Goldenland Past Dark

“Chandler Klang Smith is one of the most exciting new novelists I have read in some time. Her precise, lyrical voice should enchant a good many readers.
Goldenland Past Dark
is an impressive debut that signals the beginning of a long and fruitful career.”

—Nicholas Christopher,

author of
Veronica
and
The Bestiary

“Like a Max Fleischer cartoon or a Charlie Chaplin film,
Goldenland Past Dark
sneaks in real, unsettling weirdness and lingering melancholy behind a facade of zany fun. In this vivid, highly original debut, Chandler Klang Smith proves herself to be an imaginative force to be reckoned with. Step inside this circus tent: you’ll be glad you did.”

—Christopher Miller,

author of
The Cardboard Universe

and
Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects

“Chandler Klang Smith’s debut is filled with fascinating freaks and language that evokes the magic of a night under the big top.”

—Lev AC Rosen,

author of
All Men of Genius

ChiZine Publications

Goldenland Past Dark
© 2013 by Chandler Klang Smith
Cover artwork © 2013 by Erik Mohr
Cover design © 2013 by Samantha Beiko
Interior design and divider image © 2013 by Danny Evarts

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Lyrics to “Nickelodeon,” on pages 246–248, by David Crellin, aka Armitage Shanks, The Carny Preacher (
www.thecarnypreacher.com
), reprinted with permission. With thanks to Pinky d’Ambrosia and Circus Contraption.

EPub Edition MARCH 2013 ISBN: 978-1-92746-937-8

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]

Edited by Samantha Beiko
Copyedited and proofread by Kate Moore

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

For Eric Taxier, my first and best reader, always.

“They’ll never find me, behind this nose.”

—Jimmy Stewart,
The Greatest Show on Earth

The clown is putting on his face
. Light bulbs ring his dressing room mirror, and on his vanity a dozen glossy photographs show him posed atop a saddled ostrich—he’s autographed about half of them, so far. Watching his reflection, he uses a delicate brush to paint dark diamonds around his eyes, then adds a dab of red to the tip of his nose. He draws surprised commas for eyebrows. Just as he’s finishing, a bejewelled acrobat appears at his door. She knocks shyly.

“Mr. Bell,” she says, “they’re waiting.”

Meanwhile, under the big top, the crowd rustles and fidgets in anticipation—until the ringmaster steps into the spotlight. His black shadow spills out behind him. Around his neck he wears a red bow tie, which spins slowly, like a tiny propeller.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he intones. “I give you the one—the only—king of the clowns!”

Deafening applause. Men lift their sons and daughters onto their shoulders to see. Women fan themselves excitedly. Some swoon.

Three burly men carry a life-sized painting of the clown in his harlequin suit out into the ring. The crowd groans with disappointment; they laugh sheepishly behind the backs of their hands. But even though it is only a painting, they feel strangely drawn to it. It’s a perfect likeness: the clown sits carelessly on a throne, surrounded by peacock feathers, bunches of grapes, and velvet curtains. He wears a tiny gold crown slightly askew and holds a sceptre topped with a jester’s head. His harlequin suit, checkered black and white, swirls like a dream of chessboards. He looks content, affable, with a guileless, almost childlike grin. He has a hunchback, is a bit on the small side, true, but these flaws just add to his quirky charm, like Charlie Chaplin’s moustache or baggy pants. In some inexplicable way, he looks familiar.

Gazing out on the crowd with hooded eyes, the ringmaster announces that he will now cast a spell, even though he retired from magic—“that dark art”—long ago. The three burly men prop up the painting on a giant easel, then cover it with a tarp. The ringmaster pulls on a pair of white gloves and draws a slender wand from his sleeve. It is black as ink, with an inch of white at its tip, like ash on a cigarette.

“Abeo, novo, exorior!” he thunders, slashing the wand through the air.

Smoke billows everywhere. As it clears, the three men remove the tarp from the painting. The crowd gasps. Though the painting is as beautiful as ever—the grapes, feathers, and curtains remain brilliant and unchanged—the clown is now standing outside the frame, crown, sceptre, and all.

