The Sideshow of the Void

From time to time, murmurs and mutterings concerning the carnival spread amongst the houses of town like an unseen plague This signals the carnival’s imminent arrival. The carnival returns to town from the shadows of the backroads in random unknown intervals, except in certain dreams. Always presenting itself under a different name.  The whispers are never about the fact that it’s coming. But the whispers are about the carnival itself. And if you listen close enough, a few folks whisper about the thing within the carnival.

The carnival has come to Balsam, a tiny town on Maramouth Island in downeast Maine, since the late 1700s. I suspect it is a traveling carnival. It’s held where the chapel of Saint Genesius once stood, in a meadow which exists between the ocean and cliffs on one side and the woods on the other. Built by French settlers, it mysteriously burnt down in 1760.  The debris was cleared, the graves from the cemetery relocated. Or most of them... a few folks in town were unable to locate relatives\' graves, and that caused a real stir. The land was never used for anything but the carnival after that. The fog always gathers thick in that clearing, percolating like a mass of ghosts. Which was fitting, as the meadow was rumored to be haunted.

I first experienced the carnival with my friend, Danny. I was 7 years old. I’d heard kids talking in hushed tones on the playground about the carnival. Or Singing verses like:

\"I hate you, you hate me,

Meet at the circus at half past 3:00!

Take you to the strong woman, take you to the clown

Take you to the sideshow and right out of town!”

Or things like: “The sideshow will snatch you away to the dark mother! To dance with the troupe and the clown!”

Danny’s mother dropped us off and told us she’d pick us up later in the afternoon. Neither his mother nor my parents knew about the carnival. They hadn’t been residents of the town long. Maybe they’d heard whispers, perhaps from a man on the street corner, holding a sign reading: “I Am Jesus”.  Or while driving, on some radio station, the static becoming a hum at the base of their skull.            It was a wonderful early September day in Maine, remnants of summer heat almost gone, and Autumn hadn’t quite arrived. Passing underneath the large monikered entrance, lit up with large humming bulbs, the ambiance and aromascape of the carnival assaulted us.

We claustrophobically wove between the masses, and we partook in the rituals of the carnival: riding whirling attractions, smelling and tasting ungodly delicious foods purveyed from flashy booths, hearing music that sounded like a happy clown squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste, the carneys yelling “Step right up, Step right up!”.

At some point, I detected a strange scent. In my memory, it was the smell of old, moldering things in the corner of an ancient attic mixed with the smell of 400 candles guttering out and being lit all at once. We both wordlessly followed it. That scent, or sense, of something outside of the carnival that made itself known. The object inside the object, a nesting doll. The shining shadow behind the veil.

We went around the backside of the Duckshot booth at the edge of the row, and that’s when we saw it. A sort of makeshift alley was created by the thick wall of gnarled trees on the left and the multicolored backs of the game booths on the right. A tunnel; left-hand black, right-hand rainbow.

And the end of it was the entrance to a strange, decrepit sideshow.

I stopped dead in my tracks, filled with a sense of supreme awe and bottomless terror.

The sideshow was familiar. Not from whispers I’d heard in town. In fact, I had never connected the whispers and rhymes of the children…to the sideshow. Or the diorama.

My family moved to Maramouth Island when I was six and my sister was seven. Her name was Laurie. Often told by adults that she was a precocious girl, my sister possessed peculiar proclivities. She would spend a lot of time in the woods, hunting mushrooms, pretending to be a witch, and playing in the tides despite my mother’s dissuasion. She also loved unusual dolls.

Our parents tried to bribe our forgiveness for moving by getting us gifts. I don’t remember my gift. But she received a large, intricate diorama with matching dolls. The diorama was a carnival, made in the fashion of a sideshow type carnival from long ago. You could lift the roof off and play with the things inside. There were exhibits and corresponding dolls of the strong woman, the sword swallow, the laughing clown, the Freak Show, etc. Amongst these acts was also “Zelda the Fortuneteller”, who held a black crystal ball which lit up a wonderful purple when plugged in, along with other lights throughout. My parents procured it from a defunct oddity store in town.

The exaggerated style and unusual craftsmanship evoked such peculiar emotions in me. The dolls didn’t look extremely life-like. But the diorama, and the dolls inside… their essence possessed a dark, intangible element that made my skin crawl. Like when one witnesses a case of uncanny valley. Yet the sideshow diorama enticed me. Its presence enfolded me into itself.

It was a wonderful toy, a work of art. And she loved it.

A few months after we arrived in town, Laurie was playing alone in the woods on a gloomy day.  She loved those days when the fog enveloped everything, weaving itself between the trees like trickling milk.  She took a wrong step in the fog and plummeted off the cliff. They found her at the bottom, smashed upon the rocks. She’d fallen off the cliff near the meadow, the place where they hold the carnival.

