It was total madness. Not-Bartholomew had turned me into part of the show. No one in the audience had believed a single thing I’d said.
I couldn’t tell if the clown cops were really trying to get me or if they were just putting on a goofy act. But I knew if I got caught, they’d just drag me backstage. And Bartholomew wouldn’t be too happy about all of this.
When my torch’s flame went out, I chucked it at one of the clowns. It caught him square in the neck and he cursed under his breath.
“You’ll pay for that,” he growled under his breath while flashing a lunatic, red-lipped smile
“All right, coppers!” shouted Bartholomew through the megaphone I’d dropped. “Enough puttering! Let’s take him away!”
The cops formed a semicircle and cornered me near the back of the stage. They crept toward me, making little fake grabs as they closed in, gnashing teeth.
There was nowhere to go except up.
The scaffold behind me stretched up to the rafters. Maybe if I could get up there, I could stall until someone figured out that I wasn’t part of the show. Or until the real cops came for Lloyd.
I made a grab for the scaffold ladder as the clown cops rushed me—but they were too late. They missed me by a hair.
As I scrambled up, my heart thudded—this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy—and the music picked up speed, sounding as tense as I felt. Everyone in the audience ooohed and aahed.
Bunch of dumb sheep!
The clown cops started up after me, but I climbed faster. Soon, I was on top of the scaffold, high above the stage. I tried shouting, but no one could hear me above the crowd and the music.
I didn’t see how this could end well at all.
Chapter Seventeen
But here I am, at the beginning again.
Well, the beginning of the end. There was even a fat lady singing—literally. She’d come out with the rush of performers who’d stormed the stage, adding to the confusion. She was warbling along with the orchestra’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” but she was the least of the chaos.
Strobe lights flashed, tumblers tumbled and jugglers juggled and unicyclists unicycled. A fog machine belched purple smoke. The tech people above let loose some paper birds on strings that began swooping through the audience, dropping confetti. Kids squealed, adults guffawed. Everyone was so entertained, they forgot all about the kid in trouble. They’d never seen such an apparently well-organized mess.
Then again, neither had I. Maybe I was missing the hilarity, though, seeing as I was too busy escaping a mob of deranged clown cops.
So, to refresh your memory: after climbing a fifty-foot scaffold and then falling ten feet to Sharkman’s diving board, I was officially cornered—again. Clown cops above, below, and climbing. Sharkman in his tank with his little sharks. My mom and real Bartholomew were nowhere to be seen—maybe they’d escaped. Maybe he’d kidnapped her for real this time.
The audience was my only hope, but my throat was sore from shouting and I was only getting harder to hear. But it didn’t really matter. Nothing in the world would have shushed that mass. They thought this was all just part of the show and, by the grin on Not-Bart’s face, he knew it, too.
His grin got even wider when the first person in the audience shouted, “Jump!”
They call it déjà vu, but for me it was more like déjà vomit. Suddenly I was back in Brenville all over again, reliving that horrible nightmare at the pool.
What is it with me and diving boards?
At least this time I had my clothes on. Even in the serious situation I was in, my face reddened thinking about how everyone had stared at me when I got up out of the Brenville Pool. When everyone saw what had happened and they went silent as death.
The clowns were about ten feet below the diving board and gaining. I edged further down the high dive. They would be up to me in seconds, and then they would grab me and haul me backstage and that would be all she wrote. No one would ever hear from the Zander brothers again.
What is it that you do when you’re being kidnapped? I racked my brain. If…if you’re getting kidnapped, you throw a fit. You make a lot of noise. That’s what they told us when we were young.
“You let anyone nearby know that something strange is happening,” Dad had said. “Even if they can’t stop them, they’ll remember. They’ll remember what happened, and maybe it’ll help find you.”
But I couldn’t make noise! I’d tried that and no one could hear me.
I looked down and could make out Lloyd standing up, looking at me. He was the only one who looked like he wasn’t fooled—but he also looked boxed in by the swarming crowd. But even if Lloyd could read my lips, it didn’t help having an about-to-be-arrested murderer on your side. Speaking of which: Where were the cops?
Behind me, the first clown had reached the top of the diving board ladder. Maybe it was just his makeup, but his grin was terrifying.
If everybody would just shut up, I could tell them that none of this was an act!
Then everything fell into place. In one second, I knew what I had to do.
I took a deep breath and did it. Really. I didn’t back down, I didn’t give up.
I.
Did.
It.
In one swift move, I dropped my pants—and my boxers.
Spartacus Ryan Zander, once again, naked for the world to see.
