R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

If You Find The Crimson Carnival...(Pt 4 - Final)

By: u/Jgrupe

Sometimes life just doesn't work out as you'd planned. A lot of us live on the borderline between failure and success, teetering somewhere between the two until death.

It's a precarious and uncomfortable place to live.

I had resigned myself to a life of dissatisfied semi-closure after rescuing Sarah from the Crimson Carnival.

Sure, she wasn't quite the same, but we had our good days. A few cold stares and some sleepwalking in the night wasn't so bad. Her personality was different. She was less sympathetic and quick to anger, but for the most part she was the same old Sarah who I had known before she had disappeared.

The strangest part was, she claimed to remember nothing about the carnival. She said it was like a black space in her memory that she couldn't get back, no matter how hard she tried.

I suggested therapy, and other ways she could unlock the suppressed memories, but she refused, becoming more and more upset every time the subject was brought up. It got to the point where the mere mention of the carnival was enough to send her into a fury. She would swear and scream, saying I didn't love her anymore. She would throw things and slam doors and cabinets causing me to become worried for her safety at times, she was so upset.

It wasn't until she finally let it slip that I realized why she was getting so mad. It was at the tail end of one of our arguments and she muttered, "I don't remember it, but every part of me wants to go back there. Wherever 'there' is. It's pulling at me. Do you know what that feels like? To be told you can't have something when it's all you want in the world?"

I had tried to ask her to explain, fighting back feelings of hurt and betrayal, but she refused to say anything more on the subject.

Two days later I saw her talking on the phone to someone and she hung up quickly when she saw me coming. I didn't really believe her when she said it was just someone from work calling to ask if she could come in early the next morning. The look on her face said otherwise.

It was no coincidence that Friday the 13th came around once again soon after and I was awoken that night in the late hours by a phone call.

It was Gary.

"He's gone. I think he's going back to that place."

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat up. Looking beside me, I saw that Sarah was gone as well.

"Sarah's gone too," I replied. "Why would they go back there? We destroyed it. The whole thing burnt to the ground. They're just going back to an empty field in the countryside."

He was breathing heavily and I could hear he was running.

"I'm coming to get you. Don't go anywhere, just wait for me there. They did the ritual already, I followed them out to the field where the place was and it's back. The Crimson Carnival is back!"

I looked at the clock and saw it was still early enough, and realized what he wanted to do. He wanted to go back there, and he wanted me to come along as back-up.

The four of us had become close since escaping from the demon's fairgrounds. All of the insanity involved in the experience had been too far-fetched to talk to anyone else about, and we found ourselves becoming friends after our traumatic near-fatal experiences.

Sarah and Bruce became a pair, I noticed, while Gary and I would talk about things from our perspectives and tried to remind them of what had happened. Bruce's memory had been completely wiped clean of any recollections of the carnival as well.

Soon he became reluctant to talk about the experience as well, getting quick to anger at the mere mention of it the same as Sarah. Shortly afterwards the four of us stopped talking as frequently.