The Carnival of Lost Souls : A Handcuff Kid Novel

by Laura Quimby

  “Well, if you’re so smart, tell Jack why it is impossible, even if he wanted to leave on Halloween, and if he tries he will probably end up dead,” Skimmer said.

  “Tell me.”

  Jabber’s eyes narrowed. He lowered his voice and Jack leaned in to listen. “Just because you will be free from Mussini’s contract doesn’t mean he won’t try to keep you here. The forest will be crawling with Death Wranglers paid off by Mussini, traps will be set everywhere, and if you are caught you will be hanged and your lifeless body tossed into the Black River, where it will sink to the bottom, and your spirit will stay here in servitude to Mussini forever. I will try and help, but you must escape Mussini on your own. The gate at the North Wall will be unlocked, and if you make it that far, you are free to leave.”

  “The gate will be unlocked and we can just walk out? No deal-making with the Death Wranglers?” Jack considered it.

  “If you make it that far,” Skimmer said. “It’s a huge risk.”

  Jack leaned back in his seat and thought about T-Ray and Boxer and knew it was their only chance—their last chance. “If it’s the only way, then I say we go.”

  “Excellent. Maybe it’s time Mussini gets tricked for once,” Jabber said.

  Jack knew that Jabber had personal reasons for standing up to Mussini, tricking him by getting rid of Jack, and proving that he was a worthy heir to the show. Everyone had an angle. But as long as that meant he would help, Jack didn’t care about Jabber’s motivation.

  “But you still need a trick for the show. Mussini is expecting a huge finale. Halloween demands it.”

  Jack stared at Jabber. “I still have to do the trick? Can’t we just leave before the show starts and avoid the torture cell all together?”

  “Mussini’s suspicious of you. He knows you are going to try and escape. You have to do the trick.”

  “How will I do that?” Jack asked. “You keep forgetting that I’m not actually a real magician.”

  Jabber drank down the last swallow in his glass. “Magician or not, you must risk your life for the good of the show.”

  “Or you could forget about the show and work with me,” Skimmer said, grinning. “Partners. Seventy/thirty split on the merchandise till you learn the ropes. Leave Mussini and the show behind.”

  “I can’t leave T-Ray and Boxer.”

  “I hope you’re terrified,” Skimmer said. “If I were alive, I know I would be.”

  “I’ll do it. I’m not afraid.” But Jack was afraid. “It’s the only chance we have.”

  “It’s just a little torture. Nothing to be afraid of,” Jabber said, then turned to Skimmer. “And I’ve got a job for you, too.”

  “I don’t work for Mussini.” Skimmer shifted his weight away from Jabber.

  “Think of it as a freelance opportunity.” Jabber stood to leave. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “If you’re not taking no, then this job of yours better pay.”

  Jack stood. “I get the feeling everyone pays in the forest.”

  The enormous glass tank stood center stage. An attention getter. A spotlight hog. Genius in its simplicity—a glass rectangle that looked like a telephone booth. It also resembled a glass coffin standing on its end, but Jack tried not to think about it as his own personal death trap as he walked around it. Once inside the glass chamber, he would be like a fish caught in a hard glass net. Jack shook the image off. Focus! No time to freak out now. If he wanted to stay alive, he needed to do a lot less worrying and a lot more practicing.

  Jabber had positioned the glass tank on the stage overnight. Jack had no idea how they built the tank or where the parts came from—Mussini had his ways. He probably could get a Trojan horse built if he wanted to. That’s how Jack felt, like he was inside the camp of his enemy, hiding in the great belly of a horse, waiting for Mussini to fall asleep before he could strike.

  Mussini hardly slept, and the day before Halloween he paced back and forth like a tiger seeking weakened prey. His eyes were all fire, and the sight of a new and dangerous trick thrilled him. Like the dead, Mussini was never satisfied for long. Each show had to top the previous one, and the greatest show of them all was rapidly approaching.

  Halloween was the most important night of the year for Mussini. All of the towns in the Forest of the Dead threw wild parties with music and food, buckets and bowls overflowing with candy. The dead pulled out their best costumes, and for one night, the streets glowed with twinkling lights and music and laughter. Jack’s performance would be the highlight of the Halloween tour—he couldn’t disappoint.