The gasp from the crowd felt endless. Hands flew up in front of kids’ eyes. Old ladies swooned. Jaws fell open and little girls giggled. The music screeched to a halt, ending in an oboe squeak, but then that was it.
The whole circus had fallen into silent, gaping, motionless horror as I stood there, my suit pants around my ankles, my button-up shirt barely covering my rear end, a red blush covering my entire body. Yes, my entire body.
But.
But.
But the clowns on the ladder backed off. Sharkman stopped swimming. Not-Bartholomew’s eyes bulged from his fake Bartholomew face. He looked like he might have been even redder than me. The stage was mine.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted into the silence. I pulled up my pants and secured my belt as I spoke. “I don’t want to offend you all, but I need to say something and I need you to listen. What I said was true. The Incredible has been stealing from museums. Tonight I think Bartholomew’s planning on taking silverware from the Portland Art Museum. He locked me in a tour bus, but I got out. He’s even got my brother backstage. Bartholomew is evil—and it’s not just made-up stuff on some website. Please—call the police!”
The silence was so thick I thought I was going to choke on it.
And, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I launched myself off the diving board in an Olympic-worthy half gainer into the water tank below. After being naked in front of a thousand strangers, it didn’t even seem that difficult.
The first thing I saw when I surfaced was the angry face of Sharkman, glaring at me with his black eyes from across the tank. Luckily, he stayed on his side with his small sharks.
“You stole my act, kid,” he whispered. “Get out of my pool before I eat your face.”
I didn’t wait to see if he was just talking tough or if he meant it. My suit made it hard to swim, but I got up the ladder and pulled myself out, dripping, onto the stage. The whole tent was so quiet you could hear the water sloshing in the pool and the dripping of my suit. I stood in front of the spotlights, not sure what was going to happen, when the music gave a large ta-da!
“How about that?” boomed Not-Bartholomew, his voice cutting through the awkward silence. He looked at me like I was some vile thing he wanted to stomp, but he also held his arm out to me like I was his son. I felt myself being nudged over there by one of the clowns and I stumbled forward. I tried not to flinch as he put his arm around me.
“That
was a little experimental entertainment we’re working on,” said Not-Bartholomew, his hand pinching the back of my neck so hard I thought he was trying to do some sort of Spock move on me to make me pass out. “He’s wearing a body suit, though, folks, so don’t worry! We wouldn’t really… Crazy stuff, huh?” Not-Bartholomew kind of faded off, finally at a loss for words.
The crowd was still uncertain and quiet. Then Not-Bart leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Look to your right. Offstage.” Instinctively, I looked.
It was Will. The two security guards were holding him where the audience couldn’t see him. Will looked at me with scared eyes. He looked like he’d been crying.
“If you ever want to see your brother again,” Not-Bart hissed down to me, “you will take a bow. And you will smile. Like you mean it.”
I was so close. So close to exposing Bartholomew. So close to getting Mom back. All I had to do was say a few more words to the audience and everyone would believe me.
But I couldn’t let them hurt Will. Even if he was the worst brother in the world, he was still my brother. I glanced offstage again, but the guards had already dragged him away. I felt my eyes welling up.
And so I took a bow. And I smiled. Like I meant it. At that, the crowd laughed awkwardly and clapped politely, but there was no cheering. Not like before. I thought I saw someone pull out a cell phone and start to dial, but I wasn’t sure—it might have been a trick of the light.
Within a few seconds, the circus music started up again and a few of the clowns play-fought with me as they led me backstage, into the dark.
They barely had a chance to push me behind the curtains before I was tackled to the ground. Clowns, fake cops, Sharkman—the gang was all there. It was like, suddenly, I was not just one scrawny kid, but some kind of superhero that required massive strength to contain.
“Please, don’t do—mmmph,” I was about to say “this” when someone shoved a scarf in my mouth. The scarf tasted like face paint, making me gag.
This was not good. Will and I could both be dead before the cops arrived. Or we might simply “vanish.” Maybe the plastic surgeon would make a double of me and they’d be able to play off everything I’d done as part of their routine.
I turned my head and saw Will through the wall of clown cops surrounding me. He had a security guard on either side of him and had already been gagged. I took a little pride in the fact that Bart’s people thought I was a bigger threat than Will, who was twice as big as me and ten times as mean. Then I noticed another clown—how many clowns does one circus need, anyway?—pull out a length of rope. Were they going to hang me? String me up?
But no, they just started wrapping me in it.
