Circus of Fear

It's ok to fear the dark my child.
Fear does not simply form out of childish ignorance.
For all fears there is a flicker of reason.
In the dark outside your home you may one night hear the sound of screams, singing, and bells.
Do not shudder, my darling, for it is simply the world you don't hear, that isn't seen, that you should be afraid of.
For in the absence of sight and sound awaits the true terror.
When the sounds call you you can not answer.
Hide beneath your sheets, turn on the light if you must.

In truth this does nothing.

Simply avoid the temptation to follow the sounds you don't hear and leave your curtains shut.
Out your window the darkness is pure.
With no light to keep you safe.
In this dark is the flickering of torchlight.

Once you've seen it it's already too late.
You will feel the flames beckoning, calling for you, and you will lose yourself in them.
Should you follow them into the shadows your path will become clear.
A pitch black forest.
The only light is the flicker of the torches burning away the dark among your path.
After the hypnotic call of the dark has faded you will be aware of your surroundings.
You may not have realized you even left the warmth of you bed until now.

As you stand outside the rotting, patched up tarp, flapping in the wind, The torches continue to glow.
Revealing the image of the hideous tent before you.

Red and white stripes slide gruesomely down it's sides. Flags, flayed and tattered, dance restlessly in the freezing wind.
Cages on wheels and rotting caravans litter the dark wood around you.
Nooses, ancient and frayed grip the dead trees tightly, hanging motionless despite the wind.
This is his home, for you are now a guest in his world.
He who waits in the shadows, he who is the very dark that engulfs you.

For in this world there is no light to vanquish his pitch black reach.
This, my poor child, is The Circus of Fear.

The eye of terror, and source of your fear.
It lies just outside our world.
The dark is it's portal, it's door that connects our worlds.
Inside the air is thick with screams, cries, horrible songs, and the stench of rotting flesh.
In it's stands rive others, once like you, now what you would become.
Knowing nothing but darkness and pain.
Below them the show is beginning.

The clowns, too terrifying to comprehend, with stitches, scars, mangled limbs, and hundreds of horrible eyes.
And blood stained jaws smiling blankly at their audience, lurch, limp, and crawl out of the darkness.
Flying abominations tear onlookers from the stands, hang them on meet hooks and shove glass shards beneath their fingernails.

Slowly for days the screams and singing of the mad continues.
Over time blood fills the center, drowning those who bled it.
When their games have ended, the shadows consume them once again.
Silencing all the terrible sounds of the damned.

The darkness takes on it's own life.
Taking on the very image of fear in the form of an elegant, slender man.
Dressed in a tall and very clean tuxedo and beautiful top hat with a playing card wedged into the band.
From below the rim of the hat shine two perfectly round eyes.
Glowing with seemingly impossible brilliance.

And a horrible smile carved happily into his face.
As he opens his grinning maw his hundreds of pointed teeth begin to part.
As he addresses his imprisoned audience he speaks loudly with otherworldly enthusiasm and cheer

"Welcome! Ladies, Gentlemen. Children and those who should've died long before them! Welcome To the Circus of Fear!
And now that our final guest has arrived! Now we can truly begin to entertain!"