  “Halloween is a night of celebration, a night of irony,” Mussini said. He sat down in the front row and propped his feet up on the edge of the stage. “It’s the one night the dead rejoice and run free in the streets. It’s their night to live again.”

  Boxer wheeled in an enormous drum that sloshed water onto the stage in sloppy waves. Jack’s stomach seized. He wasn’t the best of swimmers, and although technically he wouldn’t be swimming in the tank, just the idea of all that water made him seasick.

  “Today we will see if our Jack is scared of a little water,” Mussini said, rubbing his palms together. Just try and get out of this one. His dark eyes glittered.

  “It’s not a little water,” Boxer said, rolling another drum of water out onto the stage and filling the tank. “It’s a lot.” Jack stared at the water. Boxer was right—it was a small ocean.

  “I’m not scared of water.” Jack sneered at Mussini, trying to convince him that was true.

  “I hope you have given up your desire to leave our little family.” Mussini put his arm around Jack and began his little heart-to-heart. “I will do anything to make this night a success. After Halloween, we will be the most famous show in the forest.”

  Jack slipped out from under Mussini’s arm, but the man kept talking. “Stars in a starless world, my boy. Are you ready for it?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready.” Jack grabbed his towel. Ready to get as far away from you as possible.

  “It’s going to be a great trick. Jack’s staying with us. He knows better now.” Jabber helped Boxer hold the barrel of water as it sloshed into the tank. “Right, Jack?”

  “Right. Best trick ever.”

  Mussini left the boys to practice on their own. This gave them the time and space they needed to plan the trick and the escape perfectly. No mistakes—not this time.

  Boxer eased a rickety ladder over to the tank and propped a two-by-four on the edge so Jack could sit down. Wearing swim trunks that Jabber had gotten for him, Jack climbed up the ladder and swung his feet over the edge of the glass. Practice began with Jack holding his breath underwater while Boxer and Jabber timed him. After dropping in, he shot out of the tank gasping for breath. Jabber clicked the stopwatch.

  “One minute and thirty seconds. Not bad for a scrawny kid like you.” Jabber nodded to Boxer, who tossed a set of shackles onto the stage. “Time to go upside down.”

  Jack climbed out of the tank, sat on the stage, and closed his eyes while Boxer locked him up. Sometimes it was easier to see things with his eyes closed. His mind’s eye opened wide, and he saw the way the trick played for the audience. Tight metal cuffs closed around his wrists. The cold clasp of shackles gripped his ankle bones. Boxer turned a crank, the chain took hold, and Jack was hoisted into the air, where he dangled over the tank. His body stiffened as he tried to control the slight sway. Boxer let out the chain and lowered him headfirst into the icy water—a black curtain dropped over the box, plunging him into darkness. Jack had to escape the manacles before drowning to death. Torture was a good name for the trick.

  When he was eight years old, Jack took his one and only trip to the beach. It was fun, at first, running along the sun-baked boardwalk in brand-new rubber flip-flops, eating cotton candy and hot salty pretzels. The sand on the beach was covered in the coolest things he had ever seen—washed-up starfish and iridescent shells. He had only seen sea life in books and on television.
The red bodies of starfish littered the beach like small treasures from the sea. Starfish shrivel and die out of the water. So Jack flung them back, one by one, slinging them into the crashing surf, saving them from the impending doom of the scorching sun.

  Back then, Jack thought he might be part dog. He had these super-canine senses, like the way he couldn’t remember people’s names, but could remember their smells. The beach parents smelled like stale beer and piña colada. His big, beer-bellied foster father decided Jack should learn to swim. Jack stood at the edge, ankle deep, while his feet sank into the soft sand. He raced back to where his foster mother sizzled in the sun, drenched in coconut oil, lounging on a bright orange beach towel, reading a steamy romance novel. But before Jack could make it to the safety of the towel, Mr. Big-Belly grabbed him, spun him around, and shoved him toward the water. Jack’s heels dug deep trenches into the sand, but it was no good. His foster dad lifted Jack’s featherlight frame up into the hot August sun and tossed him like a starfish returning to the sea.

