The Otherland Circus

By Kelsey Elizabeth Behm

Lizzie Lutwidge knows her father is up to something. Albert Lutwidge is head psychiatric scientist at Londons grand asylum, the Paupers Lunatic Mill. For as long as Lizzie can remember, Albert has been studying the young females of the asylum while reading Lewis Carolls Alice in Wonderland. Lizzie makes the connection between the two when she reads a letter intended for her brother. Whenever she asks him about it, however, he loses his typically happy smile and becomes stoic and withdrawn, refusing to answer her questions.

Lizzie being ever curious, her familys reluctance to speak only spurs her into her own investigation. It all started with a girl named Alice. Now the path to rehabilitation at Paupers Lunatic Mill is doused in blood. Can Lizzie save the girls whom life has so horribly hurt? Perhaps they dont want to be saved, as each woman wanders towards a wonderland of violence, darkness and desire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532044809

Kelsey Elizabeth Behm

Kelsey Elizabeth Behm has been telling stories her whole life. The only things she loves more than books are her cats, Queen Katie Cat, Sir Charlie Mouse and Captain Jack Sparrow. Born and raised in the Saskatchewan prairies, Kelsey is committed to writing full-time. Her dreams are often excellent inspiration, as they tend to be detailed and infused with dark scenarios.

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THE OTHERLAND CIRCUS

Copyright © 2018 Kelsey Elizabeth Behm.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4478-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4479-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4480-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018902818

iUniverse rev. date: 06/04/2018

Contents

Part 1 - The Arrival of Ms. Pumpkin

Part 2 - The Panda, Up to Bat

Part 3 - The Courtier’s Lullaby

Part 4 - The Doll’s Precious Seed Awakens

Part 5 - Alice

Epilogue

Part 1

THE ARRIVAL OF MS. PUMPKIN

A H , WALKING SLOWLY DOWN THE street after dark. She has no idea where she is going. Around the corner there—what is this frightening sight? Ah! It must be the Otherland Circus. The Madame dressed in red, the Panda—batter up! The Diva Doll and the Mistress Courtier. Hey, lalulalula, come watch us perform! The fiends of the moonlit night just for you. Oh, nonunonuno, the mutilations of this land! Come, there is still time for the show!

The thousands of bright lanterns that adorned the wide, cobble stoned path were each of a different colour, strung across the archways where masked inhabitants peered down, watching the festivities. There were clowns and dancers parading through the middle of the road, singing of a carnival and a feast and urging everyone to follow them. Despite the cheers of the crowd and the colours of fancy, the celebration appeared sinister to Anne, in a way that made her heart quiver. Many masked beings had already approached Anne directly, attempting to force her into following the crowd, and she found herself hugging the side walls in order to avoid them as well as to keep herself from being trampled. It seemed strange to her that such a lonely place could be alight with so many bodies, their festival the only source of life she could see.

The Carnival only leads to misery. The real fun lies within a tent strung up by the true Alices of this land.

The song was soft and dreary, very much unlike the sinister happiness of the other, louder voices, and it caught Anne’s attention immediately. Tearing her eyes from the brightness of the street, she peered around until she spotted a dark alleyway across from her. There, around the corner, just inside the alley, stood a beautiful woman scantily clad in the most feminine of attire, the iridescent, see-through fabric giving her skin an ethereal blue glow. Typically Anne held no interest in such things, preferring the simple pants and hat of her brother’s wardrobe over the clothing that adorned this woman’s body. However, there was something about the way the woman beckoned to her with a single finger, while humming that dreary tune, that aroused Anne’s curiosity further. Carefully, Anne made her way across the street and approached the strangely seductive woman, ignoring the classic warning about strangers that danced through her head, listening, instead, to the eerie woman’s song.

Through the alley and to the side lies a circus for the lost to find.

The woman was gone in an instant, darting through the darkness of the narrow side street with nothing but an echo of her giggles left behind her. Anne hesitated for only a moment, looking back to the bright safety of the main road. Her father had always warned her about alleys, and his deep voice rumbled in Anne’s head of its own accord: They lead only to the madness of the mind. As nothing good comes of it, ’tis best to stay upon the main path, where you’re sure to find a safe end.

