The post on The Veil Archives was three years old and had only four comments. But the details matched accounts going back to the 1800s: a carnival that appears deep in the wilderness, never in the same place twice. Lights and music where no lights should be. People who enter and never return. And those who do come back... changed.

Ronald Davis has researched paranormal phenomena for six years without ever seeing anything he couldn't explain. When he convinces his ghost-hunting group—Reggie, Jason, Crystal, and the chronically overlooked Lois—to investigate, he hopes to finally find proof.

What they find is Schuld's Travelling Wonder.

Real. Impossible. Beautiful in ways that make the skin crawl. A ringmaster in crimson welcomes them with a smile that promises everything and costs more than they know.

One by one, the group separates. Reggie follows a beautiful woman into the House of Horrors and sees every cruelty he's ever committed played back in scenes that close around him like walls. Jason follows a clown into the Freak Show and meets the twisted reflections of everyone who bent themselves to become something they weren't. Crystal rides the Tunnel of Love and learns what it means to be truly empty.

Only Ronald and Lois escape with gifts: footage that will make them famous, and a mirror that shows a beautiful face. But gifts from the carnival always come with a price—and the corruption has already begun.