by C. Mahood
Tessa and I had watched Abe creep up behind the circle of smaller tents and make his way silently to the opening to peer into the large tent. We could just about see him lift up a flap and then freeze. He must have stood there, peering into the tent for at least ten minutes. Not moving not shaking, just holding the flap above his head as he stood half way into the tent. Then the flap fell from his hand and blocked his from our sight.
We waited for a while longer. Then even longer still. An hour, at least, had passed and I was beginning to worry. It seemed he was not coming back. Fear set in then. The heart dropping, cold sweat fear that comes over you like a wet blanket. If he was hurt, or gone, I would be lost. I had been following him blindly for days. I had no map, other than the one in my mind. I had drawn it in the first place, but without looking at it for reference I was still lost. He knew where Garret and Sarah could be. I did not. My mind was made up. If you know me you will know that that happens pretty quickly. Once I’ve decided then that’s it. No moving me. I told Tessa to stay, she did, she is great that way. I creped up to the tent, following the same route Abe had trodden out before me. I say creped but it was like an elephant creeping through a stadium of bubble wrap. Not very stealthy. Lets just say Sam Fisher’s job is pretty safe. No contest here.
So I made my way finally to where Abe had entered the Tent. It was the largest circus tent I had ever seen. The only circus I had ever seen was the like of Duffy’s in County down or even the Russian circus in the Titanic quarter a few years ago. They were dwarfed tenfold by the tent I was about to enter.
The think canvas was heavy from its sheer size. How Abe had lifted and held it above his head was a wonder. I lifted the corner where the rope had been unlaced and curled it up high enough for me to crawl under. It was dark inside, my eyes were not adjusting as fast as they should. It must have been the dehydration or lack of food over the last few days. Few carrots would not have gone a miss. That was the reason we had stopped in the first place. Abe was to go ahead and see what we could barter for a meal. That decision turned out to be our worst.
My eyes slowly came around. The first thing I could see was the outline of a small man. It could only be Abe. He was standing only a foot or two from where I had seen him last, before the tarp fell from his grip behind him. He was staring dead ahead. Towards a large pillar of light from the hole in the roof to the middle of the circus ring. As my vision returned I could make out the inside of the circus tent. The ring was larger than I knew possible. The interior of this tent was so much larger and disproportionate to the size of the exterior. To explain better, I crawled into the tent from the base of the cover, along the grass and dirt, but when I stood up inside I was on the back row of the high circumference seats. The base of the circus sank deep into the ground. Like standing on the edge of a sink hole or the back seats of a massive stadium. I felt immediate vertigo as though I had walked out on the ledge of a skyscraper looking down. That however was not the most shocking of sights. I put my hand on Abe’s shoulder and the two of us stood in deathly silence. Out of both fear and respect. Sat in the seats and spread over the benches were bodies. Old, bloodied and rotting bodies. Limbs had been torn from most and every one had died in a struggle. They looked as though they were trying to climb up towards to entrance at the far side of the tent. There were burn marks coming from the base of the pit, reaching high up to the singed ropes overhead. Scorched props and cages lay dry and black. The wood looked rotted from the flames. Charcoal has turned everything black. The bodies that were not dismembered had been singed, to a crisp. Some wore armour. Some wore rags. Some wore nothing. All were dead. On the eastern side of the circle sat a large chair. Not quite a throne but a definite place for someone of authority to rest. There was a platform there and underneath the platform was a doorway that lead from the centre of the pit to what I could only imagine as the backstage. Instruments lay on seats, untouched from last time they were played. They sat neatly where they had been placed. Miraculously the flames had not bleed over the balcony on which the chairs were fixed. The body of a burnt animal lay curled in the centre of the room. I could not guess the species. It was too crisp and black for that. It was as large as a gorse but the legs were not quite long enough. It had a large spear protruding from its side so I can only assume it was a dangerous animal killed during the panic of the fire. Or perhaps what caused the panic and fire in the first place.
