Music Box: The Dark Carousel, #4

By Anya Allyn

The DARK CAROUSEL series is a heart-stopping mix of American Horror Story and the fantastical elements of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

The final terrifying story of The Dark Carousel series.

As the day of Cassie's marriage to the centuries-old spirit, Balthazar, grows chillingly close, she finds a secret way to the high tower. The shadowy inhabitant of the tower has haunted her mind since her first day at the castle.

In the tower, Cassie makes a shocking discovery, after which nothing can be the same.

Before Cassie's last stand against the castle ends, she'll fight the serpent shadows that swoop in like spectres from across the frozen wastelands, and she'll face down Balthazar and the serpent empress herself. 

But her greatest fight will come from within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anya Allyn
• Release date: May 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781540137784

Anya Allyn

Book III coming in mid-2013. Updates on the Dollhouse books at: http://dollhousetrilogy.com I greatly value your reviews and feedback, Anya [e-mail]  

Book preview

PROLOGUE

CASSIE

I listen to the mantra of the waves crashing far below this balcony that clings to the cliffside.

There’s no escape.

There’s no escape.

I have become the bride of the monster—Monseigneur Balthazar Batiste. I’m confined to his dank, dark quarters far below the castle.

He’s convinced that I am a descendant of his wife from the fourteenth century—Etienette—and he demands that I bear his children. Balthazar is a ghost, but in two months time when the spring ends, Henry and the others will bring him a new body from the fourteenth century of another earth.

On the first day of summer, Balthazar will wake. Until then, he keeps me like a china doll in a glass cabinet, with all his former wives. I am only allowed brief respites from my prison, from midnight to dawn, out here on the balcony that hangs above the ocean.

Everything . . . everything has slipped from my grasp. From the time Molly and I were brought to the castle on this windswept cliffside in France, every hope has blown away. My parents are dead. Almost everyone from my world is gone. And Molly is dying.

My grief is a glacier.

The entire earth is frozen solid. The serpent creatures rule the oceans, devouring humanity, sending out their shadows to destroy any who stand in their way. Balthazar and the people of the castle control it all, waiting for the second book of the Mirrored Tree, when all the stars will be theirs.

Cold steals in like a strangling vine of ice, despite the suffocating humidity of this night. When Ethan came to see me after my ill-fated marriage, Balthazar threw him onto the moors, to be eaten alive by the castle panthers.

My heart lies forever locked away in the music box Ethan gave to me. I’ll never stop hearing that tune.

1. THE PATH

ETHAN

ONE MONTH AGO

Cassie’s face is white with terror as Balthazar flings me high into the night sky and sends me over the castle wall. I land on the spongy, damp ground of the moors. Yellow-eyed creatures tear snarling through the open gatehouse. Cassie’s scream slices the air.

Jumping to my feet, I race across the moors to the forest. I need to reach the tree with the hollow, the tree in which Cassie keeps the music box. There’s a Path next to the tree—an invisible tunnel back to the museum. The castle doesn’t know about the Paths. If I can reach it, I can escape the panthers and return to find a way to get Cassie out of here.

In the pitch dark, I can’t find where I need to go. The low, rumbling roars of the cats are just behind me. One of the cats leaps on me—the weight of his body knocking me from my feet—and I tumble with him.

I wait for all three panthers to pounce, but it doesn’t happen. I wait for death, but instead am pulled backward at enormous speed, so fast that all grows black and I’m knocked out.

Only when I gain consciousness do I understand what happened. Someone, at some time, must have traveled through a shadow to that tree and left a Path behind. And I fell into it. I must have been hurtling through the shadow-tunnel unconscious.

I don’t know where I am or where to step off. Have I reached the museum yet?

I come to a stop and am hurled out of the Path.

Just below the clouds.

Wind shrieks in my ears as I see the face of a distant silver moon. A blizzard captures my body and tosses it about like a crazed dog with a bone.

Below me, the world gleams darkly white.

Ice.

I brace myself for what must come. Landing on the ice world at this speed will kill me.

I plummet. I have seconds before it’s all over. Mere seconds. Cassie’s tortured expression hangs in the space before my eyes. Two thoughts puncture my mind:

I didn’t save her.

Her fate is infinitely worse than mine.

White death pushes toward me. My eyes close and I see only her.

I hit the ground with a shattering force. My consciousness tears away.

2. CLEAR LAKE

ETHAN

PRESENT DAY

We need to make a decision.

