Beyond the Gilded Gates
written by: Elizabeth Hoyle
The carnival had visited the vacant lot every year for as long as Daria could remember, yet it had never shown any signs of life. Not ever. It lurked in the shadows of two large apartment complexes like a forgotten ghost, taking up some of the only clear land this part of the city had to offer. Daria had wondered more than once why the land couldn’t be used for a park or something of more use than a carnival no one apparently ran, and no one ever came to. But for all her wonderings, the carnival was there, year after year, a dark unsolved mystery behind gilded gates that showed up on the first of May and vanished at the beginning of June.
“I know, right? I’m going to fail that test tomorrow, I just know it. As long as I pass the class, I don’t care. I won’t need algebra after this,” Daria told her friend Sarah over the phone as she waited for the crossing sign to change. She reached down and took her little brother’s hand as the sign changed from “Don’t Walk” to “Walk,” and they surged forward with the crowd, everyone eager to get home.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. `Kay, bye.” They reached the other side of the street, and Daria ended the call, stuffing her cell phone into her purse. Her little brother, Scott, let go of her hand and began doing karate moves down the sidewalk, the ends of his yellow belt flopping as he twisted, kicked, and punched. Sweat trickled down her neck, and her shoulders ached from carrying her backpack laden with homework, compliments of the teachers trying to kill their seniors before they could graduate.
“Hey Daria, do you wanna see something my teacher showed me today?” Scott called eagerly from up ahead.
“Sure,” she answered, too exhausted to really care. Scott took out a worn baseball from a side pocket of his backpack and began to throw it up in the air, and attempted to punch it on its way back down. It was the baseball their dad had given him before being deployed. He carried it everywhere with him.
After his fifteenth failure to punch the ball, he let out a frustrated yell. “Well, it worked when George did it.”
They were walking by the carnival. Daria looked to see if there was anyone around; as always, there wasn’t. Even in the setting sun, the place that should be so happy was bathed in shadows.
“George was probably hitting something larger than a baseball.”
“Yeah,” he replied through gritted teeth. He gave it one last try; this time his fist connected with the ball at the right moment, sending it bouncing across the sidewalk. Right through the gates of the carnival.
“I did it!” Scott threw his arms up in victory.
“Yeah, but now your baseball’s gone.” His smile quickly faded as he looked and failed to find it. He stuck out his lower lip, his chin trembling like he was about to cry.
“Can I go get it?”
Daria’s phone began to ring. Scott began to beg through the amount of time it took for her to fish her phone out of her purse, answer it, and endure her mother’s freak-out that they weren’t home yet. She hung up with a sigh and fixed her brother with a no-nonsense look.
“That was Mom. She says to come home now. You can get the ball tomorrow.”
“B-but,” he sputtered, shifting from foot to foot, torn. “But it might be gone by then!”
“No, it won’t. You know no one ever comes here.” He threw down his backpack and folded his arms around his tiny chest.
“I’m not going until I get my baseball!” Daria rolled her eyes at his childish defiance and kept walking down the sidewalk. Half a block later, he still wasn’t following her. She sighed and trotted back to him, really not wanting to do this.
“Okay, you have five minutes.”
A wild grin broke across his face, and he threw open the heavy gates and trotted through, vanishing. The gates clanged shut behind him. She slipped her backpack off her aching shoulders and settled down on a nearly clear patch of sidewalk, wishing she were back in the dance studio that she’d just left, practicing for the upcoming show. She watched cars scud by as the sun sank lower in the sky. She stood up, peering through the fence, seeing nothing but shadows of myriad shapes and sizes. Where is he? She thought. He should be back by now. It’s just a baseball. But her fingers wandered to the copy of her dad’s dog tags around her neck. He’d made for her, reminding herself that the ball meant as much to Scott as the dog tags meant to her. I guess I’ll have to go get him.
She tried opening the gates, but they wouldn’t budge. She hefted her backpack over the fence, tossing Scott’s over as well in case someone tried run off with them, though whoever wanted her homework was welcome to it. She squeezed her foot into the links of the fence and climbed up. She jumped to the ground, landing with bended knees, fear clutching her heart at being on the other side of the fence, in the place she’d always been intrigued by and a little afraid of. Her heart rate tripled as she picked herself up, lights flipped on, impossibly bright, coming from a sign pointing to something lost in the shadows
“Scott! Where are you?” She called out uncertainly. Complete silence answered her. Though the city teemed at her back, she could hear nothing in this no man’s land. “Scott! We need to go home!” Not even an echo. A shiver ran down Daria’s spine.