Abe still said nothing as he took everything in. Tears in his eyes but I felt no sadness from him. I struggled to speak. I returned outside, the air in there was thick and dry. I felt my mouth and nostrils turn to sawdust. Like a dry heat sauna I couldent even caugh from the lack of moisture in the air. Outside I walked around the Tent to the entrance. What I found ther was as terrible as the inside. The door to the tent had been barred shut. A plank of wood between the handles and a kart rolled in front of the entrance flaps. Inside the carts were two dead Lions. Both again had bolts and spears embedded deep into their sides and back of the heads. This looked like an attack. This was no fire accident. This had been planned. By blood ran cold and I lost control of what little food I had in my belly. I fell to my knees and retched onto the dry and dusty ground. Tessa came to see if I was ok but I had to push her away. I could not even look at the bodies. My stomach was weak and my senses were overloaded. The smell hit me as I started to get to my feet and with that came the guilt. My first reaction to the smell was excitement. I know it sounds disgusting. It was a primal basic hunger. The smell of cooking meat made my mouth water. It wasn’t until my brain caught up that I realised what the smell really was. The burnt meat from corpses. I can safely say I have never felt guilt and confusion quite like that. I could only tell you it was a disgust and shame cocktail. On the rocks.
Looking around the fairground it was pure destruction. Like something from a silent hill game. Everything was broken, ripped or burnt. The remnants of a busy evening long past lay as evidence on the ground. Blown by the winds on the plains to cling to the sides of the tents and fair ground stalls. I kicked some of the sweeping paper bags and glass bottles from my path and continued to walk through what looked like an abandoned movie set from a student shot zombie film. Some bodies lay in the ground, always in groups of three or four. My surrounding phased me in a way that is truly hard to convey. It was like a dream state I was walking in. Like I said before it felt as though I had stepped into a video game. Everything was familiar but not at the same time. There were definite signs of struggle and of a fight or scuffle. There were however no survivors or anyone to tell the tales I so longed to hear. That has, and still is one of my biggest flaws. I just need to know! It doesn’t really matter what the issue is, I just need to know. Be that who slipped at the ocars, even though I despise celebrity culture or who is dating who on the red carpet. Again, even though I hate that world. Sarah Usually kept me up to date with E News. I hate what she tells me half the time but again, I just need to know. This was a little more serious however. People lives were at stake, or lack there of. I called out as I walked around. Checking in ever small tent and cast tents too but there was no one. It began to become a sorry and depressing game of hide and seek. A game where I kept winning but felt as though I lost more with each find. I must have circled the whole circus perimeter because I found myself back by the barred doors behind the lion corpse wagon. Abe was kneeling by a brown patch of land. A square of flattened and dead grass. Like a crop circle only, well, square.
“Abe, what happened here?” I asked but he did not reply. He simply remained crouched in the flattened grass. The outline of a wagon by the looks of things. There where wheel tracks that turned to the east up ahead. Someone had left here in a hurry.
“Two sets of tracks me boy” Abe pointed to the ground and followed the marks as he spoke, still not looking to me.
“Survivors?” I questioned “Of who did this?”
“I fear the opposite son, the one that did this I believe.” Abe’s voice was solemn and soft. I follow
ed behind him as he traced the path of the wagon that had left. His hands on the ground as he crawled along until he stopped dead in front of a stack of hay bails. His head hung and he made his way to his feet. Covering his mouth he took a step further then fell to the ground with a cry. He continued to sob as I approached. I could not see what was behind the hay bails on my approach but once I turned the corner it all made sense. The body of a man and a woman were curled together. Blood had stained the entire surrounding area. Movies, books and games cannot prepare you for seeing so much blood. The bodies had been cut it prime places. They had bled out while comforting each other in the fact they would be together in death. It was heart-breaking but yet oddly comforting, just to know they died together in the arms of each other. The man had tattered clothes, it looked like jester outfit. Torn and caked in mud that was now died red. She too had a similar outfit on, hers didn’t look quite as bad but it still had the markings of wear and tear. Some burn marks on the sleeves too.
