Selena screamed and jumped back.
"Oh my God," Ethan yelped.
"Bloody," Nairn murmured.
"This is some kind of joke right?" Bea said looking around. "This isn't funny!" she yelled to no one in particular.
"Let's look around," Selena said. In the silver moonlight she looked paler than a ghost.
Nairn nodded. "Let's split into two groups. Bea and I will go left and Selena and Ethan take the right."
With Ethan blurbling complains, Selena grabbed his arm and took off to the right, leaving him and Bea behind.
"I want to talk to you," Nairn said. " So I thought, 'why not talk while we're looking for Nico?'"
"Better than teaming with that fatty," Beatrice muttered under her breath and stormed off with Nairn following behind.
"You like Nico," Nairn said. "That's why you're furious with Ethan."
In the silver moonlight, Bea' s bronze skin reddened.
"Sh-shut up," she stammered. "You don't know anything."
Nairn shrugged and continued walking in the eerie silence of the night.
Bea's flashlight then pointed at a dark red trail in the dirt. She covered her mouth shakily and took a step back but Nairn couldn't stop staring.
"Blood." He internally rolled his eyes at himself. Of course it's blood. What else could it be, ketchup?
Bea remained frozen in shock.
"You aren't the scared type, Bea. Com on shake it off, we need to -"
And then he saw it too.
A finger lay in the middle of the stream, covered completely in blood but something silver in it caught his eye. He bent down and picked it up, ignoring the horrified whimpers coming from Bea. Carefully, he slide it out and inspected it.
It was a ring.
A hawk eating a snake was engraved on it.
Nicholas' ring.
"Oh, shit," Nairn muttered.
*
Selena continued to drag Ethan around until she noticed something in the dirt. She pointed her phone directly at it to see what it was.
She couldn't stop the breaths that came out from shaking.
She turned to her fat companion. "Ethan..."
Ethan turned to see what she had looked at. "Selena..."
It was teeth. Not a tooth. Teeth. Twenty-six of them. All covered in blood and dirt and worms.
*
Nairn shoved the ring into his pocket and, holding Bea's arm, marched on, ignoring negative thoughts that burned in his mind.
He turned left and noticed something in one of the carriage seats. He shone Bea's torch on it and swallowed.
A body.
Not just any body.
The body of Drevin Kawalsaki.
*
Selena took a deep breath and went onwards. This time, Ethan had gone silent. An owl hooted strangely.
She shone her torch on the control booth and screamed.
A corpse.
Silas Jon's.
*
Feet and heart pounding, Nairn ran to where he heard the sound of Selena's scream. He reached the control booth to see the body of Silas Jon with his eye partly plucked out and his teeth missing.
"Holy shit, " Bea cried.
"Fuck this. Let's go home," Ethan wailed.
Selena nodded a bit too enthusiastically and gripped Nairn's shirt. "Yes, let's."
"But what about Nico?" Nairn asked.
"He's probably dead too. Or ran away or something, I dunno. But what I do know is that I don't want to die in a freaky carnival with missing teeth!" Ethan wailed harder.
"Good point," Nairn agreed.
They ran back the way they came though nothing was chasing them. They paused in front of the wired mesh for breath.
Bea looked up.
"Shit."
"What is it?" Selena asked.
"T-the wired mesh fenced," She stuttered and pointed her index finger towards it. "Isn't there supposed to be a hole? I-isn't it supposed to be rusted and old."
Nairn looked at it.
"Fuck, you're right."
Instead of the rusted wire mesh they'd seen earlier that night, it was a newly placed one. Silver.
"What's the time?" Selena asked Ethan staring up at the sky. The moon was changing fases quickly. From crescent to half to three fourth to full.
Ethan checked his watch. "I don't know. The hands on the watch are spinning rapidly."
"Selena check your phone," Nairn said
She gulped loudly. "The numbers are just changing so fast, I can't understand it."
"We need to get out of here," Bea yelped and took off running to the main entrance with the others following close behind.
*
The ticket booth was a crumbling, rusted piece of metal with a ticket slot and an area for the guard on duty that consists of a bright red telephone and a plastic folding chair. That chair was exactly where they found the body of Paul Higgs holding that bright red telephone.
Selena yelled and Bea toppled backwards on her butt. Ethan whimpered and Nairn turned his head away in pure disgust.
Paul Higgs' body was skinned out and a clown face was painted on his muscle face. His grey eyes had needles poked in them and an ace was scraped on his arm.
In red, probably Paul's blood, wrote the words, DO WHAT THE SIGN SAYS.
The sign.
Nairn looked to the left of the booth to see a bright white sign with pink words written on it, though now hard to read due to rain washing layers of it off.
ENTER YOUR TICKET TO LEAVE/COME.
And under it was a pink arrow that led to the ticket slot.