With a defiant smile on her face, Anne tossed the words from her mind and, putting the lights behind her, turned to run down the dark path, twisting this way and that after the strange mistress. She had always preferred the unknown to the safe and well trotted.

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No time, no time! I’m already late.

But, Allen! Lizzie called out to her brother. However, he had already dived down the subway stairs like a rabbit through its hole. Heaving a sigh of irritation, Lizzie stared into the dark stairway with a sense of defeat. This was not the first time Allen had managed to wriggle his way out of Lizzie’s grasp and disappeared from her sight. It seemed that no matter how Lizzie tried, she was always a step behind her brother. If Allen would only answer her questions, Lizzie could be content with her proper place in the world, sitting in their home reading her stories and being kept away from whatever it was that her brother and father had been studying since before her birth.

Really, it was Allen’s fault that Lizzie was even curious about such things to begin with. It had been her father who’d filled her head and room with stories like Lewis Carroll’s famous Alice in Wonderland since she was a child, but Allen had been the one to leave that cryptic letter open and displayed on the dining table. Lizzie had always known her father was studying young females deemed insane by the law—as he was head psychiatric scientist at London’s grand asylum, the Pauper’s Lunatic Mill, it was an obvious part of his job—but she had never heard of the intriguing details the letter described until that fateful day. Lizzie had been thrilled and excited to learn about the Alice Effect, as the letter called it, but whenever she had queried Allen about the subject, he would spout an excuse of being late for an appointment and promptly dash away. Seeing as Allen was indeed always late for something, Lizzie had accepted the excuse at first, but after months of trying to corner the man, Lizzie was at her wits’ end with frustration. She was no longer a child but rather a grown woman of intelligence and reasoning! Surely she could handle those darker stories her father and brother seemed to be rapt upon studying until they were inside out and outside in. Both men were simply maddening, and Lizzie was sick of being left in the dark without so much as a match to light her way.

Echoes of footsteps travelled up from the darkness Lizzie stood above—and for the first time she truly considered the stairs she had never set foot upon when alone. The idea of slipping down the hole after Allen had never truly occurred to Lizzie before, as Albert had driven it into her skull through his stories of Alice that it would lead to nothing good. However, the idea simply popped into her head this day and straight out refused to go away. It grew stronger with each passing moment as Lizzie stood staring into the unknown.

Squaring her shoulders in feigned confidence, Lizzie found herself taking her first steps down the cold, dark stairwell towards the massive underground system. She had only ever ridden the subway in the presence of her father, so buying a ticket and figuring out which was the appropriate train was a rather difficult and time-consuming task. Being a woman of logic, however, she figured it out in the end. She soon found herself standing in the train, her grip on the handle above her tight, as though her palm was not, in fact, sweating her anxiety through her skin. Even though countless bodies surrounded her, Lizzie felt alone amongst the sea of faceless strangers. When she had last seen the asylum, she had been a young girl, curious and stricken with wonder at the asylum’s inhabitants. Though she could no longer remember what she had seen, Lizzie travelled there now with a feeling in her chest that spoke of eager intent laced with fear of the unknown. She would find her answers soon enough.

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So Anne followed the girl through alleys she’d been told never to venture down, for ‘they lead only to madness.’ Hand in hand, she followed obediently. Hush, hush, for the circus has begun!

The circus grounds shone with all the colours the main street had held, but the thinnest of fog dulled the effect, giving the lights an eerie and appealing glow that the main street could not match. With a keen interest, Anne walked through the circus, pleased to see that she was the only stranger traversing between the stands. Only the tumbleweeds and the classic circus music from the old, high speakers accompanied Anne on her journey, and as she made her way past the merry-go-round, a feeling of calm eased its way into her senses. Anne realized that this place made her feel very similar to how she imagined being at home should feel, which was quite intriguing, seeing as Anne had never felt such a thing within the walls of her physical home in the past. In fact, Anne had not felt anything that was even comparable, save for the old, rusting memory of her mother’s arms.

