Speaker 1: Bailey seemed like the perfect girl, a real angel sent
from above. I met Bailey at the farmer's market. She
was selling handmade soaps and dancing around in a dress
that looked like it might have started life as a
pair of curtains. I was selling eggs and vegetables, something
I did pretty regularly on the weekends, and she took
to me right away. Next week, when I came back,
she had set up her stall right next to mine,
and I guess we really hit it off. After that,
we began dating, sort of. Bailey never used labels, she
said they were restraining. She preferred to call us partners,
and I have to say that she really broadened my horizons.
I was used to my dates being at the local
steakhouse or at the creek while I fished, but Bailey
was into nature walks and making stuff. We spent afternoons
making soap and candles. We'd take edibles and then go
on long hikes, and sometimes we'd just drive for hours,
listening to music or talking about old times. Most of
it was just us enjoying each other's company. Bailey was
very adventurous, and it was nice to get out and
see things that I probably wouldn't have saw it out
on my own. Two months after meeting, Bailey was living
with me as well. Bailey didn't have a lot, just
pull along trailer and a lot of materials for making things,
and it all fit pretty snugly in my garage. We
spent a lot of our time just tooling around, seeing
the sights, doing whatever we felt like. It was nice.
But I learned one thing about Bailey very quickly. Bailey
was impetuous, prone to flights of fancy. It didn't matter
where we were going or what we were doing. If
Bailey saw it and she wanted to have a closer
look at it, we were stopping. We stopped at too
many farmers' markets to count multiple yard sales, and she
stopped me on the way to my cousin's funeral so
that she could check out what amounted to be a
tourist trap. I didn't really mind. We were the best
dressed pair at the state's largest totem pole. It was
fun going on our little adventures. Sometimes we mixed things
with substances that led them to be hazy when I
tried to remember them, But a lot of the time
we were just out and joining each other's company, and
that made it all worthwhile. It happened one afternoon while
I was driving, as so many things usually do. I
was telling Bailey a story about my childhood, and she
laughed suddenly, which caused me to ask her, what was
so funny. It's you, mike me, I asked, not really
getting in. What about me? I swear, I don't know
how you live before me? All your stories just seemed
to be you doing normal things. Haven't you ever done
anything impetuous before me? Like, didn't you ever go on
an adventure before I came along? Well, of course we did,
I said, a little defensive. We went and did things,
saw stuff, did all sorts of stuff. I don't mean
like vacations, she said. It almost sounded disdainful. I mean
like just went did things because you feel like it,
Like just stop to eat in a roadside diner because
the exterior looked cool, or went to a state park
you were passing by just because you wanted to see
what it looked like inside. I thought about it and
shook my head after a moment. No, I guess we
never did, and my parents were kind of generic. I
suppose we just never really did stuff like that. Oh,
how about it? Are you ready for a real adventure?
I laughed, Haven't we gone on enough adventures? Yet? We
seemed to go on adventures all the time. She smirked,
and as usual, it was equal parts amusement and disdain.
I mean, like a real adventure. I'm not talking about
safe adventures like a farmer's mark or a garage sale.
I'm talking about somewhere where you're not sure if you'll
come back at the end of the day. I'm talking
about a real Tolkien adventure, with elves and orcs and
strange food, the whole shebang. I had to think about
it for a minute. I always played it safe. I
didn't eat at weird restaurants or stop at places where
I didn't know the crowd, and it always kept me safe.
Hanging out with Dailey, though, showed me that I might
have been a little too locked into my habits, and
maybe it was time to try something a little different. Maybe,
like Bilbo before me, it was time to go on
a real adventure. Bailey gave me this odd look, like
a cat contemplating how best to get a rat, and
when she pointed at a side road off to the left,
I realized she had been planning this all along. Take
that road for a mile and then I'll let you
know where we're going from there where? But she held
up a hand to silence me. No questions. We're on
an adventure. Remember. It was around lunchtime when we started out,
the two of us, planning to go down the dollies
for hamburgers and fries. But it was nearly five o'clock
when she said that we were getting close. We stopped
for gas about an hour before I saw it, and
Bailey still wouldn't answer any questions about the destination. I
didn't know what we were getting close to, but when
I saw the handmade sign for a roadside carnival, I
figured that had to be our destination. It was August,
and roadside carnivals were at a premium right now. It
seemed most of them put ads in the circular, though,
and didn't just leave signs on a half abandoned roadway
in the hopes that people would find them. I started
to protest, but she was right. We were on an adventure,
and adventures were rarely scheduled. We pulled up outside this
little cow pasture, maybe thirty acres in all, and It
was amazing what they had managed to do with so
little space. It was like the carnivals I remembered from
when I was a kid. It was one of those
haphazard roadside attractions that you sometimes see thrown up out
of nowhere. There were little tents with curiosities in them,
a small corral for some malnourished animals, and a few
rides with that barely hanging on sort of look. The
whole place looked like it had just appeared at some
health department officer's fever dream. And as I killed the engine,
the look on my face must have been far from enthused.
What Bailey asked, you wanted to go to a carnival.
There's like a half dozen around here we could have
gone to, and they had gone so far from home.
