THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #45: A review of "Carousel" by August Derleth

Pelan treats Derleth in kind of a backhanded way. No, maybe those aren’t the right words. He says that Derleth’s legacy these days is merely as a “Lovecraft acolyte,” then turning around and saying that “he was one of America’s great supernatural writers.” He takes a lot for granted. Sure, Derleth was the biggest proponent of continuing Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos without really understanding the driving force behind them, turning it into more of a Heaven vs. Hell kind of thing. But the world knows that’s not all Derleth did. Many of his non-mythos stories are everywhere, to say nothing of his non-supernatural Wisconsin stories.



This is one of those non-mythos stories. The local carnival has long been abandoned because of a very unfortunate incident. A while ago, a lonely black man was goaded and ridiculed “beyond endurance” merely because of the color of his skin. He lost his shit and murdered the carnival’s owner. Well, that’s putting it lightly. He tore the guy limb from limb, and as a result, the rest of the town rose up and lynched him.


Now, the only person who comes here is a lonely little girl by the name of Marcia Benjin. Her mother had died, and she now has a stepmother watching after her. The problem is, Mrs. Benjin is a cunt. She wants to break this little girl down, presumably because she loves hurting helpless people. Yet she does so in such a sly way so as to convince Mr. Benjin that Marcia is the antagonist, and she, herself, is the victim. He buys it, hook, line, and sinker.


But then Marcia starts talking about seeing her friend at the abandoned carnival, a very nice black man. Mr. Benjin thinks she’s just created an invisible friend, but Mrs. Benjin feels a chill. She remembers the black man who had been lynched there many years ago, and since the town is full of white people (hey, Derleth was from Wisconsin, so that was probably his perspective) and no one else, she assumes something is wrong.


The horror of this tale isn’t the possibility of a ghost; it’s what Mrs. Benjin does in order to exert her sense of sadism over a little girl. She whips this poor girl senseless. WITH AN ACTUAL WHIP.


However, this story has a lot in common with the sort that EC Comics would eventually tell. SPOILER ALERT: The black man tells Marcia that he’ll make sure no one ever hurts her. Lonely people must stick together, after all. So Marcia, who is pretty smart for her age, tricks Mrs. Benjin into chasing after her, intent on punishing her for yet another transgression. They both wind up at the carnival, at the carousel, where the black man emerges and gruesomely tears Mrs. Benjin to pieces, just like the carnival owner. The only recognizable part of her when he’s done is her left hand, which still bears her wedding ring. END OF SPOILERS.


It’s a good story, but one wonders if it could have been great with just a few tweaks. Perhaps Mrs. Benjin, ever the sadist, was one of the black man’s tormentors all those years ago. Perhaps his ghost is the tricky one, manipulating little Marcia into bringing her stepmother to the carnival. Something like that could very well have influenced A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but . . . oh well. It’s still pretty fun. Give it a try.

[This story first appeared in SOMETHING NEAR and cannot be read online at this time.]