I knew when we buried her in Balsam that I’d never leave town.

It sounds silly, but when I missed my sister, I would play with the diorama. The intricately made dolls and aspects of the diorama made me feel closer to her.

After her death, I would play with the strange figurines and diorama, assembled with such detail and care, and it brought me closer to her.

And now before stood that same sideshow carnival from the diorama, as if out of a dream.

I looked at Danny. He was dazed at the sight as if in a trance. We approached the sideshow, observing the worn banner and sign proclaiming that The Sideshow of the Void was right inside, flapping in the wind which had become cold.

Upon entering, I felt wholly transported. The happier music faded, replaced by calliope along with an eerie violin accompaniment, which seemed to come from the shadows; a twisted and devilish tune, evoking some grotesque cartoon I’d seen on TV late at night. I felt like I had been transported into a different time and dimension.

I saw the firebreather. To breathe the fire, he would stick his head into a roaring open flame and take a deep breath. Then, smiling like the devil, he would belch out a pillar of conflagration. His skin boiled and burnt beyond repair.

I saw a strong woman who pulverized decapitated heads, the blood, hair and brain-matter dripping from the head of her sledgehammer.  I saw the man who swallowed a sword, blood pouring out of slits in his throat as he spoke with the sword inside. I walked past the entrance to the Freak Show and The Museum of Other-Worldly Items. Despite my disgust, my morbid curiosity drove me further and further.

I saw the dancers performing for a small crowd, a tantric diabolical dance upon the stage. I saw the clown who sang in exaggerated, fantastical, sorrowful tones.  His frills were stained a sickening color, the awful features of his face painted in off-putting shades, teeth stained from tobacco smoke. And his eyes shone like the void.  He held up a mirror to his own face, singing mid-song:

“...But beneath these false facades

The light does not shine far

At night we peer in the looking glass

To see what we truly are.”

I continued my way through the sideshow until I got to Zelda the Fortuneteller. She sat encased in glass… the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but I could not tell if she was a real human being or an automaton. I pressed the button and was given a fortune sealed in fine paper and ink. I wanted to open the envelope at once, but a strange and sweet voice came from the booth: “Do not open the fortune until you are home in bed, and the clock has struck eight. If you do not obey this command, your days will be cursed.” It came from Zelda‘s mouth, but I was still not convinced if it was a mortal or machine.

She then pointed to her right toward the exit hallway, shadowed and partly awash in red light from the exit sight. The music behind me seemed to swell in a sickening fashion. I ran from that place in shock. It had all been like the diorama.

As I ran, I noticed that time had passed rapidly and Danny was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t remember when exactly we’d been separated. The hall of mirrors ejected me out into the twilight. The lights from the games and rides glowed in the dark in the distance, washing the trees above and the ground beneath in a strange afterglow.  I could hear the roar of the ocean, smashing itself against the cliffs.

My parents were waiting at the entrance with their car, worried sick. I almost told them about the sideshow, but I had a feeling that if I did, they would think that I was making it up, having pulled the source material of my lies for my deceased sisters’ playthings.

As I crawled into bed later that evening, the clock downstairs struck 8 PM. I suddenly remembered the envelope still in my jacket pocket. I fumbled in the dark for my jacket and pulled it out.  In the new darkness of my room, the sideshow model lit up. Its lights flashing and blinking, parts moving. Then all fell silent, save the purple light of the fortuneteller which blinked rapidly. It was frightening, not just because it turned on by itself, but also because it wasn’t plugged in.

By the dim light of a small antique lamp and the sliver of moon which hung in the sky like Death’s scythe, I pulled the message out of the envelope, which was printed on equally fine paper. The letter was written in a refined hand:

“Your visit was most welcome. Because you brought a friend, we will allow you to return alone once more. Your friend is joined up with the carnival and will never return home. Do not speak a word of this. They will not believe you. You will suffer a great loss in your thirtieth year. And remember, we are all performers in the cosmic show. We are all dancing for the Mother of the Void. Even Laurie.”

My child-mind was filled with questions and fear. With the sideshow, and of the fortune that came with it.

They never found Danny. I was brought into the police station. They asked me when was the last time I’d seen Danny. I said I hadn\'t seen him since we both entered the sideshow, where we got split up, which was about 3:30pm. I got lost, and I didn’t know what happened to him.

I didn’t tell them, or anyone for that matter, about the envelope. And I didn’t tell them that 3:30pm was the same time my watch stopped working.

Weeks later, I looked over the diorama and I noticed there were… new dolls inside. A doll of a small child standing in the crowd of one of the shows, wearing the same outfit Danny had been wearing that day at the carnival. Most horrible of all, a doll of my sister stood near the Laughing Clown exhibit.

I didn’t sleep for a week.