Those are safe carnivals, she said, with a wink. These
carnivals aren't like the ones you find off main street.
These carnivals are the kind that you find on Internet
posts and Reddit stories. These carnivals can get a little
out of your comfort zone, but they're always tons of fun.
You're coming right or are you going to be an
old fuddy duddy? I didn't want her to think of me,
it's some old fossil. So I told her I would go,
and off we went. I probably should have been a
little bit suspicious, but there didn't seem to be any
reason to Bailey had never really struck me as the
dangerous type, and I didn't think that she would get
me into any trouble that we couldn't get back out
of again. The carnival was exactly as run down as
I had feared it would be. The rides made noises
like they were just barely working. The animals looked like
they might have mange, and the curiosities seemed more like
badly done taxidermy. It all seemed very held together by
shoe leather and happy thoughts. The carnival workers were just
as disreputable looking, and there were more orcs than elves.
It seemed all of them were missing teeth, and more
than a few of them seemed to be missing fingers.
They all leered like they couldn't wait to get a
lot look at our cash, and I found myself clutching
Bailey a little tighter than I strictly needed to. I
wasn't opposed to having a little fun, but this was
a lot outside of my comfort zone. These people could
be criminals, and we were just getting ready to walk
right in. And I looked down at Bailey. It was
like she could read my mind and didn't approve of
what she saw there. I buried my misgivings and started
trying my best to have a good time. We wrote
some rides and had some fair food. But the longer
we stayed, the more things stood out But made me nervous.
Was the way the carnival people kept looking at Bailey.
They didn't leer so much as they looked at her
the way that you look at people when you know
them or you recognize them. Their smiles were a little
too big, and their hellos were loaded with understanding. I
know how that sounds. It sounds paranoid as hell, but
I was starting to feel a little paranoid. It felt
like they had expected us, and I wasn't sure these
were the kinds of people I wanted to be expected by.
Bailey just kept telling me to relax, have fun. She
even offered me an edible to calm me down, which
I refused. The longer it went on, the more my
senses started tingling, telling me that something wasn't right here.
I wanted to go home, but I wasn't going to
be the one to break first either. Bailey had made
it pretty clear that she thought I was a stick
in the mud, and I didn't. I didn't want to
prove it by getting goosey over some offhanded looks. By
about eight o'clock, my back hurt and I was ready
to go home. I told Bailey as much, and she
begged for just a little while longer. She said she
hadn't been to one of these carnivals in a long
time and she just wanted to hang out for a
little while longer. I told her I was ready to go,
that I could see it on her face that she
wanted to call me an old man, and asked me
if it was past my bedtime. I finally told her
that I needed to go to the bathroom and that
I was going to go look for a porta potty,
eyes clearly having guessed that I was uncomfortable, and went
searching for a toilet while she went searching for more adventure.
Thank god I did. I might not have made it out.
I was sitting in the porta potty, pants around my
ankles as I tried to figure out what I was
going to do, and that's when I heard them. I
didn't know them, but I assumed they were carnies. That
might be an unfair assumption, but they just.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: They just sort of sounded like carnival folk. They had
thick accents and seemed to be discussing some event that
was coming up. I didn't have a lot else to
listen to, so I craned my neck and tried to
hear what they were discussing. How much longer until we
spring it? One of them asked, you know as well
as I do, how this works. He either said, they
have a good time, they had the rides, they eat
some fair food, then we spring it on. By then
they're too tired and full to do anything. So we
always get him.
Speaker 2: So we always get him, and if it ain't broke,
we ain't likely to fix it. Didn't look like he's
gonna put up, don't fight anyways big enough, but he
looks plain and Milk thought he'd struggled more before.
Speaker 1: Then they moved off and I lost the rest of
the conversation. My blood ran cold. Sounded like these guys
were getting ready to rob us or worse. Who knew
what they had planned, and I realized I had left
Bailey unattended, that might have heard her while I was gone,
and that thought, that thought had me hiking up my
pants and heading back into the carnival. It wasn't until
then that I realized how few people were at this thing,
and how most of them looked like the same carnival
folk that I had just heard discussing our fate. If
there were any other passers by then, I didn't see them.
It didn't bode well. That was more than ever that
we needed to leave. I started looking for Bailey amongst
the crowd, but I couldn't seem to find her. All
the people were smiling a little too big as they
watched me past, And it was weird to be the
focus of that much attention. You know, you know how
you can just feel it when someone's eyes are on you.
That's how I felt, and I didn't much care for it.
It was very unsettling. It made me think that more
than a couple of them might be in on the scheme.
I was coming through the midway when I saw the
group of them, the lead man pointing at me as
they made a bee line for me. Two of them,
big old bruisers and the kind of thing teamsters usually
wear on mob shows. They were making their approach, trying
to look casual, but it was all to a parent
who they were coming for. Maybe they had already gotten Bailey,
but I wasn't going to do any good if they
got me too. I duck between the two stalls, keeping
my head low as I tried to get somewhere a
little more public. That was made all the harder by
the fact that no one else seemed to be here.
It was like trying to blend in in an empty field.