The voice is gruff and to the point. My limbs feel frozen, fused to the surface below me. I concentrate on moving, opening my eyes, but I’m immobile. I don’t know where I am or what happened to me.

I don’t think we can wait any longer. He’s seemed on the edge of waking the past few days, but we can’t take him with us with this. It’s a woman’s voice this time, crisp and questioning. I sense her peering down at me. And we don’t know who he is. Those are old knife wounds on his neck. I know he’s just a kid, but he’s probably been mixing with bad sorts for quite a while now.

True. The man sighs heavily. It’s terrible, but perhaps I should have left him to drown.

Drown. So I ended up in a lake. Or a river. Something that had no layer of ice over it.

Light, scattered footfall runs across floorboards. Children. The smell of wood chips and baking bread drifts into my nostrils. I’m in someone’s home. A fire crackles somewhere in the room. But I can feel the chill underneath the warmth. Whoever these people are, they’re either running low on wood or afraid to draw attention to themselves by sending too much smoke into the air.

My eyelids begin twitching. I remember Cassie’s terrified eyes. I remember Balthazar sending me tumbling into the moors. I remember the hungry panther eyes. Fractured images spill into my eyes as I open them. Cassie’s face merges with the face of a young girl, no more than eight years of age. A ruddy-faced boy of about four stands close by her, holding a toy airplane.

The woman touches the boy’s shoulders protectively, examining my face. You’re okay. My husband fished you from Clear Lake. We’re park wardens, or we were, until the day winter came and never left. She pauses for a moment. We’ve got guns and know how to use them.

Her eyes are calm, with a reserve behind them that tells me she means what she says. I’m confused by her accent. She sounds American, but the tone is softer.

I try to nod a thank-you, but my neck’s too stiff.

Don’t try to move too much. You’ve been unconscious for almost a month and you’re likely to be stiff, she tells me.

A whole month? I’ve been here like this for that long? Panic rushes through me. I need to get out of here and back to Cassie. I can guess these people have checked my clothing for weapons and have taken everything they could find.

The man moves into my field of vision, and gives me a sip of water. Bushy fair eyebrows frame heavy-lidded blue eyes. His cheeks and nose bear the yellowish patches of frost nip. He’s most probably been venturing farther and farther out into the freezing temperatures around him, looking for wood and supplies. We won’t be here much longer. Would have been already gone if you hadn’t of showed up.

Where? My throat is as dry as old carpet. Where am I?

You don’t know where you are, eh? His expression changes, a guarded veil closing over his eyes.

I tell him no in a raspy whisper.

You’re at Riding Mountain, next to Clear Lake.

How close . . . to Miami?

The man stares around at his wife before turning back to me. Kid, let’s just say that you’re nowhere near Miami.

I rub my head with a hand that feels like wood. How far had I traveled? An image enters my head—an image of the moon. I remember being flung out into the empty black sky, with only the moon for company. When I’d fallen into the Path back on the moors, I’d been unconscious. I must have been sent spinning way, way past the museum. The point at which I’d fallen from the Path’s invisible tunnel must have been straight over that lake I’d splashed into. There was no way of jumping into a Path from here.

The small boy’s eyes are round as he eyes me with an open stare.

The man breaks the silence. How about I ask you a few questions, eh? How did you get here?

I try to make my hazy mind function and come up with a good story, but nothing comes to me. Look, I don’t know how I got here. My mind’s blank.

Seems that you used to lead a pretty colorful life? He holds up an array of knives, picks, rope and grappling hook, and lastly a machete.

I recognize the weapons as being mine, but there’s no explanation I can give that wouldn’t be a lie. To tell them what really happened wouldn’t go well for me. These people are from the normal world, a world in which people don’t know about ghosts or shadow Paths. Maybe I did. I have to thank you both for saving my life. But if you’ll return those to me, I’ll leave now and I won’t trouble you further.

The woman sits in a tentative pose on a chair at my bedside. And how will you know which way to go, if you don’t even know where you are?

If you’ll point me towards Miami, I’ll start walking.

Her expression is faintly incredulous. Well now, first you’d need to cross the border from Canada to America, and then keep heading south for, oh, a few months. If you intend on walking the whole way, that is.

"Canada . . . ? I can’t be that far north." My breaths quicken.

Her husband wraps the weapons in thick canvas, depositing the package in a trunk beside their fireplace. The weak glow from the fire is orange on the weather-beaten skin between his cap and blondish beard. Indeed you are. I have a proposal for you. My family and I are heading for Camp Greenwillow, in Chicago. You come with us and help protect our family until we reach the camp.

