Carnivean Shades's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show

Foreword: Even though the formal attempts to produce and solicit stories were halted over two decades ago; the desire to create and tell never diminished.  Sometime around Halloween of 2006, I reread the classic "Something Wicked This Ways Comes".  I remember walking out the front door of my house one unseasonally cold and blustery October day.  The wind was pushing fallen leaves past when one landed at my feet.  It was an amazing color of burnt orange.  I remember thinking its wind-driven path resembled a discarded program advertising a mysterious event.  I could not get that image out of my head.  That night after everyone had fallen asleep, I wrote the following.  My attempt to pay homage to one of my all-time favorite books and its author.  Sorry Mr. Bradbury, but it is a work of love.  Except for the corrections to misspelled words;  this is the fable, story, poem, tale as I finished it that night. 


Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show

A brilliant carpet of orange, red and gold falls from autumn's sentinels; painting

the landscape, covering everything in a rich blanket of season.

Drawing a perfect map, a pathway to our town, leading them here, showing them the way to

a place where life lives to be sifted.  Leading them home again.

The harbingers come, wolf-jawed children dusting the skies with their screams, announcing

Carnivean Shade's Festival, with guttural mind slicing cries.

Voices chilling the blood and cutting the air until it bleeds away peace.

In their clawed footsteps follow hellish heralds trumpeting the Festival's approach; black peels 

of music, from hand-carved bone flutes, sing to all the approaching doom.

Hush now, quiet everyone, something from your nightmares this way comes,

hide your eyes, swallow your tears, isn't this what you wanted to hear?

The tents, the freaks, the sideshows, in October the stumbling clowns.

Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Murderous minstrels painted in fresh blood red colors dance to the devil's tune, 

tossing goodies and prizes to girls and boys terrified of the dark treats.

Wagons of exotic animals follow close behind, things you have not seen in the darkest

of dreams: grotesque mammals, spectral raptors, blood-drinking rakes, fur-bearing

Amphibians with the eyes of men.  Wraiths from another time and space, another horrible place where terror paints the landscape.

Jack-o'-lanterns float along.  Hand-carved mouths snap at trembling fingers reaching to close to feel a nightmare.  Even the dragons have come to this October country dragging banners in their wake with obscene incantations and unholy sigils.  Their dark leathery wings beat a cold wind pushing them along an invisible path leading to us.

Hush now, quiet everyone, something terrifying this way comes,
Swallow your tears, hide in the trees, isn't this what you wanted to see?
The tents, the freaks, the sideshows, in October the cadaverous clowns.
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Ghostly minions, with tormented faces, pale with pain--pull the wagons along.  Weirding wagons labeled FEAR, HORROR, DEATH with markings and runes that steal the sanity of anyone who reads them this day.  Diseased dogs run alongside, snapping at bloody feet to herd the wagon pullers on their way.  Wagon wheels crush the skulls that appear as a roadway before them.

Leviathan, Behemoth and Shai'tan bellow their terrible calls.  The screams of a thousand tortured mind return the calls.  Pleading for the death that will release them to hell.  The living soul that hears the horrifying cries of that unholy trinity becomes insane.  Chirping songbirds drop out of trees dead where the shadows of the monsters fall.

Don't scream, quiet everyone.  This way your destiny comes.
Swallow your fears, fall to your knees, isn't this what you needed to see.
The horrors, the pains, the blood-soaked candy canes that make you frown.
Carnivean Shades Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has come to town.

Then he comes too,  a dark coat and hat, holding a vertebrate cane.
Strolling along in boots made from exotic mangy hide.
Skeletal hands gloved in pale hairless leather.
Behind smoke and mirrored glasses cat eyes watch and glow, his forked tongue licks along the bright ivory fangs as he smiles in triumph.

A barbed-wire leash holds back his pet,  the hound waits to feed on the watchers at the side of the road flexing its blood-soaked claws and hissing anger.  Muscles rippling beneath scales that change in color with every stride.
He tips his hat to reveal his coif of scabrous roiling leeches. Wickedly, he smiles to greet the curious bystanders and begins.
"Come one, come all.  We have what your heart most longs for.  The stuff of wishes and dreams.  Most wondrous if our price you can pay".  He cries a bleak hypnotic pitch to bring the marks along.

Don't cry.  Listen everyone. To your life death has come.
Swallow your hope, cover your ears, run for your life, die with your fears.
The nightmares, the terrors, all this you wish to be a dream.
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show will make you scream.

In the blink of an eye, the tents are there games, rides, and shows looking for marks.
Fallen Angels, take the tickets at the gateway and lead the carnival goers into the endless dark.
The scales are set to guess the weight of souls, throw a baseball and knock over the stack of shrunken heads.

Win a prize of goodies and gore, terrible teddy bears and oh so much more.  Again he is there, standing by the ticket booth for the one and only ride the festival has to offer.
He snaps bony fingers to gather everyone's attention.
"This is what you have sought, for what you have paid."
He draws back a dimensional curtain revealing the abyss and screams,
"Time to ride the blade! Time to ride the blade!"

Run away, don't look behind, insanity is all that you shall find.
Swallow your fear, cover your heart, your world will soon come apart, 
from pain and terror and suffering and blood and torment and oh so much more
Carnivean Shade's Phantasmic Festival and Hell Bound Horror Show has opened its doors. 

1-1-2020  (Originally written October 2006)