The Graveyard Festival

Chapter 5 - After Dark

Thana lay in her bed, with her blankets drawn up to her neck and her eyes staring at the wind-bitten ceiling of her little graveyard house. A faint smile was etched upon her lips, while her mind spun with the endless ramblings of thought. It had been such a curious night, hasn't it?

In the moments after her promise to stay, the boy with the strange tattoos had escorted her back to the Raven gate. Jonathan, he had introduced himself to be. The silent Ringmaster's right hand man. It was such an ordinary name for such a curiously odd person, Thana thought. She murmured it under her breath. Jonathan. She liked it already.

"Come back tonight," he said. "The Ringmaster has ordered that I show you around."

Thana thought she detected a hint of grudgingness in his words. It bothered her for a second, and then she shrugged. She pulled her covers further up her face, closing her eyes but not sleeping, pretending she was back at the deathly carnival that was now her new home.

When the first hint of dawn painted the sky red and gold hours later, Thana rose and drifted out of the door dreamily, having not slept at all.

News of the Festival had spread through the town by midday, for no one missed the tip of the black tents that rose above the trees like the ancient spires of a church. The fact that it was in Thana's graveyard interested many people, as she was amused to find out.

"Why is there a circus in your graveyard?"

"Have you gone in?"

"Do you know what's inside?"

"It's not a circus, it's a carnival," Thana replied earnestly to the first question as she skipped away to her next dreamer. "It's not something to be watched, but to be explored."

Her words only seemed to fuel the curiosity of the townspeople, who gathered before the Raven gate as dusk approached. They stood a fair distance from the gate, but marvelled at the gruesome beauty of the fantastical carnival before them. Thana had never seen so many people in her graveyard before, and admittedly, it felt rather nice to have her home be filled with the living rather than the dead.

As the dusk shifted to twilight all at once, the scent of caramel and cinnamon rode across the graveyard on the winds, whispering sweet things. Thana stood behind the crowd, bouncing slightly on her toes. The first flush of excitement filled her as her heart strummed like a butterfly's wings within her chest. This was something new and something wholly strange.

Beyond the gate, darkness had set over the carnival. The skull lamps were as unlit as they were when Thana first saw them. Not a wind stirred within the grounds, not a breath stole through the gates.

And then it happened. The lights exploded to life, bathing Thana's graveyard in a golden hue more vibrant than she had seen the night before. As they flitted to their skull lamps, the gate groaned, sending the crowd several steps back.

The Raven gate opened, inviting the crowd inside.

For one wary second, everyone stood still, as though taking in the skulls and the cloying sweetness on the wings of the breeze. And then they moved, jostling into the Festival.

Thana stood where she was for a brief second, watching quietly, smiling dreamily. The stalls were now lit, lights flickering like flames in the mouth of the skulls. The teddy bears swayed gently from where they hung from their necks.

But perhaps what was most curious were the skulls that were painted on the faces of those who worked at the Festival.

To Thana, it looked as if skeletons walked among the living in the Graveyard Festival—if skulls possessed such exquisitely disconcerting beauty. Some exuded the ghastly glow of a dying sun, their elaborate skulls painted in burnt orange and gold. Others reminded Thana of the ghostly haziness of mists and fogs, with their white skulls and dark eyes watching the crowd mill past.