The woman raises her gaze in a quick single motion to her husband, giving a slight shake of her dark head. "We don’t know who he is. He could be with the . . . others." She says the last word in a hushed tone.

He crosses the wooden floor toward me. We’ll give you no weapons. And if you make a wrong move . . . we won’t hesitate. Do I need to say more?

No. The muscles in my back hurt as I force myself to sit upright. Which way is the camp? I need to go south.

Chicago, Illinois. It’s the direction you want to go.

The fuzz in my head fades. "I’ll come with you. But I need some form of defense. What’s the point of having me along if you leave me useless?"

We don’t plan on allowing anyone close enough for you to need to defend yourself, the man tells me. Our plan is safety in numbers. My brother and his kids live in a town that’s on the way. We’re heading there, then making our way to the camp together. Now, can you walk?

Pulling my legs over to the side, I place my feet on the floor and test the weight of my body. My limbs are sore and awkward.

My knee joints are almost rigid as I make my way to the window. Outside, snow falls on a sharp angle. I’m ready to go.

But I’m not ready at all, and it’s the next day before my legs obey me and walk straight and solid. The family waits while I regain my strength. I hungrily gulp down the food they give me. The man tells me they fed me spoonfuls of soup and water for the past weeks but I hadn’t fully woken. His words are short, not giving out any more information than asked for. When I ask him for their names, he hesitates, then introduces himself as Jack, his wife as Deandra, and the kids as Mia and Jared. If these people are all I have to defend me on the trek ahead, then I want to at least be on a first-name basis.

All the while, the boy cautiously zooms his airplane in a downward motion, while his eyes remain fixed on me. At his age, probably the only thing he knows or remembers about planes is the sight of them falling from the sky. When the freeze came in the middle of summer eight months ago, their engines seized up. No planes are ever seen in the sky, anymore. Blizzards are unpredictable and frequent.

Outside, snow begins to fall.

3. CAMP GREENWILLOW

ETHAN

The landscape is bleak, swallowed up in a film of grayish-white. At least the snow is hard enough to walk on without landing knee-deep in it. The couple take turns carrying their youngest child, the boy. I’m asked to walk ahead.

We walk on for hours without seeing anyone at all.

Jack steps up beside me. Where’re you originally from, Ethan? He sounds friendly, but there’s a guarded undercurrent.

I blow out a stream of white air. A small, country town in Australia.

He eyes me from beneath his thick eyebrows. You’re a long way from home. He looks younger than I thought he was. The craggy beard and the effects of extreme weather on his face have made him seem fatherly, but he’s probably no older than his early thirties.

Yeah. I can’t explain how I came to be in the US, and if he doesn’t ask, then I’m not going to have to make something up. The safest thing is to change the subject. How do you know about the place you’re heading to? I mean, there’s no one around in any direction. Who told you there’s a rescue camp?

He nods as he gathers his thoughts. There was a mass airplane drop of pamphlets by the army. Told us about Camp Greenwillow. Seems there was an earlier camp, in Minneapolis, but they’ve moved everyone out of there already. Anyway, we hung on at home. We had enough food stores and supplies to wait it out until things got better. I made the trip down to see my brother two months ago. We decided that if things got desperate for me and my family, we’d come down to his house, and we’d all travel to the camp together.

The people from the Minneapolis camp—where’d they move them to?

You ask a lot of questions, eh?

Just trying to understand. Why are they shifting people elsewhere?

Probably not enough food supply. There’s the Great Lakes in Wisconsin and Michigan. Maybe there’s enough fish there to feed the people. If not, then the flyer said they might have to take people straight across to New York City.

My leg muscles tighten, and I’m forced to stop. That’s on the ocean.

Well, yeah? More fish in the sea than a lake.

I just think they’re better off keeping people away from the ocean, that’s all. Something tells me it’s not a good idea to keep questioning Jack. The army wouldn’t know what’s lurking out there in the Atlantic. Maybe the serpents hadn’t reared their ugly heads anywhere up that end of the coast. I didn’t know how, but I was going to have to warn the army about the serpents when we got to Camp Greenwillow.

My legs start paining from fatigue. I force them to function, keep walking.

Relief washes through me at the sight of buildings ahead. Somewhere to rest. We blunder through the snowdrifts that almost threaten to bury us alive on the outskirts.

The town is small, all low-lying buildings with some of them barely keeping their rooftops above the snow. Jack knocks on doors, rattles doorknobs. No one answers, and in the unlocked stores and homes we walk into, there is no one. It’s like a frozen ghost town.

