The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  “Did he have a girlfriend?”

  “He had a harem.” She laughed and it turned into coughing, the deep, wet cough from unhealthy lungs. “Even my girlfriends liked him. I think one even dated him, but they kept that kind of thing away from me.” Her voice was straining at the end, and she erupted into another series of coughs.

  “Anyone special?”

  “Not that I recall, Mr. Archer,” she said, clearing her throat. “Maybe. Certainly no one came to my door after he went missing claiming to be the love of his life or anything like that. I even wished at one point that someone would. It was sad he’d died with no one. Only Jason Barnes.” She laughed. “Those two boys loved each other like brothers. I’m not sure there was room in Peter’s life for anything other than his dream. And sweet Jesus could my boy play that guitar.”

  “The band.”

  “The band. Always the band. And they’d have made it, too.” She paused. “Had he lived long enough.” With that, the phone clicked and the line went dead.

  Paris

  July 3, 2005

  At the foot of the grand Palais Brongniart at the corner of Rue Vivienne and Rue Réaumur, Lara looked down at her watch. Five minutes until eleven. The imposing building in front of her was too large to be so quiet. Moonlight illuminated the fronts of the pillars. The waiter at the bistro across the street was stacking chairs in an effort to close. During the day, this part of Paris was buzzing with offices and businesses, but at night, it was nearly abandoned. Other than the waiters and the occasional couple on their way home, there was nothing here. She looked down at the ticket and confirmed the streets. The courtyard in front of her was empty and dark.

  She paced, her heels clicking on the cement. Turning, she thought she heard something behind her. Footsteps. She kept pacing. If anyone was watching her, she’d pretend like she was waiting for someone—she was waiting for someone. She regretted not telling Gaston what she was doing tonight, but she didn’t want to worry him or Barrow. After the woman had chased her, she should have been more careful, though she’d cast the protection spell again tonight before she left the hotel. She looked down at her watch again. Three minutes until eleven. All she had to do was hold this woman off for three minutes. Althacazur would find her.

  The night air in Paris was sticky and warm, giving little relief. Feeling the need to dress for the occasion, she’d worn a black dress with strappy sandals like she was going to dinner or a concert. Slung over her arm was a denim jacket.

  And she heard it again, the clicking of heels—a woman’s heels.

  Lara spun. The noise was coming from the corner near Rue Vivienne where the streetlight was out. She felt a chill run up her neck. “Come on… come on.” She looked around for something to change. Silently, she began the chant.

  Bracatus losieus tegretatto.

  From a distance, she heard a church bell begin to clang. It was eleven. As if her vision were bending, she saw the pillars in front of her warp. At first it was small, like a ripple when you throw a small stone in the water. Within seconds, the smooth waves became more pronounced, like something was trying to tear through the scene. The streetlights dimmed, making a charged noise as the scene in front of her—the massive building with pillars—gave way. In its place emerged a giant round arena with an opulent gold entrance complete with a Devil’s open mouth.

  Lara gasped. The Devil’s mouth. It was just as Cecile and Barrow had described. Looking back toward Rue Vivienne, she thought she saw the outline of a woman standing under the dead streetlamp, waiting. She stared in that direction, letting the woman know she wasn’t backing down. Straining her eyes in the dark, Lara couldn’t make out if this was the same woman from the Père Lachaise.

  There was a steady hum, as if a fluorescent light had just been turned on after a lengthy recess. Four sets of pillars led the way to a door, gaslights illuminating the path. Like a picture coming into focus, the circus with its MATINEE sign became clear. Lara looked down at her ticket. If she threw the ticket down now and ran, would this scene disappear? Tempting though it was to flee, she stared out at the figure of the woman standing in the shadows. If she didn’t go through the doors to Le Cirque Secret, then she had to face whoever was out there, knowing it was the woman. No, it was safer to be inside this circus.