“Abe, what is going on, who could do this?” Is all I could seem to say? He remained silent, he approached the bodies and closed the eyes of the girl. She had been staring at the sky when she had died. Closing the eyelids was a way to ensure sleep, long, eternal sleep. “Abe, we should go. What is the people, or monsters that did this return? I sure as hell do not want to be here if they do.” I grabbed Abe by the back of his shirt as I tried to pull him away. He slapped my hand and continued to rummage in the satchels of the fallen man. Disgusted as his opportunistic, thieving ways I pulled him back, off his feet and onto his backside.
“Have a little bloody respect Abe, for flip sake!” I yelled at the Luchorpán as he brushed himself of and steadied himself to his feet again. “I’m not stealing you thick headed pillock!” He spat at me, 2Im looking for this!” He charged past me and lifted a book from the hand behind the woman’s body. The dead man had held this with one hand and his partner with the other. It must have had some great significance. Abe opened it and flicked thought he pages, His eyes scanned the pages quickly like a child looking through the bible for pictures. He turned the pages faster and faster until he slammed the book closed and threw it towards me. He slammed the ground with his fists and swore in a language I did not understand, and glad I didn’t. It sounded foul.
“What were you hoping to find in there?” I asked him.
“Well it doesn't matter now son does it?” he kicked loose grass and dirt in the direction of the book, “It’s written in a language I don’t know, waste of my bloody time, as usual!” Abe was fuming and struggled to keep any form of composure. “I can’t bloody read it so we are never going to know what went on here!” He got to his feet and walked away. Still mumbling and swearing he sulked away from the circus paddock into the endless sea of grass, hands in pockets and kicking the small stones in the green blades.
I would never profess to be a genius, but I do have some frigging great ideas from time to time! For example, I lifted the book that Abe couldn’t read and wondered of a way to translate. Here’s the good bit, In a moment of clarity and excitement I opened the Book to the middle to last page, rolled up my sleeves, took of my boots and socks and stepped onto the book. A foot on each page.
“Hey, Abe, lucky you have me around isn’t it?” I didn’t have time to see his expression as he turned because I was transported into the book, the now familiar feeling of swimming through paragraphs, words and fonts lapping over my head as the smells transported me to the beach of this world. Since it was not my writing, like the last time I page walked, I was really there as an observer, a fan, an impartial onlooker. Like controlling kill-cam in a FPS shooter. I hoped this would explain the story behind the fateful circus we were currently in. The words were foreign to me. I could make sense of the order of the letters but the meanings became clear as the picture and surroundings came into focus I could see the corpse we had found clinging to the book. He was in the position we were standing now. All time began to speed, faster and faster like rewinding a VHS. Time lapsed back, farther and farther. I felt sucked into the pages and into the rewind. Everything was a blue moving backwards. It led me to the point of the beginning of the book he held. When he had begun to write things down. He was in a Circus tent. Battered, bruised and in pain by the looks of things. I could see his hand writing the words on the pages of this book. Then I could hear them, as though he were thinking them aloud. Before long colours faded like a watercolour dipped into a stream. Slowly the colours re-positioned and the story began.
*
The Nomad queen invaded Grimm’s Traveling Fair and claimed it as her own, breaking all vows she made to the Owners. She had offered herself and her siblings and security detail to the fair, in what she called the, `dangerous shores of Northland’ Once she stepped into the big tent’s center circle everything changed. Her dark witchcraft tainted the camp. The light stopped shining, the birds stopped singing, the rains came and all colour was stripped from the fair. Crowds stopped coming as darkness shadowed over the once happy affair.