Maybe they’ve all moved on to the camp. Deandra squeezes her children’s shoulders. We’ll be there too, soon.

I’m going to try Barney Jones’s farm, Jack tells her in a grim tone.

Her brow wrinkles. Don’t you remember? Barney went to live in an old folks’ home last spring.

Yeah. But his farm hasn’t been touched. His middle-aged kids have been wrangling over what to do with his estate. He had a couple of snowmobiles in his shed. They’re in working order. He always said he was keeping them in case he needed to make a quick escape. Poor Barney, they got him in the end.

He had Alzheimer’s. He couldn’t stay at the farm. Dee’s voice is soft as she looks across at the wind-blown ice decorating the distant pine trees.

The mention of Alzheimer’s makes me think of Granddad. Was he even still alive? Then I see Cassie in my mind, in that damned wedding dress. Had Balthazar hurt her? Here, in Canada, I was useless. I couldn’t get to where I needed to go.

But I bet the snowmobiles are still there, says Jack. His kids are city folk. I don’t think they even bothered to poke around his property.

Her eyes widen. Okay, let’s go look.

I follow Jack and Deandra to a place that sits on the other side of town. Barney’s house must be small, because I can’t see any sign of it, but the barn is huge.

Jack breaks the barn’s lock with a hand tool. He opens the door just a fraction to ensure that the snow stays out. The barn stinks of animal fur and droppings, even though the animals are long gone. And grease—the barn stinks of grease. Crammed full of machinery, tools, and memorabilia, the barn seems as though it had belonged to a human pack rat. It’s a wonder the old man was able to move about in here. Jack stomps about, looking under sheets of canvas, and between the twelve-foot corridors of shelving, where Barney had stored everything from books to antique signs to old gas pumps.

Here, Jack calls.

I walk with Deandra to the snowmobiles that Jack had uncovered. They are metallic-blue Kawasaki mobiles with red stripes and faded lettering. They look a few decades old. I help Jack pull them out.

Jumping onto one of the vehicles, I try starting the engine.

Jack places a firm hand on my arm. Don’t.

I look up at him. Just trying to see if they’re still working.

We don’t want to make noise . . . and alert anyone. Last time I came this way, there were some odd people about. Jack puts Mia and Jared onto the other mobile. There’s excitement on their cold-stung faces. These kids are nothing like the kids in Miami. They know nothing about reapers and alien serpents, and this is all just an adventure to them.

Jack walks a few steps away, and I understand I am to follow. Look, he tells me in a low voice, no one’s got any fuel left around here. And if someone who’s after fuel hears these engines, they might just want to take the mobiles for themselves. As soon as we start them, we’ve got to go and go hard, and we’re not going to stop. Understand?

Yeah. It’s the same situation back in Florida. Except, well, there’s no snowmobiles there. You walk knee-deep in snow or you go nowhere. The only ones with vehicles are the enemy.

He glares at me. What the hell are you talking about?

Which part? I curse myself. I said I wouldn’t tell Jack any more about what life was like down there. He probably already thinks I’m a liar or psychotic—or both.

Kid, don’t try bullshitting me. There’s no snow in Florida. And just who are the enemy, eh?

There’s no point backing down now, so I stand my ground. You can think what you want, Jack. There’s nothing I can do about what you will or won’t believe.

Deandra stands behind us, her brown eyes full of worry. Let’s get moving. I’ll take one with the kids. You two take the other. She gives me a quick glance. You’d better drive the thing.

I immediately understand. Jack’s going to be the one to guard all of us, and keep a watch on me.

Jack strides away with his shoulders hunched.

The snowmobiles start after a few tries, as Jack predicted they would.

I find it difficult to control the vehicle and have to keep it fairly slow for the first twenty minutes or so.

Snow falls faster now. The landscape is so desolate, I wonder how Jack and his family survived out here all this time. Or how anyone else is surviving in what seems like the middle of nowhere, completely snowed in. Deandra steers her vehicle ahead of ours, avoiding the deeper snow. Jack sits behind me, giving short half-sentence directions. We’re making ground, only maybe not enough if this snowfall turns into a blizzard.

We ride out of town. I try to look for street signs or posts. But after half an hour of riding and looking out for signs, it seems that if there were any around here, they’ve fallen and been swamped under layers of ice.

