The Man With 1000 Faces: Carnival of Caine

[Harlan Higgs]

The Carnival of Caine

The Astral Realm. A place of utter mutability and fantasy. The dreamscape is a roiling place of color and sound, nightmares and desires. Those who touch it do so unwittingly, held by it's power until they awaken. But for a few, they know what they are touching. They walk among the nightly mysteries. And it is often their personal dreamspaces that are the most frightening.

Take the corner of the Astral Realm occupied by the mind of one known in the Omniverse as Harlan Higgs. The environment would be familiar to anyone who had lived in any sort of civilized universe. A large, stamped out area of a few acres in size, dirt and hay composing the ground, temporary buildings and wagons making their own temporary city.

A Carnival!

But this carnival is different. It takes many forms. When it's dreamer is visiting, or it is inhabited, it is bright and full of life, lights and colors and smells making the rusty gears of minutiae turn, the stalls and games stocked with many a memory from Higg's past, weird and wonderful and obeyant to his whims.

But when he is not here, the carnival is silent. The buildings ruined, tattered, the rides and booths abandoned. Staffed only by indistinct shapes, faceless ghouls, and nightmares of a creature of darkness. Here, a striped clown walks, hair made of razor wire, a grin carved into it's lips as it chuckles madly to itself and stalks off on wooden stilts.

A headless strongman, his nearly nude body ripped to pieces with deep, rended slashes, an almost psychotic fury taken in destroying their form. In burly, bleeding arms he hefts a hammer and waits, the former prince of Baltimore now just a memory in Harlan's head.

Simon the Malkavian juggles flaming torches, his eyes bulging as the snake he used to carry around his neck crawls in and out of his ears. In a roped off area, stone statues of various women watch in silence, some of their features blurred and indistinct, worn away. Others are vivid and lifelike, care paid to their features. Harlan's female associates, victims, conquests, and enemies. The Garden of Gorgon.

Here, a man in a copy of Harlan's trademark suit and hat stands, selling balloons. He is dead also, the sword that killed him sticking out of his chest. Another identity, tossed away into the recesses of the Ravnos's mind. 

In the center of the Carnival is the Big Top. The fabric is ripped and torn, but the interior cannot be seen. No one goes inside when Harlan is not here. He is the ringmaster. That's his place.

On the edges of the carnival is a looming apartment complex, bedecked with guady neon signs, unlit for the moment. "RIDE OF YOUR LIFE" "HOUSE OF HORRORS" The signs say. One much smaller one, emblazoned on the brickwork of the entrance, reads simply. "SHAME."

A man in a white suit and a red bowtie leans against the apartment building, smoking a cigarette. His suit is immaculate, and he shows no signs of death or agony. He should be nothing but a pile of ash. But Jimmy Twitch is more than a mere memory. His soul still exists. He is more powerful than the shades that stalk these grounds. 

After all, he is Harlan's Sire.

On the opposite side of the compound is a glass greenhouse, filled with fog and surrounded by especially muddy ground. It looks like an old bayou shack, surrounded by marshy swampland. A canoe and a vintage Budweiser refrigerator lie on the ground near the entrance. This building is marked "Reptile House."

A wind blows over the dead carnival. It is silent for now. 

But not for long.

[Gildarts]

The infinity that was the twisting and churning of man's mind would forever go untold to all men, save the secret-keeper, Behemoth.

The secondary remained shrouded in the cloak-like umbral shadow cast by his mind, his bony build was that of an atrophied corpse covered in baggy clothing that drenched off of him as though soaked in water. His snakelike eyes were gleaming in the darkness, or rather, through it. The man was short had hollowed, ghastly cheeks, and dual shaded half-moons underneath his eyes. Yet, as his gaze darted from side to side, the monster began to get his bearings in this world of secluded nightmares.

He had learned to walk the land easily enough, for mind was king in this world of soulless phantoms and could bring the intangible to life.

Behemoth was mischievously seeking, his beady eyes continued to slice through the land of dreams. Some of the Astral land was created by primes and left there, some remained claimed territory. The scrawny secondary had the vague notion he was indeed trespassing. But he could sense her. The source. The purpose and reason he had just damned that female prime Christa to a fate worse than insanity. Eternal stone. Sure her attitude was... Less than savory, he could justify she deserved it, even. That was not the point. He couldn't leave any trace of the catastrophic memories behind. Not when they could be resummoned by a prime. Not when his secret could be revealed and used against him. He’d taken the most severe precautions, even then safe passage could not be guaranteed.

So he'd stripped her mind first of the truth, she had returned to her pre-prime state. A helpless, pathetic, angsty secondary. Then, he'd cursed her. With his Weeping Angels she’d been transformed to stone. Now, she was sitting at the bottom of Neptune's Ocean, below the watery surface of Hell. Growing barnacles and green algae on the chiseled crevices of her body as the fish swam between her legs and crabs crawled over her numb stone toes.

He had gotten Christa to summon something a mere secondary like Behemoth never could alone and then he'd transported it to the Astral Realm, out of the destructive female's clutches before the treasure's form was revealed. For safekeeping. However now, time was of the essence. Ticking with its manipulating hands, sliding like sand from an hourglass, sizzling like the flint-lit fuse of a time bomb. It was definitely this direction, he could sense it as his mind probed into the vast expanse. He had to find it before...

In the void of black, a twinkling silver corral reflected in a sheen of a flickering light which descended from above like a lamppost from the sky. Behemoth had stumbled upon a gate.

An eerie checkpoint for the wayward secondary to cross, but one he had to surpass no matter what. The treasure he was tethered to lay  just beyond the subway-esque corral, calling to him and pulsing with mysterious allure. Standing with no other choice, Behemoth slowly slunk closer, nearing the gate and noting its requirement of passage was a ticket that he did not possess.

"No matter," he slithered. There were ways around it. The secondary placed a single hand on the mechanism and released a darkness into the metal. Corroding the entire silver mindscape to first deep turmeric colored rust and whatever was left turned to dust. A simple little curse, but effective enough to dethrone firewalls and pick locks. It would however alert the creator.

The gears of the mechanism jarred. Behemoth didn't have long now, he had to get moving but now before him, as he passed through the precipice, he realized there was a whole mindscape before him. One that Behemoth would have to search every nook and cranny of to find his prize.

…

A solemn silence ebbed in the abandoned wasteland. Yes, it was a virtual freaking dumpster of a dream, someone had taken a perfectly good construct and allowed it to fall into a completely dilapidated state. The keeper was either an untidy scab, or the purpose was to hide treasure below the shroud of garbage. Clever, he or she was, if it was the second case.

Behemoth would have to be weary now that his mind had alerted him of this danger, still, his footfalls were that of a raven’s gliding wing riding a breeze. From invisibility, Behemoth observed the land of darkness. Creatures crawling and thriving within the midnight, catching his eye but not enough for him to stop. There was… Distinct motive behind the design, the mindcrafter saw that now with ease. Behemoth was drawn to the tall striped canopy however something also pricked his mind, warning him to Beware.

The secondary tilted his head curiously, the game of hide-and-seek waged on as Behemoth crossed into darker waters, thicker horrors than just a headless body of sheer sinewy beef.

The secondary stalled his pace, feeling the importance of a building that did not fit in the carnival grounds. It stuck out like a shadowy sore thumb. Before him stood someone… Something of importance. The secondary wondered if it-he- could be used as a key, or if it was a live man standing guard within this dungeonscape.

Just what lay behind closed doors of a man or monster who kept his skeletons within an already undead carnival of ghosts and ghouls?