Over the years, I stealthily gathered bits of stories and information concerning the carnival. I asked the questions when people began to mumble. If I ask outside of those times, it draws too much attention and people clam up. Even when the whispers start, most of them wouldn’t talk to me. But some did, under the right conditions.

I found that the carnival had been visiting the town for over 250 years. How people have been telling ghost stories about the sideshow for generations. I learned about how it seemed like every year, or every other year the carnival came, someone seemed to disappear. Like my sister. Like Danny. It wasn’t always a child. Sometimes a teen, a young couple, or even an elderly person.  Mostly folks living in towns nearby, or vacationers.  How those people hear about the carnival, I will never know. Perhaps the whispers begin in their towns when the carnival is close.

I researched the lyrics of the song the clown had been singing, and what I found was that it matched the lyrics of the song from an old black and white movie about a laughing clown. The movie was filmed in Devil’s Peak, NC. The town that my family and I moved away from. The movie was also rumored to have been filmed by members of a cult, a troupe of artists creating art which transcended reality and morality. And I heard many things that are unspeakable, horrific, and downright insane. It goes against every notion of reality that we know of.

I returned to the carnival alone when I was 18. It came in late April, when the fog is thick off of the cove. When I couldn’t hold back anymore. I tried to fight it, to not give in. It had invaded my dreams, my nightmares, my waking thoughts. As I walked through the town I often looked amongst the people and wondered which of them had stumbled upon the sideshow, if any of them had had people taken from them. If any of them wanted to return to it.

The sideshow had been calling to me for so long.

When I got inside the carnival, it looked so different from the one I’d been to as a child. I didn’t know what to do at first. I almost thought that I was fooling myself, a young man caught up in the delusions of his childhood ghosts. But as I walked through the carnival, I smelled that rotting ozone odor, and I followed my senses back to that tunnel of tents and trees. Back into that place outside, inside reality.

When I got inside, I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to look for Danny, or maybe even Laurie. But the other part of me wanted to see the sights.

The second card said: “You will become extremely wealthy within 15 years. Don’t forget to bring a friend next time, or you will be joining us yourself.”

Both of my fortunes came true eventually.

The third time, I went when I was 25. I took a vagrant. I found him in a park in Portland drunk out of his mind. Bribed him with some booze. Like the geeks of old carnival days, I got him black-out and Shanghai’d him to the carnival. Gave him some story about how inside the carnival there a sideshow was full of beautiful women who would do whatever they wanted. He seemed pleased. My stomach turned, disgusted with myself. But the part at the back of my mind was thrumming with electric glee.

It was harder to find it the third time, but I found it. As soon as we got inside, I left him. He wandered off toward the stage of dancing woman. I walked around, went into the Museum, saw the Freak Show. Took my sweet, sweet time, taking in every moment of it, ingesting the essence of the sideshow into every pore.

I got my third fortune.

“Your friend isn’t a great sideshow member. Bring someone better next time. Someone with more Pizazz. Or it will be your smile we take. You will see your sister again.”

I was shaken… for one thing, I hadn’t thought my plan would work. It had been 7 years since my last visit, and part of me had believed the sideshow to be a traumatic dream of a lonely brother.

I felt so guilty afterward. I tried to force the carnival from my mind. But it conquered my thoughts. And when I woke up the next day, the sideshow diorama had gained a new doll.

I am about to turn 34. And it is December, a few days before Christmas. The town is aglow in soft white lights, caroling and songs floating from open doors and wasallers, snow falling silently in the shadows. And I hear the tinges of whispers concerning the carnival.

I will visit one last time, alone; my sister is waiting for me.

I go home to my old mansard. My parents are both dead now. Taken by Death in normal, non-sideshow ways. They died when I was 30, leaving me a vast fortune which I was unaware they possessed. Just as Zelda predicted.

In my room, on my desk, the diorama of the sideshow lights up, a lighthouse in a sea of fog. It still is not plugged in. I shiver and throw a blanket over it.

At first, I didn’t know what it meant when it first lit up again years ago. But I do now. It means the carnival is on its way. The light tells me the carnival is coming, long before the mutterings of the carnival’s arrival spread through the houses of Balsam like a plague.

About the Author

Zak Cowell is a horror author and published poet residing in Bangor, Maine, home of the \"King\" of Horror himself! He has had a collection of short stories published by Madness Heart Press titled: \"Tales From Devil\'s Peak\", and in 2024, his story \"The Tragedy of the Laughing Clown\" was produced for season 21, Episode 12 of the award winning podcast, \"The No Sleep Podcast\". His poetry has also appeared in numerous collections. He is a Horror Writers Association Affiliate as of 2025. When he isn\'t writing horror stories concerning mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the divine dark feminine which resides in all creation, and the strange duality of being both an animal and a man in the modern world, he likes to hike, work in his garden, and spend time with his wife Shelby and his two puppies. His instagram and Bluesky handle is Reprobvte.