1037: Story 1037: The Carnival of 100 Corpses 1037: Story 1037: The Carnival of 100 Corpses It arrived with no warning.
No trucks, no crew, no sound but the creak of rusted wheels and a calliope tune twisted in reverse.
By dawn, the Carnival of 100 Corpses had unfolded itself on the edge of Hollow Pines—just where the dead forest met the broken highway.
Locals awoke to bright colors stretched over decaying canvas, skeletal Ferris wheels spinning without riders, and striped tents that bled at the seams.
The gates were open.
Admission was free.
Curiosity is always the first to die.
Ezra Kane, a former mortician turned scavenger, was the first to step inside.
He’d seen things since the rise of the eldritch plague—things that clawed sanity and chewed through souls—but even he hesitated at the carnival’s smell.
Not of rot.
But of remembrance.
A scent like childhood grief and birthday cake left too long in a coffin.
Inside, the midway pulsed with unnatural life.
Skeleton clowns juggled severed heads that laughed.
Carnies stitched from stitched flesh barked at booths offering “Souls for Prizes” and “Whispers You Can Keep.” A carousel spun with eyeless horses and weeping children nailed to poles.
Ezra pressed on.
He had to find his sister—Mina.
She’d vanished a week ago after speaking to something in her dreams.
Something about a circus, a crown of worms, and dancing forever.
At the heart of the carnival stood the Main Tent—its entrance shaped like a screaming mouth.
Inside, under a bleeding spotlight, the ringmaster waited.
Dressed in a patchwork suit of skin and velvet, he grinned with too many teeth.
“Welcome,” he crooned.
“We’ve been expecting you, Ezra.”
He snapped his fingers.
And the Corpses began to dance.
One hundred bodies—dried, bloated, stitched, embalmed—rose from beneath the sawdust floor.
Dancers.
Acrobats.
Jugglers.
All grotesquely elegant.
Their faces twisted in silent ecstasy and agony.
Among them, Mina spun on broken toes, her eyes stitched shut, her hands bound in spectral ribbon.
“You can join her,” said the ringmaster, bowing low.
“But every carnival needs a closer.”
Ezra didn’t scream.
He didn’t run.
He set the tent on fire.
The Carnival shrieked.
The corpses wailed.
But even as flames licked the sky, the music played on—slower now, a dirge for the damned.
By dawn, the carnival was gone.
No ashes.
No sign.
Only a faint scent of carnival treats and formaldehyde on the wind.
They say it still reappears—never in the same place twice.
It feeds on grief, memory, and those who dance too close to death.
And always, it leaves behind a single flyer:
NOW SHOWING — THE GREATEST SHOW NEVER ALIVE ONE NIGHT ONLY.
OR FOREVER.