPCLOPCLIPCLOP. There was a hallucinatory quality to what he was seeing, like something glimpsed in the flashing midst of an acid trip. Mike at last spun on his heels and began to run.

His legs churned beneath him as he bore down with a focus of will and energy exceeding anything in his experience. Though Mike was reasonably fit, he wasn't an athlete, nor did he run regularly. But now he moved with a speed approaching that of an experienced track runner, slicing through the cold night air with the relentless momentum of a locomotive screaming down gleaming railway tracks.

The tall man (Thingthingthing!) laughed again.

And again came that breathy, insinuating voice that felt like a graveyard whisper against his ear: "You run like the wind, human meat, but I blow like a hurricane."

Mike squealed in panic, freaked out by the tall man's ominous words. He had no clue what they might mean, but it had to be something really fucking bad. Then he heard something he at first thought was the hugely amplified sound of a vacuum cleaner. In the next millisecond he realized it was instead a mammoth intake of breath. There was a pause and Mike cringed, bracing for the exhalation. A rumbling wind, the ringmaster's expelled breath, rolled down the midway, buffeting the booths and shaking free several loose pieces of wood that went sailing into the sky, vanishing for a moment in the blackness, then tumbling down to be swirled about by the rushing air.

A single shattered wood plank sailed over Mike's head, whirling about dangerously like a rogue helicopter blade. The plank struck the ground ahead of him and went skittering down the midway. He felt heat tickle the exposed flesh at the back of his neck, the first warmth of the ringmaster's onrushing breath. An instant later that wind shoved him forward, lifted him off his feet, and slung him down the midway as if he were no more substantial than a discarded candy wrapper.

With his arms outstretched and his legs trailing behind him, he felt for one delirious moment like Superman. But then the cushion of flowing air dashed him against a booth and pain exploded inside him, seeming to reach every jangling nerve-ending in his body in one horrendous moment of blinding white light. Then he bounced off the booth and struck the ground next to a tent with a thud.

He rolled onto his back with a groan. His body was battered and perhaps even broken in places, but the perfect terror overwhelmed the pain. He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up, expecting to see the ringmaster towering over him. But the tall man was farther away now, and Mike marveled for a helpless moment at the power of a creature able to send a two hundred pound man sailing through the air with a single exhaled breath. How could he hope to get away from such a thing?

The obvious answer seemed to be that there was no hope.

On the other hand, there was much more distance between the two of them than before. And the tall man was no longer running-he'd resumed that freaky loping, swaying walk. He was whistling now, a cheerful tune meant to unnerve, no doubt. The tall man was drawing the chase out, toying with his prey, savoring his terror. This realization triggered an emotion that gripped Mike almost as powerfully as the terror he felt.

Hate.

There'd not been time for hate before. There wasn't really time for it now. But here it was anyway. He wanted to kill the tall man. Wanted him to suffer before dying in the most agonizing manner possible. That Mike had no clue how he might do that didn't matter. He wanted it nearly as much as he wanted to escape.

The tall man kept coming as Mike sat there stewing in his anger.

CLIP-CLOP.

CLIP-CLOP.

Another exhalation of echoing laughter resounded in the midway. The sound brought Mike spinning back to reality. He blinked hard and shook his head, forcing himself to focus on what was really important. Yes, he wanted to kill the tall man, but this wasn't feasible given the current circumstances. The tall man was still a good ways away, so Mike had one more chance to get away. Maybe his last chance. He braced his hands against the cold ground and started to push himself up.

He let out a startled yelp as a cold-and very Strong-hand seized his wrist and yanked him back to the ground. He twisted around and his eyes bugged out at the sight of a large hand extending from beneath the flap of the tent. The flap lifted slightly and thick, muscular fingers began to pull him toward the small opening. Mike attempted to brace his feet on the ground and struggle against his attacker, but he was being pulled forward with too much force. He flopped forward onto his stomach and his head began to slide beneath the flap. He detected only darkness within at first, then very vague forms. He opened his mouth to scream, but another hand-smaller and softer than the hand gripping his wrist-clapped over his mouth and muffled the sound. In another moment he was all the way inside the tent.

A physical weight fell astride him, someone straddling him like a mechanical bull at a shit-kicker bar. This, he was certain, was the same person whose hand was over his mouth. A woman. The other person, a man, the one who'd pulled him into the tent, wrenched his hand up behind his back and laid something cold and hard against his throat. Mike gulped when he realized what it was-the exquisitely sharp edge of a very large knife.

Then the man's voice was whispering in his ear: "Stop struggling and be quiet if you want to live. You want to live, don't you?"

Mike swallowed hard and gave the question a moment of intense thought.

Then he nodded, his mouth moving against the woman's soft palm.

The man's whispered voice came again: "Then not another word from you, not another single breath, until I say so. Now hold on ... here he comes...."

Mike listened.

And heard.

CLIP-CLOP.

CLIP-CLOP.

CLIP-CLOP.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from The Freakshow by Bryan Smith Copyright © 2007 by Bryan Smith. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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