  After the initial crash, mad flailing, and gag-a-thon, Jack stood in the chest-deep water. The suction of the tide pulled against the backs of his legs as the water rushed back out. Slimy seaweed encircled his ankles. Gritty sand stung his calves, and then a massive, greenish peak rose above him. He had nowhere to go. He tried to duck, but the wave crashed onto his head, filling his gaping mouth with salty water. Jack, flung helpless as a starfish, felt swallowed by the ocean. The salt stung his eyes as he tumbled uncontrollably on the wave. He was lost in an undersea world where there was no up or down.

  That’s what he was afraid of, not having his feet on the ground. Upside down in water was the key to the vulnerability of the trick.

  Houdini had invented the upside-down trick himself, so he had a leg up. Jack didn’t know how Houdini did it. He was in way over his head, literally, and he knew it. All he could do was to keep practicing and do the best he could. Jabber knocked on the glass tank, returning Jack’s focus back to reality. Boxer turned the crank, and suddenly, Jack was pulled back out of the tank, coughing and choking up water, dangling above the stage like a drowned rat.

  “How do you feel?” Jabber asked, as water streamed down Jack’s body.

  “Horrible.”

  “Good. That gives you an idea of what the trick will be like.”

  “This trick stinks.” Jack’s teeth chattered. “Why does everything have to get harder?”

  “That’s the challenge, the danger. You must create that ache in the audience’s heart. Inflict worry.”

  “That won’t be a problem. It’s just that I thought I found something I was good at. Handcuffs were my niche.”

  “Mussini will love it. It’s exactly what he’s been waiting for.” Jabber handed Jack a towel and then realized that his arms were shackled. “Open wide,” he said, stuffing the towel into Jack’s mouth.

  “Fffankss,” Jack mumbled as Boxer lowered him down to the stage and helped him out of the cuffs. He sat shivering, wrapped in a towel.

  Violet waved at Jack from the other side of the camp. Since water made the dead nervous, Violet screamed her head off the first time she saw Jack get submerged in the tank. Though she agreed to help him onstage, she wasn’t about to watch him practice. Since Runt had already betrayed them to stay in the forest, they had decided to keep him in the dark about the escape plan. Violet’s job was to keep Runt far away from the theater.

  After holding his breath all morning, Jack moved on to manipulating the handcuffs and shackles underwater. He did all of this right side up—the upside-down part would have to wait while he got used to the water. The heavy-looking locks were actually trick cuffs. One or two good yanks and they easily came free. Then he broke free of the shackles around his ankles, and the chains fell to the bottom of the tank. After a half-dozen tries, Jack escaped his handcuffs and leg irons at the same time, getting his best time yet. Now all he had to do was put the trick together, breaking free from the cuffs and shackles while underwater, hanging upside down. No problem.

  The first couple of times he practiced the trick upside down, he bent over and fell face-first into the tank like a pathetic six-year-old diving into a pool. Panic was the problem: The minute Jack hit the water, his body contracted and his knees folded in. Spaz City. He twisted and turned, finally jerking up and out of the tank, gasping for breath. Boxer slapped him on the back when he came up for air the sixth time. Jack coughed, choked, and spit up a mouthful of water onto the stage.

  “Sorry,” he managed to gag out.

  The trick had hit a wall. The control factor was the key. Jack had to control his fear, his panic, and his breathing. Jack sat panting on the board. “We can try again. I know I can do it.”

  Jabber and Boxer exchanged a glance.

  “We can practice more later,” Boxer said.

  “Maybe one last try,” Jabber said.

  “One last try,” Jack echoed, and braced himself for the chilling descent into the tank. Boxer let out the slack in the rope and plunged Jack back into the water. The trick started out fine. Confident that he might finally get out this time, Jack slipped out of the restraints that held his feet. But then he twisted around and caught himself in the shackles as they fell to the bottom of the tank. Tangled in a sea of chains, Jack couldn’t get his bearings. The links twisted and pinched at his skin like an iron octopus dragging him down into the deep. His body felt slow and clumsy underwater. He tried to right himself and dive out of the water, but he wasn’t fast enough. Water rushed up his nose. He choked and coughed, inhaling the burning cold darkness. His vision went black.