“You will not find him that way.” The soft, deep voice came from the dark beyond the lights. Daria stepped forward, feeling like a wary animal sniffing a poacher’s trap.
A sign flared to life, pointing at a man, proclaiming him to be “Garin, The Wondrous Fortune Teller” in faded black lettering. She looked at him closely, seeing no signs of life when she realized he wasn’t alive at all. He’s a machine. The metal he was made of glinted through where his once flesh-colored paint had chipped away with time. No nuts and bolts stuck out of him, yet she could see the gears in his jaws and arms that enabled him to move and speak. He’s a great automaton, she thought, wishing her machinery-obsessed dad were here to see him. But was it him that spoke? She reached out to touch him when his eyes flew open. She jumped back with a frightened yelp.
“You will not find your brother by yelling for him,” he said. She put her hand to her heart as if that would stop its frantic fluttering.
“What do you mean I won’t find him?” Her voice rose an octave. “Where is he?”
He turned his unsettlingly pale blue eyes on her, metal groaning against metal as he did. “The Great Skathian has your brother.”
For some weird reason, the name only made her more fearful. “Who is that?”
“The manager of the carnival,” he said with an odd whistle that would have been a sigh if he were human. “He controls it all, who goes in, and who goes out.”
“Take me to see this Skathian. I want to go home, and I’m not leaving without Scott.”
“You will go home, Daria Johansson, but not without some difficulty. For those who stray into the carnival do not emerge unchanged.” There were many loud groans and clangs from Garin as he stood up, layers of feathers, dirt, and crusted bird feces falling off of him. He took a fedora Daria hadn’t noticed off the back of his chair and put it on so he looked palely dapper, like a 1920s gangster, wearing tan pants, white shirt, and dark vest. She suddenly had a sinking feeling she should have gone home and then come back to look for Scott with her mother.
“Come and see what wonders our carnival has to offer.”
Light burst upon the rest of the carnival. Daria threw her hands over her eyes, the glare was so bright.
“Do not close your eyes to what is around you,” Garin whispered into her ear, placing his cold metal hand over hers and clumsily pulling it down. Daria didn’t know where to look, there were so many things to see, many of them more than a little disturbing. There were numerous faded red and gold tents, filled with many objects for sale, she couldn’t name or guess what their use was. There was one tent selling gigantic, broken porcelain dolls, whose sad eyes seemed to follow them as they walked by. There were sad-faced musicians, playing their instruments with indifference, a hat full of centipedes and maggots in front of them. A small group of girls painted every hue of the rainbow ran screaming out of a black tent spattered with what she hoped was fake blood but didn’t smell like it, the sign above which proclaimed it to be “Zari’s Tent of Horrors”. It was a completely different, strange world, here between the two apartment buildings. No wonder no one visited.
“Yes, you and your brother are the only humans to come here for an interminable count of years,” Garin glanced sideways at her, one of his eyes rolling backwards in its socket as he did so. “No doubt what you see frightens you.” Daria dodged out of the way as a man with an elephant’s trunk instead of a nose darted through the crowd, holding a jar of glowing powder that smelled of burning cloth, trumpeting gleefully.
“Yeah, a bit,” she replied, staring after the elephant man, wondering if there was any way out of this rabbit’s hole she had followed her brother down. When she turned back around, there was a gnarled blue hand shoving a baseball in her face.
“Does the lady want to play a game?” The voice sounded menacing even over the screams coming from a nearby rollercoaster. She grabbed for the baseball, certain it was Scott’s. The hand pulled it away with a sharp tsk tsk.
“Shame, shame, my lady. You must pay before you can play.” The voice belonged to a tall, humpbacked, blue, elf-like being. Its eyes were wide and emerald, its teeth pointed and brown. His wooden booth was the plainest thing she’d seen in this grandiose carnival, the sign above it saying “Someone broke your feelings? Break their hearts!” An uneasy feeling turned her stomach as she returned her gaze to the elf, who was still talking to her.
“It is a simple game, my lady, nothing could be easier. You give me a memory of someone you don’t like, you have three tries to hit one of the plates attached to the spinning wheels behind me,” he moved aside to show her, “and if you hit one, you break the heart of the one you gave to me.” He leaned forward, so close she could smell his rotten breath. “Whom do you hate the most, my lady?”