  Blinking, she took in the scene in front of her. An entire circus had just materialized in front of her eyes, supplanting a Parisian landmark. Lara looked around. The waiter at the nearby café continued to stack chairs as though the entire square had not transformed in front of him. Without a ticket, perhaps it hadn’t.

  “For goodness’ sake, get in or get out.”

  Lara looked around the pillars to find a clown holding a miniature version of himself—a ventriloquist dummy. Doro. From Cecile’s journal, Lara felt like she already knew him.

  “Yes, you.” The clowns were dressed identically—all in white, from the face paint to the fez hat to the costume.

  Above her, a horse whinnied. Was the statue alive as well?

  Amazed, she spun around, not unlike Dorothy who had just entered Oz.

  “Ms. Barnes.” The dummy’s hand pointed to the door. “This way, s’il vous plaît.” As the clown walked, the dummy peered around him. “I am Doro. Or, he is.” The little wooden hand pointed up to the clown, who held out his hand to claim her ticket.

  She was reluctant to give it up.

  “The ticket does not belong to you,” snapped the dummy.

  It was the same dread she’d felt entering a fake haunted house for Halloween. She expected to be entertained, yet there was a foreboding sense in the background. Lara nodded and handed the larger clown the ticket and watched as it melted into his hand. As she stepped onto the carpet, it rolled up behind her, giving her the sinking feeling that perhaps the ticket was one-way. She gulped, regretting she’d been so impulsive. She should have told Gaston. But what would he and Barrow have done? This building wasn’t real—or at least wasn’t real in this dimension. And they hadn’t been invited.

  Entering through the giant mouth, she then stepped through a set of ten-foot-tall arched doors that snapped shut tightly behind her. Unfurling in front of her was a hallway—not any old mundane hallway, but a corridor lined with windows, light shining in brightly through them. Which was an impossibility, because it was now night in Paris. For a moment, Lara wasn’t sure if this was a circus or Versailles, as the walls were adorned with gold reliefs. As she continued through the hallways, she found a series of adjoining rooms with doors positioned in the center of each room. In front of her were nine more sets of matching white lacquered arched doors, all open; their elaborate gold-leaf inlay and handles looked like something out of a rococo dream—the colors like a macaron shop window. Below her, the floor was a black-and-white harlequin pattern, followed by a dizzying beige spiral floor past the next doorway. The walls of the arcade were painted white, gold, and aqua. White and gold reliefs adorned the walls, and heavy crystal chandeliers dripped from the ceiling—she tried counting and there had to be a hundred of them, reflecting light and making the place drip and sparkle.

  It was then that she noticed it. The colors were like a 1960s Technicolor film—the blues and golds more pronounced and everything bathed in a kind of glow, almost a soft focus. This world didn’t look real, as if she’d stepped into a Claymation puppet show. Perhaps Giroux had tried to mimic it with his dripping technique. In each room she saw a different attraction: a fortune-teller, shooting games, cakes and food trays, even the smell of popcorn. While elegant, the gauges and machinery were old, like they’d been installed during the Belle Époque period, causing her to feel like she was walking through a time capsule. The place also smelled like a stale house that had been shut up for the winter before enduring a furious spit-and-polish attempt at freshening.

  Each room was painted in hues like macarons. As they entered the next room, another scent greeted them at the doors. It was sweet. “What is that smell?” She looked down at the sma
ll puppet for an answer.

  “Melting chocolate, I’d say, although I cannot smell.”

  Lara inhaled sharply. “God, that was amazing.”

  “We have the almond room next.” The clown pointed. “This way,” said the dummy, leading her through the doors as the sweet smell of almonds and sugar engulfed her. “We call this hallway the Grand Promenade.” While she’d entered the building at night, outside the windows the sun was streaming down on elaborate hedges and mazes in the lawns outdoors.

  At the fourth room, they stopped at an old carousel. With its double-decker platform, it was the grandest carousel that Lara had ever seen.

  He motioned for her to get on.