  Jack jerked back. Icy porcelain crashed against his sides. He was in an antique bathtub with big claw feet, just like the one Houdini used to practice holding his breath underwater. He lay flat on his back submerged in a foot of water, air bubbles pouring from his clenched lips. If he could just hold on a little longer. His lungs burned. He leaned up and gasped. It was the night of the show. The theater glowed. The bathtub stood center stage. Jack emerged from the water to the raucous applause of the crowd—a standing ovation, but for what? He stood soaked and shivering. Through the audience, the professor made his way from the back of the theater. He’s come to save me, Jack thought. As the professor approached the stage, Jack noticed the string of handcuffs that bound his wrists.

  Mussini stood, towering above the crowd, and raised his knife. Jack screamed, but no sound escaped his mouth. The knife sliced through the air, driving into the professor’s back. The professor stumbled, pitched forward, but kept going. Another knife sailed through the air, hitting the professor, causing him to crumple to the ground. Mussini didn’t stop but flung knife after knife with perfect aim. The professor crawled to the stage, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. When he approached Jack, he held out his shackled wrists like a bouquet of steel, a gift that only Jack could receive. Jack held the professor’s bloody hands in his.

  Pain pinched up the professor’s face. “You must escape. You must.”

  “You’re hurt. I’ll get help.” Jack tried not to look at the knives cutting into the professor’s back.

  “Don’t worry about me, my boy. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “We have a plan. I’m going to do the water torture and make Mussini proud. I’ll trick him at his own game.”

  “You’ll die trying, my boy.”

  “No, I can do the trick and escape on Halloween, Professor. Mussini and the Death Wranglers can’t stop us on Halloween.”

  A calm satisfaction spread across the professor’s face as he collapsed at Jack’s feet. “Very bright of you, my boy. Halloween.”

  “Don’t go, Professor,” Jack held the professor in his arms, his voice choked with emotion. “Don’t go.”

  Jack looked up into the wild eyes of Mussini as he prowled around the back of the theater. He had one knife left, and Jack knew he was saving it especially for him. The audience drifted away, the lights faded, and Jack was alone.

  Boxer shook
Jack violently, and he vomited a pool of water onto the stage. He coughed and hacked up water and phlegm. Jack leaned up; his throat was raw and his nose burned on the inside.

  “That was a close one,” Boxer said. “Are you all right? How many fingers am I holding up?” Boxer waved his hand in front of Jack’s face.

  “All of them,” Jack said. His teeth chattered and he curled his knees up to his chest. “What happened?”

  “It’s called drowning, and turns out you’re pretty good at it, seeing as how you almost didn’t make it out of the tank.” Jabber leaned down and peered into Jack’s eyes. “He looks OK,” he said to Boxer.

  Jack closed his eyes. It was just a dream, but the professor had been so real. He felt like such a sucker. The professor was probably home safe and sound and nowhere near Mussini, just like he planned it. He wasn’t going to save him. No one was.

  “This sucks. I can’t do the trick. What are we going to do now?”

  “You have to do the trick—the Chinese Water Torture Cell is the best trick we’ve got,” Jabber said, sitting on the edge of the stage.

  “Yeah, and get myself killed.”

  “Your failure is anticipated. Dying keeps you with Mussini, it’s what he expects. So you’re going to need a showstopper if you want to get out of here,” Jabber said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”

  After they fine-tuned their plan, Jack stumbled off the stage to find Violet and fill her in, and then he made his way to his tent. Every bone in his body ached with exhaustion. Sleep was all he had the energy for, so he threw open the tent flap and made a beeline for his hammock. Jack noticed T-Ray shifting nervously from foot to foot, waiting inside for him.

  “What’s up?” Jack flopped down into his hammock, which groaned under his weight and swayed back and forth. “Did you get a chance to talk to Jabber? He said he would let you know what’s up.”

  T-Ray fingered the edge of Jack’s hammock. “Yeah, it sounds like a good plan. I’ll miss Violet and Jabber. I wish there was a way that they could come back. I’ll even miss Runt, though he did rat us out. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I just wanted to say that it’s OK.”