Image by Jean-Paul Jandrain from Pixabay
The train trundled along the mountain path. The clunk of rusty wheels didn’t fill Joelle with confidence. They’d probably not been serviced since the eastern bloc came down.
An old man stared at Joelle, fingering a small wooden box which rattled with a dull cadence. The old man grinned a spittle ridden grin and looked her up and down… lingering on her legs and the hem of her miniskirt.
“Do you want to see what’s in my box of tricks sweetness?” He leaned forward and a stench like nothing she’d ever smelt assaulted her nostrils. There really was no other way to put it was like the smell of shit and death combined.
What the fuck did this guy have in that box.
She turned away and stared purposefully out of the window, escaping that leer... if not the lingering smell.
Joelle shivered as the tunnel’s gaping maw of blackness approached, growing larger with each passing second. She stared through the window. An ocher smear of mud weaved a pattern down the mountainside, the flood run-off spilled randomly like a Rorschach's blot. It warped from a Bat into a cruel raptor diving from the hillside, until finally the pattern resolved into a face, lean and gaunt. They entered the tunnel and the blackness and she gripped her charm bracelet her grandmother had given her.
Cer-chunk, cer-chunk, cer-chunk.
As blackness descended she looked back at the old man's grinning face. Needle teeth protruded from grey scaly skin, a maw to swallow the last vestige of twilight from the train. The scream died in her throat, muffled from sheer terror.
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”All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun
Pop goes the weasel”
Joelle chased her cousin Cristian around the rhododendron. His mousy brown hair tousled from forcing his way through the hawthorn hedge into the woods at the back of her aunt’s garden earlier.
She shuddered at the memory.
In the brown gloaming of the canopy among the woody smell of rot and woodlice, they had found the desiccated corpse of a deer. Nothing more than a leathery hide, protruding bones and empty eye sockets. Three large rents split the stomach where the wolves had left their mark.
“You’re the monkey.” She laughed as she shook off the memory, pointing at Cristian’s ruffled hair and dishevelled waistcoat.
“Monkey, monkey.” She teased and then shrieked as he reversed the chase, hands waving in his arm pits, screeching like a chimp in the forest.
As she careened around the far side of the rhododendron her stomach lurched and silence descended like a burial shroud. Pushing through the hawthorn hedge at the back of the garden a ripped and ravaged face emerged. Thorns pierced eyes like ripe apples as the doe emerged crawling along on empty legs. It turned to look at Joelle freezing her like stone with those black bottomless pits.
Needle teeth gleamed as it opened its bile flecked mouth and a voice as dry as parchment froze her to the spot.
“Pop goes the weasel.”
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The blackness of the tunnel. The rhythmic rattling of train on track and the hissing breath of the old man near her ear. Joelle’s blood was ice, she sat paralyzed, tongue lolling in her mouth.
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”A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle
That's the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.”
Joelle looked at her mother singing her favorite song as she wrapped the thread around her finger. The pin, the instrument of torture clasped between her lips.
“It’s only a splinter darling. Hush up crying and look away. If you don’t look it won’t hurt as much. It will be out before you can say, pop goes the weasel.” She reached down with her finger and pushed gently on Joelle’s nose.
“Now look away sweetpea.”
Joelle did as her mother asked. A thought flashed that her mother was a cruel person doing this out of malice. The sting of the pin in her finger shocked her and she tried to pull her hand away but it was held, as if in a vice.
She turned betrayed eyes on her mother and bile flooded her throat in horror as her gurgling scream rent the air. Her mother’s face resembled a corpse, grey flesh hanging in strips around a lip-less mouth. One long cruel fingernail pierced her finger like a frankfurter on a stick.
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The abysmal darkness. The rhythm of the train on the track a sickening pulse. Her blood still as ice, as long fingernails caressed her throat
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"Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
Mix it up and make it nice
Pop! goes the weasel.”
Joelle weaved through the crowds, leading the carnival boy a merry chase as she sung.
She liked him, well she thought she did. The way his hair fell in his eyes and that peacock strut. He raised new feelings that were both exciting yet scary.
She rounded the candyfloss store and spotted a merry-go-round. Golden lights illuminated this spinning flare of crimson and blue. Horses flew past, bedecked with shimmering bridles and silk flowing from white tails. Children whooped and shrieked in joy as it picked up speed before slowly coming to a halt. She started toward it after checking her pockets for the required Leu.
An arm grasped her roughly. The carnival boy pulled her toward him but she pushed him away.
“I’m going on the merry-go-round.” She pointed, smiling at him. “You can join me if you want.”
“That’s for kids.” He pushed his hair from his eyes looking at her sulkily. Joelle decided she wasn’t so keen on this rough boy. Welts were already raising red on her arm where he’d grabbed her.
“Suit yourself.” She ran and paid the man, entering the maze of horses. She jumped on one and noticed that the boy had followed, seating himself on the horse behind. She turned and grinned for the sheer joy of the carnival. Music blared and the horses started their gallop.
The horses picked up speed and the world whirled around her fading into a blur of faces. Colour flashed past and the smears of pink candyfloss motion. A strange sound mingled with the tinny music of the ride.
Cer-chunk, cer-chunk, cer-chunk.
It settled into her soul causing a deep and immediate panic. Sickness flooded through her as the intensity of this noise grew and she glanced back at the boy. He grinned wildly, seeming to have lost all his previous distain for the merry-go-round.
Joelle’s heart leaped into her mouth as four long claws burst from his fingers and his face stretched impossibly long like velum over a canvas. He rose up on the horse as if galloping and as she looked around she saw that all of the children stood in their saddles. Twenty versions of the demon stared at her, black eyes watching choked in laughter on their own blood.
A wide smile split faces as a lizard like tongues flicked around needle teeth.
Suddenly, Joelle felt her chest rupture as the demon appeared behind her claws twisting her insides as he stared right into her eyes. It whispered a chant through the mix of fading colour. Smears of horses stretched endlessly away into blackness so deep that even sleep couldn’t compare.
”Half a pound of children’s blood
and bones to build an easel
a few keepsakes in my biscuit box
Pop! goes the weasel.”
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The train bloomed into light as it emerged from the tunnel. Andrei walked into the eerily quiet cabin.
“Tickets please.”
He paced along the row of seats confused, sure that there were passengers in this cabin when he’d passed through last.
On the final seat there lay a strange biscuit tin, lid half open. Carved in its lid a fairground scene shone green with a luminous livid light. A merry-go-round spun at the center causing the box to rattle as if something was trapped inside. He opened the box fully, some small bones rattled around a large golden bracelet which gleamed in the last fading light of the twilight’s death.
The end
© Rowan Joyce all rights reserved
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