Applause roars all around him, but the clown ignores it. He’s intent on getting back inside the painting. Much laughter as he shakes his jingling sceptre in annoyance, pushing and kicking the picture. He goes around behind it, climbs the easel and looks over the top of the frame. He walks away, then comes back with a running start and flings his body at the canvas. But it’s like running into a wall. He falls flat on his back. The crowd is in stitches. The ringmaster comes to help him up, but the angry clown just shakes his fist. You got me into this mess, he seems to be thinking. You get me out.

The clown limps around a little, scowls, and stomps his foot. Then he holds a finger in the air, struck by an idea. He hurries off stage left and returns with—a cannon! The crowd is now torn—some still howl with laughter, but many others shout warnings, shriek, cover their eyes. The clown ignores it all. He puts on a helmet and goggles, lights the long rope fuse with a gigantic match, and climbs into the barrel. He waves the three burly men over, and obediently, they aim him at the painting. The fuse burns, burns, burns, leaving a snail trail of ash, until, in a flash of sparks, he hurtles out.

He flies, and for a second as he hangs in the air, it seems like his plan might actually work. Then he tears straight through the canvas, leaving a clown-shaped hole.

Webern Bell woke up face down on the dirt floor of his tent, arms and legs splayed, as if he’d just been thrown a great distance. All around him, the canvas walls rippled in the wind, hitting the tent poles in dull slaps. He had the same queasy sensation he always did when he woke up too suddenly: that he wasn’t alone, that an intruder was too close for comfort, not just in the room with him, but a little ways inside his mind. Webern tried to ignore the feeling. He tried to pull the blanket up over his head, but someone else yanked it away first.

“We have to go,” insisted the blurred figure. Webern rubbed the hump that rose from the left side of his back, and squinting, reached for his glasses. It was just Explorer Hank, the animal tamer, crawling around the floor of the tent. Hank was busy stuffing the many pockets of his khaki shorts and safari jacket with everything he could grab: a rubber chicken, a set of red juggling balls, a slide whistle, a comic book.

“Hank, it’s still dark out.”

“It’ll get a lot darker if we don’t hurry.” Hank found Webern’s suitcase under a red wig and a pair of inflatable pants. He popped it open and started to throw things in. “A man like that sleeps for nobody.”

“Who, Dr. Show?” Sometimes, the ringmaster delivered Shakespearean curses and threatened them with the kinds of torture that hadn’t been around since the Middle Ages, but Webern knew better than to take him seriously.

“It’ll be us, next!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Webern pulled on a pair of dirty jeans. The roof of the tent was low—four feet high—but he was able to stand without stooping any more than usual. He glanced around, looking for his sneakers.

“Mars Boulder.” In his haste, Hank pulled a tent stake loose, and a flap of canvas whipped through the air. He said something else that Webern couldn’t hear. Needles of rain flew into the tent.

“Who?” Webern yelled over the roaring wind.

“Out there! Look!”

Webern peered out into the storm. In the middle of the campground, a meagre bonfire was still spitting. A lone figure circled it. He moved heavily but with terrifying force, like a tree tearing itself up by the roots. Silhouetted against the sky, his face looked smashed in, as though his nose had been broken several times. For a moment, as he gestured against the pale flames, Webern thought he was trying to conduct the storm. Then he saw that it was a sword he held in his hands.

“Meow?”

Webern looked down. Ginger, the tiger cub, was rubbing her face on his legs.

“Give her to me.” Explorer Hank crawled over to Webern, shoved the suitcase at him, and scooped up the bedraggled animal. “Shh, shh. Daddy’s here.”

Webern glanced around the tent. The only shoes still unpacked were a pair of green frogman flippers, so he stepped into those.

“I feel like a freak,” he said, looking down at his feet.

“No one’s gonna stab this kitty,” Explorer Hank murmured to Ginger. “Not if Daddy can help it, oh no.” He covered the tiger’s ears with his hands. “Stop upsetting her!” he hissed. “Just grab your shit so we can get out of here!”

Except for some empty Moxie cans and a sock or two, the dirt floor looked bare. Webern didn’t notice the circus’s travelling schedule left crumpled up in one corner. He hefted his suitcase and followed Explorer Hank out into the rain.

Cold drops stung Webern’s naked hunchback, and he hugged the suitcase to his chest self-consciously. Most of the other performers’ tents were already gone; Hank must have woken them sooner, when there was still time left for packing up. Leaving his bed behind in such cruel weather gave Webern a lightheaded feeling, and as he snuck along behind Hank, he thought vaguely of children in bedtime stories, who floated out their windows into the cold blue night.