And I finally ducked down behind one of the abandoned
midway booths and tried my best not to be seen.
I must have been doing a pretty good job of it,
because the group went by with a lot of dark
mumbling and more than a few glances to see how
I eluded them. I just thought about standing up, and
I heard an all too familiar voice, and I was
glad that I hadn't. We lost him, said a deep,
raspy voice. I told you guys not to lose him,
Bailey said, And hearing her talk about me like that
made my neck hair prickle. I've spent the better part
of three months getting him on the hook, and all
you guys had to do was grab him when he
got out of the bathroom. I can't have gone far.
We'll find him, said the gravelly voice. You'd better the
rituals in three hours, and they'll be held to pay
if we don't have him. They moved away, and I
was left standing there wondering just who I had been
dating for the last few months. What ritual were they
talking about? What sort of people were they? I thought
they all seemed a little too friendly with Bailey, and
now it made sense. If this had all been some
elaborate ruse, then I'd fallen for it, hook line and sinker.
I had to get out of here. I had to
get away before they were able to do whatever it
was they were planning to do. A quick peek over
the stall showed me that there were only a few
carnies at the end of the midway, and they weren't
looking in my direction. I stayed low and started making
my way around the sides of the booth so that
I wouldn't be noticed. Most of them seemed too intent
on looking for where I was to see me, and
I made it a pretty good distance before I was
finally spotted, I'd come out near the concession stand, smelling
the fried oreos and the funnel cake, and that was
when somebody yelled and said they'd found me. There is
a volum that seemed to fill me with adrenaline, and
suddenly I was running for my life. I had to
make it to the parking lot. I had to make
it to my truck. I had to get out of
here while it was still an out here to get to.
Some of the bigger carnival guys tried to block my way,
but I jooped around him and kept running. The sounds
and the smells of the carnival were jarringly not gating.
At this point. They all with passed me like a
frantic merry go round, and I wasn't sure I was
ever going to make it out. It all seemed like
a little kid's nightmare more than anything, and every time
I thought that I had made it away, another came
looming out out of nowhere to block my path. For
such a small carnival, they seemed to be nearly endless
supplies of carnies, and I rejoiced when I saw the
exit looming up as I passed a scrambler that was
on the edge of the campground. The gate was made
of flimsy looking wood, but the ticket taker, a man
that we had paid to get into this place, was
wide enough to block it with just his body. I
didn't think I was gonna make it through. I didn't
think there was any way, But when I hit him
squarely with my shoulder, something I haven't done since high school,
I bowled right over the top of him and just
kept going. I made it to my car and was
thankful that I hadn't locked it. I got in the
driver's seat and crammed the key into the ignition, expecting
them to start hammering on my truck at any minute.
I expected them to just pick the truck up and
move it. Some of them were big enough to do that,
but they didn't. They didn't even I touched the truck
as I looked up at the carnival before screeching out
of their little makeshift parking lot, and I saw why
they were all rayed around the rim of the carnival,
just watching me from a distance maybe of about fifty feet.
They stood like worshipers in a church, waiting for their
preacher to come back. Bailey was among them, looking disappointed
but not angry. Her eyes seemed to tell me that
i'd be back, and that was the last I saw
of her. As I went blaring out of the parking
lot and back towards home. I was glad that I
had paid attention on the way in otherwise I might
not have made it. It took me a little while
to get back, but I've never been so happy to
see my home as I was when I finally came
back to the front yard. I went inside, took about
twenty minutes to stop my hands from shaking before I
called the police and told the sheriff what happened. I
don't know if he believed me, but he agreed to
go back and look into it. The sheriff and I
had known each other for quite a while, and I
think he knew enough to trust my judgment and that
I wouldn't make up tall tales for no reason. He
said he'd go back and have a look, and if
he found anything, he'd let me know, and I had
to be content with that for a moment. He came
back to me that night, and it seemed that maybe
he believed me, at least a little bit. It also
seemed like maybe he'd seen something out there that made
him a little bit glad that he hadn't been the
subject of my story. We found something that was no carnival,
but it was something. Seems like they left it all
out there. There were rides and lights still going, and
you could smell the stuff ry, And even after they
put out all the fires of some night, there was
nobody there, not a soul, but all of us felt
like somebody was watching that. Wherever they went to went
in a hurry. I also found some other things that
led us to believe you might not have been too
far off about the sacrifice angle. They were closed in
one of the tents, closed wallets, stripped of cash, no identification.
Some of those ideas or people in the database, some
of them have been missing for a good long time.
If your Bailey ever calls back again, let us know
we'd like to have a word with her about some
of the company she's been keeping. I told him I would,
but who knows if I'll still be alive to call
in the morning. Bailey has a key to my house,
he knows where I live. Quite a few of her
things are still here. Who's to say, she might not
decide to come back anyway, see how her sacrifice is
still here. I don't know, maybe it was all just
an act or goof, but if you find yourself being
courted by a strange woman who tries to lead you
into adventure, be very wary. I don't know what or
who they were trying to sacrifice me to, but it
sounded like they might have needed another one very shortly.
Hey there, kids, it's me mister Peppasta, and before we
say goodnight, I just wanted to say thank you so
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