When a group of people run at us, it’s as though they just appeared out of nowhere. One minute there was nothing but wide empty spaces between snow-flanked trees, and now there’s a menacing-looking mob. Then I realize they didn’t just materialize. There’s a building completely buried, with people jumping from some kind of makeshift door escape hatch in the roof.

Get out of here! Deandra yells to me.

I follow her lead. Jack turns and fires a single shot behind us.

More people appear on the other side of us, seeming to climb out of the icy ground itself. There could be hundreds more, all waiting in their burrows like moles.

Jared screams, clinging to his mother. Mia bends forward, arms around her brother, trying to shield him. Deandra tears ahead of us, on a narrow trail between icy hills. If people come at her from the front, she’ll have to plough straight through them, or else they’ll stop her dead. And if Deandra gets stopped, I don’t like our chances. There’s too many of them.

Jack fires another shot. I glance over my shoulder. Two rocks spin past us. They’re trying to bring us down any way they can.

Deandra’s mobile flies into the air as it heads over a sharp hill. She lands the mobile upright and I exhale in relief.

Hurry! Jack’s breaths are ragged in my ears.

But the thing won’t go any faster. A rock hits my arm. I keep going, zigzagging after Deandra. She’s headed the best way she could. There’s unlikely to be any houses in the thick of a forest.

We leave the ambushing people far behind. The forest looks like something out of a serene winter postcard. We keep going for another half hour without stopping.

A blizzard strikes without warning. The whole world is white and gray. A town appears on the horizon, a mere blur that I might have missed if Deandra wasn’t heading straight for it.

Deandra rides into town and along what must be the main street. She continues on, winding through the streets. It’s a much larger town than the last, but it has the exact same feeling about it—abandoned. She stops alongside a tall house painted in a faded sky-blue. Jack jumps from the snowmobile and treads through the deep snow to the front door. When no one answers his knock, he moves around the perimeter of the house, seeming to be looking for another entry. Finally, he smashes in a glass pane and unlocks a window.

Our boots echo hollowly on the wide stretch of floorboards as we step inside.

In the huge wooden kitchen, the pantry door lies open, the contents looted. Snow plops down and lands on the kitchen counter. Jack leans heavily on the kitchen counter, his face turned up to a hole that goes straight through the ceiling and roof. He stares at the snow coming through as if it’s an enemy he can’t quite figure out.

Deandra drops to her knees by the fridge, pulling out a piece of water-logged paper from underneath it. It’s a note from Mike, she tells Jack.

He frowns at the limp note in her hand. What does it say?

Says they went to the camp already. The army came into town and took all remaining food supplies, and told them to head off.

Anything else? he asks.

He just says he’ll see you at the camp.

Jacks shrugs, but the shrug is stiff. Well, okay then. So, we’ll stay here overnight and head out again tomorrow.

Pulling up a stool, I seat myself at the kitchen counter. Every muscle in my body aches. I’m guessing Mike is your brother?

Yeah, says Jack. Got three teenage kids. His wife died of cancer four years ago.

Deandra starts pulling out the food she’s packed in a backpack. We eat at the kitchen counter, the kids asking when they’re going to see their cousins.

Afterward, we put the mobiles away in the shed, Jack keeping both ignition keys safely in his pocket.

Darkness drops down like a smothering curtain, and the temperature plunges. It’s too dangerous to light a fire. Jared asks repeatedly to go home and starts crying, balling his fists under his chin. Jack carries him upstairs, and the four of them sleep together in the same room. I hear the lock turn on the door. They don’t trust me. That much is evident.

I haven’t known silence and darkness as complete as this, except for the Toy Box of the underground. Bunking down in a kid’s bedroom, I fall into a dream, and I dream of Cassie. Every muscle clenches as I wake in a cold sweat.

It takes three days to reach Illinois. The huge towns we pass on the way are emptied of people—either dead or gone. There’s a small supply of oil hidden at Mike’s house, enough to refuel the mobiles for the first leg, but not enough to keep going. Jack and I search people’s abandoned houses for any sign of fuel or food, making sure the kids don’t see any of those families who’d stayed too long and had frozen to death.

Jack and Deandra now understand at least this much: the world has changed, and stealing isn’t stealing, anymore. It’s survival.

Last night, we saw distant explosions lighting up the sky like fireworks. I couldn’t guess what that was about, but I didn’t like it. Jack didn’t want to talk about it. His mind was bent on reaching camp, and that was it.

When we reached Chicago, Jack and Deandra visibly relaxed. Much of the desperation of the last few days lifted from their expressions. Everything was going to be okay now.