Ride the ride, chained to a pair. Shift round and be merry, till marriage is found, and gone is despair.

Wind blew the Mistress’s hair before her face, obstructing most of the woman’s features, and Anne found herself staring into big blue eyes. The Mistress was sitting gracefully upon a stoic glass unicorn, and for a moment Anne thought she saw the beast shed a tear.

Who are you? Anne asked, approaching the ride with awe in her eyes. The woman smiled, offered Anne a delicate hand that she took with readiness, and pulled her up and onto the ride. Anne sat on the dragon opposite the Mistress’s unicorn, and the ride started seamlessly, as though it had been waiting for her.

The Mistress Courtier, the one who holds your gaze, is such the Procurer of young souls for this most intricate maze.

Reminiscent of a lullaby was the Mistress’s voice, entrapping Anne within its lyrical lilt. Never in all of London had Anne heard of a voice such as hers. It was simply enchanting, lulling Anne into a daze of dance, twirling her head slowly ’round her shoulders in time with the Mistress’s words.

The voice of an angel, the face of a beast, such is the fate of li’l ol’ me. But you, young soul, you are bright and spry. Care ye to take an ol’ boar to the circus of the damned?

Nodding was all Anne could muster as she gazed into Mistress’s now-grinning face. For only a moment, Anne felt a pulse of unease at the whiteness of the woman’s smile. It was brilliantly white, even more so than the sun shining on snow on a cold Christmas morning; and there was surely no sunlight here to shine upon those dazzling pearls. Distracting Anne’s gaze, the Mistress Courtier ran a finger down Anne’s cheek, stilling her movements. For the first time, Anne noticed a single flaw on the woman’s visage, a scar that seemed to cut around the frame of her face, as though it were not her own. It was thin and clean, and Anne found herself wanting to lay a hand on it, to run her fingers across it, to see what was really underneath.

Before she could lift her hand, however, the Mistress was sliding off her unicorn and leading Anne towards a tent that lay in the centre of the grounds. Entering the structure, Anne saw that it was by no means undersized, but it was not as roomy as she had thought it would be considering how large it looked on the outside. A quick count of the seats had Anne convinced that the most the place could hold at one time would probably be around seventy-five to one hundred. For a circus, that did not quite seem worth it, but Anne had no time to question the Mistress about it, for she was being filed into a front-row seat and the lights were dimming. Perched upon her seat’s edge in anticipation, Anne smiled as the Mistress’s hand left her own and a spotlight sparked into life to reveal the centre platform. The Mistress, however, merely stood to the side as a new woman stepped up, clad in vivid red that turned from fabric to flowers seamlessly.

Lady Anne—the red-clothed woman’s voice was deep and commanding—let us entertain you.

The circus began.

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The giant monochrome sign for the Pauper’s Lunatic Mill towered over Lizzie like some foreboding misery. She had not seen the asylum in many years, as Albert had practically forbade it, teasing her with mistakenly slipped details yet being unwilling to entertain the idea of Lizzie even coming near the place. Though it was no surprise as to why, Lizzie realized now that she stood before it. The building cast a dreary, foggy atmosphere over the surrounding area, as though it were attempting to strip the very earth itself of its colour. Lizzie felt herself shiver when she took a step towards it, and tension flooded her body as every nerve instinctively told her to turn around and never look back. Her eyes would not stay put on the front doors but instead were drawn towards the cemetery she could see off in the distance to her left. She wondered for a moment if that was where they buried the ones who died in the asylum and were never collected, but the gruesomeness of that thought had her racing to pry open the stone-like front doors so she could tear herself away from it.

Aah! The door handle was cold enough to burn her bare fingers, even though it was still early autumn and the leaves had not yet abandoned their trees. Lizzie clutched her injured hand and held it to her chest, glaring at the door as if it had tried to bite her. Though, she supposed it had—as well as a door could, at least.

Well, you obviously don’t want me here either, do you? Lizzie muttered. She covered her hands with her sleeves and gave the door a harsh pull. It was illogical to think that the door might