She was just about to ask if she could just have his baseball when Garin intervened, throwing a chill arm around her shoulders protectively. “Not now, Thorean. It seems you have another customer.”
“Yeah, you do! Fork over that baseball and fetch me a stool, I’m ready to play your game.” The nasal voice that called out belonged to a man that came up to Daria’s waist.
The stooped elf rolled his eyes. “You know the rules, Dhali; you can’t play since you work here. Skathian’s orders.”
“I’d disobey his orders a thousand times if it’d rid me of Gron,” Dhali shook his head, his beard swaying. “Who are you?”
“Daria Johansson,” she answered, uncertain whether she should offer to shake his hand since he didn’t offer his. He looked her up and down and sniffed.
“Another human, like that whelp who came running through here earlier.”
“Where is he? He’s my brother.”
“I’m taking her to see Skathian,” Garin said, increasing the pressure of his arm on her shoulders. Dhali’s eyes widened.
“Is that wise?”
“I just want to get him home,” Daria said. Dhali motioned for her to come closer. She leaned forward. He has nice eyes, she noticed as she looked at his face properly. They were big and brown, sad and angry at the same time. He put his hand at the back of her neck and for a second she thought he was going to try to kiss her. But he just held her there so he could look into her eyes.
“When you deal with Skathian, make sure the terms of your agreement are final,” he warned her. “Spell out what you want and then do everything he asks you in return. I didn’t, and now I live in a hell of my own making.” A tear slipped down his cheek.
“Is that Gron guy you mentioned so bad?” She asked.
He nodded. “Gron the Strongman, strong of arm and leg but black of heart and deed. I can never forgive what he did to me⸺” Dhali broke off, biting his lip, his chin wobbling. A few seconds later, he sighed. “The blood of the one you love should be avenged with the blood of those who killed them, don’t you think?”
Before she could answer, Garin yanked her to her feet. “Enough, Dhali, you’re frightening her,” he chastised him, although she wasn’t afraid. As they walked away, Daria put her hands to her cheeks and found tears there, though she did not remember beginning to cry.
Next to Thorean’s was a wide tank full of murky water. Inside it was a mermaid. No hair grew anywhere on her body, and her eyes were the same glittering green as her tail. She was beautiful. She was putting on a show for a small, eager crowd gathered around her tank. As she edged closer, Daria saw the mermaid’s sign said: “Darling, the world’s only fire-breathing siren!”
Like she wanted to prove the words true, Darling jumped up from the water, streaming fire like a dragon while singing an enchantingly melancholy song, did a flip, and landed back in the water with a hiss of rising steam. Darling wrote the words Help me in the condensation that had formed inside her tank as she breathed more fire underwater.
“She swims in her own tears,” Garin said, pulling her away. She pushed him away.
“Can’t anyone see how upset she is? Why has no one helped her? She doesn’t belong here!” Daria didn’t know how she knew that, but she felt it was the truth. He looked at her sadly and shrugged.
“I’ve heard she did not belong with her own kind either. Come,” he said, taking her arm as the crowd burst into another round of applause.
They drifted through the carnival for what felt like miles before they came upon a small black and white striped tent next to a huge, similarly striped one. A man stood outside the smaller tent, smoking a cigarette. His eyes were not human, all black, tinged with red.
“She needs to see Skathian, Finn,” Garin said in a contemptuous tone. “Now.”
Finn looked at her and took another drag of his cigarette. “She can wait in ‘ere,” he said with a thick, unidentifiable accent. He grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her into the tent. “And you can come wif me to explain to Skathian why there’s another a them humans in his tent.”
Daria listened to the metallic clunk of Garin’s footsteps fading away. She took a deep breath, tried to make herself relax. There wasn’t much to the room except for a dressing screen quarantining a part of the tent and a massive desk with a statue of a chained angel child perched on the edge. The statue was so big and lifelike it looked real. She stepped over to the desk, hoping Garin would not be gone long. On the desk was a gold-handled whip. She picked it up; it was made of strong leather, so stiff and unyielding that she hurt just imagining its sting. The end of it was stained with blood. Her throat went dry. Please let Scott be okay, she prayed again and again as she examined it, though she didn’t know if any deity could hear her in this place. A blade slipped out of the handle as she set it back down. She pulled the blade out of the handle, and to her relief, there was no blood on it. She slipped it back into its sheath.
