Chapter 1: The Forgotten Funhouse
The world had devolved into a fever dream of flashing lights and manic music. The cheerful calliope tune that had lured them from the woods now felt like a deranged soundtrack to their doom. The Hollow Children advanced, their movements jerky and unnatural, their collective gaze a physical weight of chilling emptiness. They weren’t running; there was no need. The carnival was their playground, and the group was the new attraction.
“Don’t let them touch you!” Raven yelled, her voice nearly swallowed by the carnival’s din. Her initial relief had curdled into a cold, hard knot of terror in her stomach.
They backed away, a tight, terrified cluster in the center of the midway. To their left, the Ferris wheel spun, its empty carriages like swinging cages. To their right, the carousel’s painted horses rose and fell, their glass eyes gleaming with a malevolent intelligence. Every direction was a dead end of terrifying whimsy.
“This way!” Ash shouted, pointing toward a large, garish building that loomed at the end of the midway. It was shaped like a giant, laughing clown’s head, its mouth a dark, gaping maw of an entrance. A sign flickered above it: “FORGOTTEN FUNHOUSE.”
“Are you insane?” Jasper shrieked, his eyes wide with horror. “We’re not going into the clown’s mouth! That’s rule number one of not getting murdered at a carnival!”
“It’s better than becoming their playmates!” Raven countered, grabbing his arm and pulling him along.
With the children closing in, their faint, giggling whispers weaving through the loud music, there was no choice. They sprinted toward the funhouse, the giant clown face seeming to laugh mockingly at their approach. As they neared, a new smell cut through the cloying sweetness of popcorn and cotton candy—a strange, thick scent of black licorice and something syrupy, like honey.
Just as they reached the entrance, an old woman materialized from the shadows beside the ticket booth. She was impossibly ancient, her skin like wrinkled parchment, her eyes milky and blind. She held a stack of colorful tickets in a skeletal hand covered in too-thin, bluish skin. “Admission,” she rasped, her voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement.
Without thinking, driven by the pure panic of the approaching children, they each snatched a ticket from her hand and plunged into the dark mouth of the funhouse. The tickets were cool to the touch, the paper old and weathered. On the front, a cheerful slogan read: “The Carnival of Eternal Night—A Thrill You’ll Never Forget!” They shoved them into their pockets without a second glance, their only thought on escaping the things that hunted them.
Inside, the cacophony of the carnival faded, replaced by a disorienting silence. The air was thick with the scent of licorice and honey, so strong it was almost suffocating. They were in a narrow, winding corridor, the walls painted with swirling, hypnotic patterns that made the floor seem to tilt and sway. The only light came from dim, flickering bulbs overhead, casting long, distorted shadows.
“Okay, where to now?” Finn asked, his voice tight. He fumbled for his flashlight, but his hands were shaking too badly to get a good grip.
The corridor opened into a vast, circular room. Every surface—the walls, the ceiling, even the floor—was covered in mirrors. It was a hall of mirrors, a labyrinth of their own reflections. Hundreds of versions of themselves stared back, their faces pale and frightened in the dim, pulsing light.
“I hate this,” Willow whispered, clutching her journal so tightly her knuckles were white. “I really, really hate this.”
They took a tentative step forward, and their hundred reflections did the same. The effect was dizzying, erasing any sense of direction. Every path looked the same, a corridor of infinite reflections.
“The scent is stronger in here,” Luna noted, her hand covering her nose and mouth. “The licorice... it feels wrong. It’s their scent.”
As if summoned by her words, a new sound echoed through the mirrored maze. A soft skittering, like bare feet running on glass. It was followed by a faint, childish whisper that seemed to come from all directions at once. The Hollow Children were in here with them.
“They’re behind the mirrors,” Ash said, his voice low and dangerous. He pressed a hand against one of the reflective panels. It was ice-cold.
Then, the reflections began to change.
Finn was the first to notice. He was staring at his own image, trying to get his bearings, when the reflection smirked at him—a cruel, knowing grin that was nothing like his own worried expression. He recoiled as if burned.
“Did you see that?” he stammered, pointing. “My reflection, it—”
Before he could finish, it happened to all of them. Their reflections began to act independently. A reflected Raven, her eyes glinting with malice, drew a finger across her throat in a slow, deliberate motion. A humourless smile spread across her crazed face. Jasper’s reflection began to laugh silently, its mouth stretched into an unnaturally wide, manic grin. Willow’s reflection started to weep, thick, black tears streaming down its face from hollow, empty sockets.
“This isn’t real,” Raven said, her voice shaking. She was trying to convince herself as much as the others. “It’s a trick. An illusion.”
But the terror felt undeniably real. The whispers grew louder, slithering out from the mirrors themselves, weaving a tapestry of their deepest fears.
You led them here, Raven, a voice hissed from her reflection. Their fate is your fault.
Your logic can’t save you now, Finn, another whisper mocked. There are no rules here.
They’re all going to leave you, Willow, her own distorted image sneered. You’ll die alone.
The psychological assault was relentless. The group huddled together, their backs to each other, a small island of terrified humanity in a sea of mocking doppelgängers. The skittering sounds grew closer, a pitter-patter of unseen feet running just behind the glass, circling them like sharks.
“We have to get out of here,” Jasper cried, his hands clamped over his ears. “I can’t take this!” He made a break for what he thought was an exit, a dark space between two mirror panels, but ran headlong into a solid wall of glass. He crumpled to the floor, dazed.
