The Haunted Carnival

The carnival arrived without posters, without radio ads, without warning. One night the empty fairgrounds at the edge of town simply changed. Rusted gates stood wide open. Strings of lights flickered weakly, glowing a sickly yellow against the fog.

No one remembered seeing the trucks come in.

I noticed it first on my walk home. Music drifted through the trees - tinny and warped, like it was being played underwater. A carousel tune. Slow. Wrong. Every instinct told me to turn around, but curiosity pulled harder than fear.

The Ferris wheel creaked as it turned, though no one sat inside. Each empty car swayed gently, like it was breathing. The air smelled of damp hay, oil, and something faintly sweet… like rotting cotton candy.

“Hello?” I called.

The sound was swallowed immediately.

The midway stretched farther than it should have. Lights buzzed weakly, casting long, crooked shadows that twitched when I wasn’t looking. Every game booth looked abandoned, yet every prize was dusty with fingerprints. The stuffed animals hung limp, their seams splitting, their glass eyes cloudy like cataracts. I could have sworn one of them blinked.

A ticket booth stood near the entrance. Inside, a man sat motionless, slumped forward. His striped vest was stiff with age, his skin gray and papery. I stepped closer - and he lifted his head.

His eyes were hollow pits.

“Carnival’s open,” he rasped. “Always has been.”

I ran.

But the exits were gone.

Every path led deeper into the carnival. The music grew louder, overlapping melodies colliding into a shrieking mess. I passed mirrors that didn’t reflect me correctly. Every reflection showed a different version of me: screaming, burning, laughing, begging. In one mirror, I wasn’t reflected at all - only a scorched outline, pressed into the glass from the other side.

Then I heard laughter.

Children’s laughter.

I followed it to the carousel.

It spun slowly, horses rising and falling, their painted smiles cracked and peeling. Children sat atop them, pale and still, their hands fused to the poles like wax melted and hardened again. Their eyes tracked me as I moved.

One of them spoke.

“Want to ride?”

I backed away, heart pounding. That’s when I saw the sign bolted above the carousel, letters rusted but readable: 

WELCOME BACK

Memories flooded in.

The missing posters from years ago. The carnival fire. The screams. The bodies never recovered. I remembered holding a ticket. I remembered the smoke. I remembered collapsing.

The mirrors had been right.

I never left.

The lights flickered once… then steadied.

Somewhere, a gate creaked open.

And far off, beyond the trees, someone new stepped onto the fairgrounds, drawn by distant music drifting through the fog.

The carnival was open.

And it always would be.