“The blood is not the boy’s.” A girl’s voice made her jump out of her skin. When Daria had recovered, she saw what she had thought was the statue of an angel was actually a person. The girl, who looked to be about Scott’s age, was chained to the desk, her grey wings twice as big as she was.
“How do you know?”
“Skathian is also the carnival’s lion tamer,” the girl said. “It is lion’s blood.”
“That’s awful.” Daria edged away from the whip, looking up at the girl instead. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Megga. And before you ask, yes, I was born with these.” She tilted her head toward her wings and shivered. All she had on was a nightgown. Daria picked up a blanket that hung from the dressing screen, draping it carefully around Megga’s shoulders.
“Born with wings but can’t fly,” she heard Megga mutter to herself. She caught Daria’s wrist. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you how small you are. Especially Skathian.” Her eyes pleaded with Daria. She heard voices from outside the tent; she struggled to get out of the Megga’s grip, but she was relentless. The voices were getting closer.
“I promise,” she whispered. The tent flaps opened, and Daria’s arm was freed.
“Ah, so this is the young lady you’ve told me so much about, Garin.” Whatever she had pictured Skathian to look like, it was not this. He was tall, thin; his angular face sported a mustache and close-trimmed beard under a pointed nose and brown eyes. His movements seemed slightly snakelike as he came toward her. He circled her like a vulture, looking her up and down. Garin watched, his face impassive.
“So you are Daria Johansson?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered coldly.
He chuckled. “I like your manners.” His gaze flickered from her to Megga. “You should take notes, Megga.”
Megga began sniping at him in a language Daria couldn’t identify. Skathian responded in the same tongue, then silenced the girl with a backhanded slap.
“You must excuse the fact that she is chained, she has been bad, very naughty indeed,” he emphasized the last word angrily before he turned back to her. “Garin here tells me you are interested in retrieving something you’ve lost.”
“Yes, I-I want my brother back, safe and sound, and the baseball he came in here to get.”
He hummed a steady note while he weighed her words. Daria stared him down, determined not to be intimidated. Finally, he looked away from her.
“Thank you, Garin. Your services are no longer required.” Garin left, giving her a look that told her he wouldn’t be too far away.
“It would be a shame to let such a pretty butterfly slip through my carnival without making use of her,” he said, turning back to her. “You carry yourself far better than most humans. Are you a dancer?”
“Yes.”
“How well do you dance?”
“Well enough for you, I’m sure.”
“Show me.”
Feeling very uncomfortable, she kicked off her shoes and slipped off her jeans and shirt, so she stood before him in only the leotard she hadn’t taken off after practice. Just do what he wants, she reminded herself of Dhali’s words. She did a few stretches and then began to dance the piece from Cinderella she was learning for her recital. As she finished, Skathian’s eyes shone with awe.
“You’re perfect,” he breathed. “I’m doing a big show tonight, and since my lion-taming act can get ugly, you will open for me. Wow, the crowd before the lions come out to play.”
Daria couldn’t help but get distracted by the pleading looks Megga was giving her. “W-would this be all I have to do, and then you’ll give my brother back to me?”
Skathian chortled. “Of course! Do this for me, and the boy and the ball are yours.” He held out his hand. She took it, giving it a firm shake.
“Wonderful! Finn!” The flaps opened to admit him. “Take Miss Johansson to costumes, tell the workers there to make her beautiful. She is our dancer tonight!”
For some reason, this made Finn laugh and look at her like she was the stupidest human being on earth. The last thing Daria heard before Skathian ushered her out of the tent was Megga whispering two words.
They sounded like “You fool.”
Some time later, Daria reentered Skathian’s tent, her face powdered pale white with dark shadow pasted around her eyes. She was in a thigh-length black dress, the skirt of which was cut into flower petal-like pieces so she could easily dance. Skathian was not there. She shifted uneasily as she heard the massive crowd in the huge neighboring tent, where, the costumers had told her, Skathian held all his shows. She didn’t know who the beings in the audience were or how they’d gotten here. I hope this is quick, she thought.
She heard a muffled voice behind the dressing screen. She stepped around it. Megga had been gagged and tied up. Daira untied her. Megga bit her as she removed her gag.
“What was that for?!”
“You’re an idiot!” Megga screeched. Skathain’s voice sounded out from the big tent, introducing her.
“What do you mean?”
“The only reason he wants you to dance for him is to make his show more interesting. You’re lion bait!”
Daria’s blood went cold. “How do you know that?”