Ash and Finn rushed to help him up. As they did, their reflections watched, their faces devoid of concern, their eyes cold and predatory. Luna’s reflection held up a single tarot card—The reversed Tower, a symbol of an avoided catastrophic upheaval—before it altered to a grim dark version of the eight of swords; the blindfolded victim trapped in a ring of swords, its face eerily resembling Luna. She gulped down her terror as the card perfectly reflected their trapped, helpless plight.
The scent of black licorice was overpowering now, a sweet, sickly poison that made their heads spin. The children’s laughter echoed, bouncing from mirror to mirror until the entire funhouse seemed to be shaking with their cruel mirth.
“They’re feeding on our fear,” Luna said, her voice strained but clear. She was forcing herself to look past the terrifying images, to focus on the energy behind them. “The mirrors… they’re windows. They’re showing us what it wants us to see. We can’t let it win.”
“So what do we do?” Raven asked, her leadership faltering under the weight of her own reflected accusations.
“We break them,” Ash said simply. His reflection grinned, a flash of white teeth in the gloom, and shook its head in a silent ‘no.’ The daredevil in Ash took that as a personal challenge. “We break them all.”
Without another word, Ash turned and hurled his heavy, multi-tool with all his might at the nearest mirror. The tool bounced off with a dull thud, leaving the glass completely unscathed. Ash’s reflection laughed, a silent, mocking peal of triumph.
“It’s no use!” Finn yelled. “They’re protected by… by whatever this is!”
Panic began to set in again, a cold tide rising in the room. They were trapped. The whispers intensified, becoming a roar of insults and fears. The reflections grew more monstrous, their features twisting into grotesque caricatures.
It was Willow who saw the key. Her mind, usually lost in history and lore, was adept at finding patterns. While the others were focused on the horrifying faces, she was looking at the glass itself.
“The corners,” she said, her voice barely audible over the din. “Look at the corners of the mirrors.”
They followed her gaze. At the junction where four mirror panels met, there was a small, intricate carving etched into the glass—a stylized, gnarled apple, the same kind they might have seen in the cursed orchard.
“It’s a weak point,” Willow reasoned, her voice gaining strength. “A maker’s mark. A sigil. If the forest made this place, it has to have a flaw. It’s arrogant.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Raven agreed, a spark of her old fire returning. An idea was forming. “Okay, new plan. We’re not just breaking glass. We’re shattering the illusion. We have to do it together, and we have to mean it. Don’t look at the faces. Look at the sigil. Focus all your energy on that single point.”
It was a desperate, flimsy plan, but it was the only one they had.
“Everyone, find a weapon,” Raven commanded. Finn grabbed his heavy flashlight. Ash retrieved their multi-tool. Willow clutched her thick, leather-bound journal, its hard spine a potential bludgeon. Jasper, seeing a discarded metal stanchion from a velvet rope that led nowhere, picked it up, his knuckles white. Luna held a large, black tourmaline crystal from her pocket, its surface meant to absorb negative energy.
“Okay,” Raven said, taking a deep breath. “We aim for the same set of corners. We ignore the whispers, we ignore the reflections. We focus on that apple. On three.”
They stood in a line, facing one wall of mirrors. Their reflections stood opposite, a dark pantomime of their actions, their faces twisted into masks of contempt and amusement. The whispers rose to a fever pitch. The skittering of feet behind the glass grew frantic.
“One…” Raven began, her eyes locked on the tiny, carved apple.
You are nothing.
“Two…”
You are already dead.
“THREE!”
With a collective battle cry born of sheer terror and defiance, they lunged forward. They swung their makeshift weapons, pouring every ounce of their fear, anger, and desperation into the single, focused attack.
Finn’s flashlight, Ash’s tool, Jasper’s stanchion, Willow’s journal, and Luna’s crystal all struck the exact same point on their own glass at the exact same instant.
For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened.
Then, a network of tiny, spiderweb cracks erupted from the sigil. A high-pitched screaming sound, like a thousand nails on a chalkboard, tore through the air. The reflections in the mirrors wavered, their faces contorting in agony. The sweet scent of licorice soured, turning to the smell of burnt sugar.
With a final, explosive CRACK, the entire wall of mirrors shattered. It didn’t break into shards of glass. It dissolved into a swirling cloud of black smoke and screaming whispers, which was instantly sucked away into the darkness.
The sudden silence was deafening. Where the wall of mirrors had been, there was now a simple, dark exit. The rest of the mirrored walls in the funhouse went dark, the reflections vanishing, leaving them as simple, non-reflective panels of black glass.
They had done it.
They stood panting in the sudden quiet, the adrenaline slowly beginning to fade. They had faced down the illusion and won.
“Did we… kill it?” Jasper asked, his voice trembling as he dropped the heavy stanchion.
“I don’t think so,” Luna said, looking at the dark exit. “We just broke the toy. Now it’s angry.”
As if on cue, a deep, guttural roar echoed from the depths of the funhouse, a sound of pure, frustrated rage that was far more terrifying than the children’s laughter. It was the sound of the carnival itself, and it knew they had escaped its first game.
Without a second thought, they bolted through the newly opened exit, plunging back out into the cacophony of the haunted midway. They were free from the funhouse, but they were no closer to escaping the carnival itself. They had only managed to annoy its master.
The Legend Of Black Hollow. © 2025 | Horrified Candles. All Rights Reserved.