Once they were far enough away from the campsite, Hank began to run across the empty field without looking back. Webern scrambled to catch up. Behind them, he thought he could hear blades clashing. Maybe it was only the wind.

“Hank,” he whispered, “c’mon, wait up. That guy does look nuts. Should we really just leave Dr. Show like this?” His arms ached under the weight of the suitcase.

Hank glanced over his shoulder, barely slowing down. “If you want to stay, it’s your funeral.” Ginger meowed and pulled herself up onto his shoulder. Her wide eyes reflected the distant fire. Hank kissed the top of her head, hushing her.

Webern’s flippers slapped the ground. A few yards away, a pair of headlights switched on. The white light blinded him. Hank hurried around to the side of the car, and Webern followed him.

The yellow Cadillac was packed with other circus performers. Webern sat with his suitcase on his knees, crushed between Hank and Brunhilde, the bearded lady. In front of him sat the giant, Al, who had the seat pushed all the way back.

“We leave now?” asked Vlad, who, along with his Siamese twin Fydor, sat in the driver’s seat. They were joined at the chest, in a pose that suggested they were always just on the verge of breaking off a brotherly embrace.

“Yeah, and step on it.” Hank slammed the car door and the Cadillac sped off down the muddy road.

Webern leaned forward to look around Brunhilde and out the window, but all he could see were raindrops racing across the glass. “Where’s everybody else? Where’s Nepenthe?”

“Schoenberg has brought this fate upon us all—foolish man.” Brunhilde swung her thick golden braid over one shoulder. She was a tall warrior goddess of a woman, with hips the breadth of reindeer antlers, and right now she was taking up half of Webern’s seat. “I warned him he must never cross a Klingenschmiede. They strike a devil’s bargain, and they never forget what they are owed.”

“Beats me how Dr. Show even found that Clinging Swede in the first place.” Hank tapped his riding crop against his knee; Ginger batted at it with her paws. “It’s some kind of curse. Riffraff and flimflam after us everywhere we go.”

“Like attracts like,” quipped Fydor. Vlad snickered.

“Enrique played his part too, though, didn’t he?” Hank leaned back in his seat. Enrique was the sword swallower, but he’d gambled away his blades in a cockfight two towns earlier, and since then had been putting decidedly less glamorous objects down his throat instead, like the handle of a shovel.

“Enrique’s just an excuse,” Al grumbled. “Dr. Show’s been saying for months he knew a guy out east with some antique sword for sale. Woulda thought it was Excalibur the way he talked. Probably the reason we came this way in the first place.”

“Can’t you all shut up for
one minute
?” Webern hated it when his voice squeaked. He tried to keep his breath steady. “I asked a simple—”

“Shh. Calm down, little buddy.” Hank ruffled Webern’s hair like he was another baby tiger. “She’s with Eng and Enrique, in the truck. They’re right behind us.”

Webern half turned to look. Sure enough, the jalopy followed them at a distance, tent poles strapped to its roof, dragging the rusty red trailer behind it. Its headlights flickered dimly as they strained against the night.

Webern Bell hadn’t been traveling with the circus long—he’d joined up in March and it was now only August—but already he couldn’t imagine going home again. He had grown up in Dolphin River, Illinois, a suburban town where the trees were skinny and the houses brand-new or (often as not) still under construction. The air there smelled like overturned dirt. Supermarkets announced grand openings every weekend. Jackhammers ripped through underground cables and put all the stoplights on the fritz, while the smokestacks of the light bulb factory poured endless clouds into the sky. Sometimes, walking through his neighbourhood, Webern would find a street full of nails, or discarded lumber cut into unusable chunks, like enormous jigsaw puzzle pieces. He didn’t know why he bothered exploring. Every road ended in a cul-de-sac.

Before Dr. Schoenberg discovered him, Webern lived with his father, a silent man who spent his evenings in an easy chair with a bottle of gin and a box full of war medals, which he often fell asleep clutching to his chest. Sometimes he rattled the box when Webern got too close. Webern had a mother once, and sisters too, but they were all gone. He hoped his sisters wouldn’t come back; he knew his mother never would. His high school was built right next to a garbage dump, but when he biked there in the mornings, he always felt like the vultures were circling him, not the mounds of steaming trash.