  “You’re kidding?” She cocked her head. This carousel looked familiar. When the dummy didn’t reply, she reluctantly grabbed the pole. There was a carousel horse in front of her, and its tail began to swish. Surely it didn’t move? As if to answer her, the tail flicked again. The dummy said, “Get on.”

  Lara took a moment to think. She was in what appeared to be another dimension, talking to a clown’s dummy, who was trying to get her onto a carousel with what might be live animals. “What the fuck. This can’t get any weirder.” She shrugged and placed her foot in the stirrup, sliding over the horse’s back. Lara felt the animal move under her, as though it were breathing. Its neck began to move up and down of its own accord like it was waking up from a long sleep. On cue, the organ music started and Lara began to feel dizzy as she lost sight of the clown and matching dummy.

  She definitely felt a little fuzzy—as if she’d had two glasses of champagne. Then something unexpected happened. The carousel began to move backward. The first image struck her hard. The carousel lights became brighter until all she could see were images of Ben Archer’s face. She was sitting on the stool at the bar in Delilah’s listening to him telling her about the widow hitting on him. Gripping the edges of the chair, she felt the bar’s cushion squeeze beneath her fingers even as she realized that this image could not be real. Still, she felt the sensation of jealousy wash over her again as he vaguely glossed over the details of what had happened with the widow.

  The next image felt like a slap: her dinner with Ben Archer months before. The illusion was so real that she slid her arms around the carousel horse’s neck to stabilize herself and found that she was gripping smooth, silky hair. With a rhythmic beating noise, the horse was cantering backward on the platform with its head down. The strange sensation made her sick to her stomach, like when she’d ridden on a train with her back to the front car. She looked around to see that all the animals—the lion, the tiger, and the zebra—were also running in reverse and in unison, like a herd stampede being rewound on film.

  The carousel lights flashed again and Ben’s face morphed. Now she saw him on the steps of the old stone Methodist church, shaking his head. She wore the ivory lace dress.

  Lara gasped loudly at the next scene. Todd stood in front of her, hazy like he was in the sun; she squinted to see him. Todd. She gasped when she saw his face again. He was like the illusion she’d seen at the gala, but this Todd was in a memory—the scene familiar to her. Up close, after all these months, she’d forgotten so many details about his features—the lines next to his mouth and the blue flecks in his hazel eyes. Perhaps her pain was so bad that she’d had to erase him. And now it felt as though a weak seam had begun to rip again at the fabric of her insides. The carousel lights flashed and the music was loud, but inside the image it was just them. They were in his Jeep with the top down; he was looking at her and smiling. The wind was blowing in her face, stray hairs of hers getting snagged on her recently applied lip gloss. She stared at Todd’s face, so grateful to be seeing it again and ashamed that she’d forgotten the way he brushed his brown hair back with his hand. He was so beautiful.

  “Don’t go.” She put her hand out to touch him.

  He looked over at her and laughed. “What are you talking about?”

  She remembered this drive. Two weeks before the wedding they’d been on their way to Charlottesville. She’d stared at his profile as he drove, but in this exact moment, they hadn’t said this to each other. He lifted his sunglasses and pulled the Jeep over, then leaned in and kissed her. These images were beautifully assembled, like lines of poetry. To touch Todd’s face again—knowing in her heart that he was lost to her—had such a purity and beauty that it took her breath away. This had been her wish: to see him again knowing the significance of the moment and the loss that was to follow. She held his face in her hands, studying every line and stray hair.

  The carousel began to slow. She could see flickers of light showing through him. Todd was fading.

  “I love you.” She choked the words out quickly, her hands still holding on to his face, a little hard so his face shook as she spoke.

  “I love you, too.” He dissolved in front of her, his voice echoing.

  Lara began to sob, hugging the horse’s neck tightly. It, too, had changed, returning to a smooth polished wood. Its tail gave one final flick that brushed against her thigh.