“How do you think?”
It was only then that Daria noticed the hideous scratches on Megga’s arms. She was missing three fingers on her left hand. Skathian called her name. Shuddering, she stood there, vacillating. He called her name again. She turned on her heel and walked into the other tent. I have to do this. There is no other way.
There was a mat laid down in the middle of the tent for her, and Skathian stood upon it, smiling at her as she walked up to him. He looked deceitfully dashing in a tuxedo, his whip hanging from one of his belt loops. The crowd of inhuman creatures cheered madly for her. They already knew why she was there and could sense the good time coming. Skathain caught her arm in a death grip, though to the audience it must have looked like they were embracing because they cheered all the more.
“Make them happy, or your brother will feel the pain of your failure,” he whispered. She looked down at the black pointe shoes they’d given her and nodded. He let go of her and exited the stage, leaving her utterly alone in the crowded tent.
She struck a beginning pose, and immediately harsh rock music came bursting from the speakers mounted on the tent’s support poles, so loud she cringed. No one will hear me scream when the lions come out to play, she thought. She shook her head. Stay focused. She began an impromptu dance to the fast guitars, kicking, twisting, and twirling to the rapid music. Too soon, she was out of breath, and her legs were trembling. She slowed down, dancing to the song’s orchestral undertones instead.
The crowd of strange beings got into the music, trumpeting along and cheering her on as she danced what they all knew was her swan song. About halfway through the song’s second verse, someone grabbed her hips and lifted her up. She gasped, looking down while trying to keep her composure. It was Skathian, his coat and tails off. His whip still hung from his belt. He must have decided to make this a duet to make it easier to throw me to the lions, she thought frantically, her heart beating even faster. She surely had mere minutes to live. She kept dancing, letting him put his hands where he wanted, looking for a way out of the arena as he twirled her around.
There! A door on the far side of the arena, if only she could get to it. A children’s chorus of the song boomed eerily throughout the tent, then the music went quiet. She seized the opportunity as he wound his arms around her for another lift. She grabbed the handle of his whip, loosened the knife, spun around, and plunged it into his shoulder. She jumped from the platform and ran, the sand of the arena splaying out from under her pointe shoes. The cages built under the stands were creaking open. Seven powerful lions burst out of their cages, bodies lean with hunger, eyes aflame with determination to kill. They converged on her, cutting her off from the door. They drove her back, fur rippling over their powerful shoulders, their massive faces so full of teeth. Let this be quick. Let Scott live. The first lion lunged at her as she heard the squeak of a door opening.
“Daria!” Scott’s voice cut through the mayhem, and she saw her brother holding Garin’s hand before the lion tackled her. The lion’s teeth sank into her shoulder, unbearable, slicing pressure down to her bone. She screamed. The crowd roared, and the smell of her own blood mixed with the vile stench of the lions. She tried to kick the lion away, straining to see. Garin and Scott were still there. She wanted just one more glimpse of them before she died. Garin smiled sweetly, and threw something to her. It soared high across the arena; she was barely able to catch it as the rest of the lions converged. She looked down to see Scott’s baseball in her hand. There was a loud sound like glass breaking, and the wild crowd fell silent.
Daria found herself back at the gates of the carnival, Scott just about to go in after his baseball.
“Wait! Scott, here it is.” She gave him the ball, then realized it had a note tied to it. She removed the note before giving the ball back to her brother. She unrolled the tiny slip of paper, which contained only a few lines in a jerky, spidery hand.
“This will serve as a ticket if ever you want to return to the Carnival beyond the Gilded Gates. I can’t promise I’ll be there, but the lions definitely won’t be. Neither will the tyrant who has kept our carnival in darkness for so long. Thank you, sweet girl. Love, Garin.”
When she looked up from the note, she found Scott looking through the bars.
“I had the strangest dream, Daria,” Scott said thoughtfully as she came to stand next to him.
“I did too,” she replied. She squinted through the bars and gasped as one of the carnival’s lights pierced the darkness and illuminated a single white flower dripping with blood that grew through a crack in the pavement.
She took Scott’s hand. They gathered up their things and went home. The next day, the fence was gone, and the carnival was full of life, people coming and going, the shrieks and giggles of children and adults alike melding with the carnival music to create a happy yet ghoulish harmony.
- Beyond the Gilded Gates - March 1, 2026
- The Second Cipher - September 17, 2023
- Chances and Challenges - April 9, 2023
