Carnival of Blood Part III

Finding some solace in the giant dagger he grasped tightly within his right hand, Jack rushed through the open door and entered the Haunted Funhouse. The stygian darkness enveloped him like a crashing glove. Already, he wondered why any normal person would have continued, but this question became quickly answered when the iron doors slammed shut behind him with a loud echoing clang.

“No way but forward now,” he whispered under his breath.

Within a few yards, the darkness was lanced with glowing bones. Skulls and shattered human rib cages hung and slowly spiraled in the void of black. They had the luminance of children’s toys, but appeared wet and dripped whatever created their glowing property. Small pools of bruised green splattered onto the unseen floor to create small pools.

Soon, the smattering of hanging bones grew thicker. Before long, Jack was forced to shoulder his way through them. The clinging glowing liquid, they had perhaps been dipped into, came away on his hair and clothes. A splash hit the back of his hand and sizzled the hairs off his wrist. “Son of a…” His jacket began to smoke and Jack found himself ducking lower as he hurried through the swarm of bones.

That was when something connected with his ankles and his body pitched forward. Despite his wishes, the unexpected fall caused him to lose the grip on his dagger and he plummeted into some sort of black pit.

His fall was halted by hundreds of round objects and it took him a few seconds to realize he had fallen into a pile of plastic balls not unlike those designed for kids to enjoy in children oriented restaurants and the like. As soon as he had hit the balls, a swirling cluster of multi-colored lights had erupted over his head. Blues and reds mixed with dark greens and deep purples.

Jack’s first thought became concern over his missing dagger. Dropping lower, his hand tried to fish under the balls for his lost weapon. In order to reach the bottom, he was required to dip his head below the chest high pile of balls. He found this unsettling. The lights were also disturbing. They seemed to make his eyes blur and his scalp tingled like two dozen spiders dancing there.

So far his search for the dagger had proved useless. He considered leaving it there, but his weapon supply was already so minimal that he had no wish to give up too easily.

The searching grew more frantic. He turned in circles scrambling for his war dagger of Yig. As he searched, he thought he heard the sound of scraping behind him. It grew in volume and part of him didn’t want to look, as though if he didn’t look he wouldn’t have to be forced to admit something lurked there.

Instead, he drew a throwing knife and whipped around. A shape rose out of the pile of filthy balls. At first it looked like nothing more than a pyramid of balls collected over the top of the pile, but these began to topple away revealing a jagged faced clown. It had small pig eyes buried within a sea of thick creamy makeup. Red lips formed a humorless smile, which contradicted the sick laughter that started to pour out of the horrid thing. A torn rainbow of colors followed as its oversized polyester outfit could be seen. Seconds later, he raised his hand and Jack saw the thing held his war dagger.

 

“Lucky thing I don’t have a clown phobia,” Jack said, while he struck a battle pose. When the laughter continued, he added, “So it looks like you’ll get to be the first one of your kind to die tonight.”

Then it was on.

The clown lunged at him with his dagger in the murder poison. The creature loomed large and came at him like a runaway train. Jack tried to move to the side, but the balls made normal maneuvers almost impossible. He managed to dodge the swipe of the dagger, but the air was smashed from his lungs by the Xemmoni crashing into him.

Jack lost his footing and when down. The balls covered over his face and he had the sensation of drowning as one of the clowns hands held him under, while the other stabbed down at him again and again.

For once the balls helped him for the first two stabs impaled the balls instead of his flesh, but the third slashed Jack in the shoulder. His jacket took the blunt of the blow, but a red line of pain tore down his left arm.

“Screw this,” he said and dragged the edge of his throwing dagger across the freak’s left wrist like he was training him on how to become a border-line.

The clown drew his hand away, even if it did keep laughing.

Instead of fighting the thing, Jacket went low, almost like he was swimming along the bottom of a pond. His left hand grabbed a fistful of the Xemmoni’s costume and he hamstrung the villain a second later.

It still laughed.

As it toppled back into the balls, Jack hamstrung the other ankle for good measure. He gasped in frustration when the clown pulled away and he lost his grip. Jack hurried to stand up, but like a man seeking a crocodile under water in the darkness, of the evil clown there was no sign, until his own dagger was stabbed deep into the back of his left calf. Jack cried out as he spied a doorway to his right.

He hurried toward it as the manic clown crawled after him. Disturbed balls rolled in odd patterns and the clown remained on his heels as he struggled through the spheres. The thing stabbed him two more times, but he was finally able to fight his way free of the balls.

The clown emerged a few seconds later. “I’m ready for you now, you bastard,” Jack yelled before driving his throwing knife deep into the crawling fiend’s eye. Leaving his knife there, Jack snatched up his war dagger and stumbled away from the dying clown.

 

 

To be continued next Monday

 

 

Find out how Jack’s Adventures Started Here!