  When it stopped, it wasn’t the pair of clowns waiting for her anymore. She recognized the familiar blue-and-green uniform of Shane Speer, the fortune-teller from the Rivoli Circus.

  Had she been transported back to Kerrigan Falls? At this point, anything was possible. She climbed down off the horse, dizzy and slightly sick. Her head and stomach were not in unison. She’d never been one for rides.

  “Hello, Miss Barnes.” In this wild French circus, his American Southern accent was terribly out of place.

  Oh Jesus. This was like those dreams where strange things in her life merged—her kindergarten teacher replacing her father onstage at a Dangerous Tendencies gig and not knowing the words to the set list they were about to play.

  “I know.” Shane was leaning against the control booth, smoking a cigarette. He took a final drag before extinguishing it on the ground with a black Puma sneaker. “You’re thinking, What is he doing here?”

  “You?” She was wobbly and pointed to him as she stepped onto the ground. Well, her hand was trying to point at him, but she stumbled.

  “I really work here,” he said, catching her, “but I had to make sure you had the desire to join us inside our little circus, so I was forced to come to you.”

  “All that stuff you said to me. Was it bullshit, then?”

  “Hardly.” He stood her up and then walked backward down the Grand Promenade, nodding toward the merry-go-round. “What do you think of her?”

  She followed behind him, staggering a bit and looking back at the carousel, taking in the ride. The carousel was aqua with a seascape scene painted on the top marquee, surrounded by ornate gold livery and round lights. She remembered her old carousel that sat rotting behind the barn and all her attempts at getting it to move with magic. This was the carousel that Althacazur had tried to teach her to pull through to her world; she’d caught enough glimpses of it when she’d come close to conjuring it up.

  “It goes back in time. Trippy isn’t it? Most people can’t stay on here for long. If they do, they go back to before they were born and then they kind of…” He snapped his fingers. “… go poof.”

  “They go poof?” Lara nearly shouted.

  He shrugged. “I guess it should come with some kind of warning… like one of those YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE signs.” He gestured to his navel with a flat hand.

  “Or that it kills you?”

  “Well, I think that’s a bit harsh, Ms. Barnes. It just makes you evaporate, which is quite different from killing you, I assure you. But we could stand here and quibble all day.” He kept walking. “Come on.” They passed the fortune-teller room. “Now, here I can give you a really accurate fortune. I can even change it up if someone asks. That cheating husband that I see in your palm? He’ll be as faithful as a nun on Sunday… but it’ll cost you.”

  “Let me guess.” Lara straightened her skirt. “Poof?”

  “Nah, just your so
ul. You’d be surprised who takes me up on it.” He stopped for a moment, then spun around like a real estate agent walking her through a showing. “This,” he said, “is the Room of Truth. No one ever wants to go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “The room is filled with mirrors that strip out all illusion, so all you see before you is the truth. As you can imagine, no one wants to see things as they really are. People have gone mad in that room.” He shook his head gravely. “Oh, we say we want to know the truth. But do we really?” Like a stage magician, he produced a stick of aqua, pink, and white cotton candy that appeared out of nowhere. He held out the stick. “Cotton candy?”

  “No, thanks,” said Lara, her stomach still settling from the ride.

  Shane shrugged and began tugging at the fluff. At the end of the hall was an even bigger set of aqua doors, which opened as they approached. Through the doors was the big top, labeled LE HIPPODROME. The sun was shining in the Grand Promenade when Lara stepped into the big top. Unlike the sunny rooms in the hall, the night sky and stars peered through the glass-and-gold ceiling of the hippodrome. Baroque carved box seats with gold reliefs lined the inside walls, with large baroque chandeliers dripping down from the ceiling, the largest in the center dome; additional clusters formed over the seating groups closest to the ring. It was like the inside of a jewelry box. To Lara’s surprise, the seats were all elaborate velvet chairs. In the center ring, the wood floor had an ornately carved and polished chevron pattern. She’d seen this circus before, in the painting Sylvie on the Steed.