All Love, All hope…
The Queen knew of prophecies and welcomed herself as the ring leader by publicly burning the owners. She threw them into the scout cart with the `Grimm’s Fair’ name on the side. She set them alight and promised the same fate to any who uttered words of contest in her authority. As the sands of time slipped slowly away and the colour from the Fair faded from the easel, so was the life dripping from the carnie folk.
To strengthen her dark witchcraft, was to drain the life-force from her new subjects. Over the seasons the once bright and hopeful fair, filled with lively, loud and colourful attractions, turned greyscale. A sorry congregation of slow, shuffling, lifeless shells. Working to a single end. Creating sacrifices out of all the possession’s and worldly goods they owned. People no longer eat, let alone feasted. The skin hung loose over their once fat faces. Hair like dirty wire hang eerily from their balding heads. No more children filled the paddock. The stalls lay dormant, empty. No games, freak shows, competition stands or food stalls. All had been striped, carved and burnt as offerings. Same for many of the shops and the meeting hall. All lay as empty tents with a rich carpet of black dust and ash.
The Queens focus, firstly was to wipe the bloodline of Grimm clean, sever the head from descendants and nail them to the family tree. She knew of me and kept me as a trophy, a plaything to be disposed of when she became bored. She forgot about me for many years as her focus was fixed on growing in power. Her vision of a Northland striped of colour and stories. Just tales of her house of horrors where performers would die almost every night attempting stunts so dangers the reason they were not attempted before were quite clear.
Every now and then her attention returned to me. The last remaining Son of the Grimm family. Once a small child, when her reign over the Fair was claimed. Now I am a man, a fool, but a man.
For the amusement of her cabinet and close aids she dressed me up as a throne room jester. Humiliating me in a most degrading role. She put me under the apprenticeship of a circus master she had forced into slavery under her ownership years before. A lifeless man, without hope or passion and wished only for death each evening he performed.
My late childhood and teens were spent learning cheap tricks like juggling, high rope walking, cheap card tricks and obvious illusions. I think I took well to the illusions. They were simple. The fire breathing however was my favourite. I had always dreamt of the glory days my father spoke of and the dragon shows they once performed. Still on the inside of the Queens Chamber wagon were Large, pretty and detailed murals. Effigies stretching the entire circumference of the room. I would follow it from the beginning to the end when I could sneak in. Running my hand along the smooth material as I studied the paintings in the circle around the old dusty books. I felt I was part of the history. An observer watching the great spectacles and feeling the heat of the dragons flames from a safe distance, detached from any harm.
One evening we were called to the big tent, in fron
t of the Bitch. She was in a particularly blue and wicked mood that night. I remember her eyes glowing, burning as she stared with disgust towards me. She called us all to the throne room and demanded a new show. A showcase of nothing but fire. We tried to juggle flaming swords and batons but repeatedly burned ourselves. The Queen had the guards beat anyone who dropped their props or slipped from the ropes. The cast of fools quickly dwindled through the injuries given by the guards. We were so angered by this but we could do nothing. Who were we but disposable prisoners? We had no military training. Even the bouts of wrestling or fencing that she often forced us to display were choreographed. Our weapons were fake or wooden. We truly were no match for her heavily armoured guards. I only had a few skills but I knew them well. I couldn’t overpower the guards with strength but I could confuse them with tricks. I could not prize the armour from their chests but I could cook them within it!
I prepared myself for the finale. There was a larger than usual crowd in this evening. We were nearing Shann. There were many small towns not on the maps and plenty of eager onlookers. We always ended our shows with fire breathing. Caitlin was my dearest friend. She was the daughter of my father’s assistant and bodyguard. Her bloodline was strong also. Ancestors of warrior’s blood flowed through her veins as did it in mine. Now we both had to grovel for scraps from the tables we once sat at. We cleaned the privies we once used. We were the scum on the boots of the queen’s men and treated as such. Through our shared hardship we bonded. We shared everything and even though it was not spoken, by either of us. We were in love. A true love, the kind of love that was not forced. We knew what each other was thinking. This love is what saved us that day.