I’d never been more relieved to be tied up in my life. You won’t get away with this, I thought, remembering the exact phrase I’d used when Nero and Robin had tied me up on the bus. I remembered what Nero and Robin had taught me: puff yourself up, push your arms out. I did that secretly as the cops spun me around, wrapping me with so much rope you could have made a rope bridge out of it.
I’d be out of that rope the moment they left us alone.
But then again…
If they put Will and me in one of those buses, we’d never get away. My mind began racing with all the horrible possibilities. Being locked in an airtight safe. Being dumped in the river…
My blood went cold as Sharkman leaned over me.
“You know, Bartholomew might have something to say about all of this,” he uttered in a cold voice.
They dragged me over to where Will was. Sharkman looked at us both for a beat before turning away to the others.
“Take them somewhere and lock them up,” he ordered. Then he smiled at us coldly, exposing his razor-sharp teeth. “Or maybe we should just feed ’em to the animals.” Will’s eyes darted around frantically, and Sharkman laughed.
“Everyone else, back to your places—we’ve got a show to finish.”
Chapter Eighteen
Four clown cops carried me and half-pushed/half-dragged Will down a set of metal steps, around a corner, and into some kind of dimly lit animal staging area. Beside me, Will was doing his best to fight back. It’s hard to do much damage when your hands are tied.
Each pen was separated by a short wall of canvas to keep the animals from seeing each other. As we approached the tiger pen (they appeared to be asleep, but even so, they were huge and absolutely terrifying), a feeling of dread settled over me. They weren’t really going to feed us to the tigers, were they? I relaxed a tad when we continued past the tigers and then tensed again as I saw a giant, floor-to-ceiling cage with two slow-looking elephants.
“You like our rubber cows?” one of the clowns said, jabbing Will, who grunted in response. “Maybe we’ll let you feed one, later.”
“Feed you to one!” Another clown laughed.
But we kept going until we reached the last cage in the row, half-draped in canvas. It was empty—and I recognized it: it was Matilda’s.
I was shoved in first, Will second.
“Mmmph!” Will grunted as he tripped over the lip of the cage and landed on his knees. It was a tight fit, but there was just enough room for the two of us.
“Might as well put this to use,” said one of them. “I hate to think of where that crazy animal is, though. Just running around somewhere?”
“Yeah, gives me the creeps, too,” agreed another.
Funny how I had freed Matilda and now I was locked in her cage. I hoped her escape had been more successful than ours.
The tallest clown shut the door and locked it. That’s when I remembered: I had the cage key in my pocket.
I could not believe my luck.
What with the ropes and that key, we’d be out of there the moment they left!
“Hey, honestly, kiddos,” said the tall clown, looking serious. “We were kidding about feeding you to the animals. Finn just wanted us to scare you. This is just until the show’s over. Then I’m sure Bart’ll have a nice long talk with you and send you on your way.”
“Or something like that,” said a shorter one. The tall one shot him a dirty look. But with that, they pulled the canvas down over the cage, and then the four clowns were gone.
It was dark in the cage, but not pitch black. Will immediately started rolling around, trying to get untied. I counted to thirty before moving, just in case the clowns were still around. After that, I wriggled into action just like the sideshow had taught me. I slipped my shoes off and—well, I don’t mean to brag, but I was out of that rope in, at most, two minutes.
I staggered to my feet, sweating, aching, rope burned—but free. I pulled the wadded scarf out of my mouth and spat on the floor a few times, trying to get the taste of clown paint off my tongue. Then I knelt down and pulled off Will’s gag.
“Ryan?” he asked, coughing. “How’d you do that?”
I grinned at him in the dim light. “It wasn’t that much rope.”
I started patting down my damp suit pockets but couldn’t find my pocketknife—or the screwdriver—anywhere. Maybe I lost it when I dove into the tank…?
“Seriously, Ryan,” Will was saying. “You got out of that so quick!” He seemed to be waiting for an explanation.
I sighed. “Well, I met a bunch of sideshow performers in Albuquerque and—”
Will just stared at me in shock. “Wait—Albuquerque?”
“Yeah, Albuquerque,” I said.
I helped him to his knees so I could start working on his knots—which was no easy task. He must have struggled quite a bit when they were tying him up because the knots felt like rocks under my fingers.
“Spartacus!” Will exclaimed. “What is going on?”
He looked so confused I had to laugh. When I thought about it from his perspective, the whole thing must have made zero sense. Him finding me locked
up, him being grabbed by security, me getting naked and jumping off the high dive. It would look like lunacy.
“I’ll tell you everything once we get out of this cage,” I said. Even if Will was still tied up, we could still run out the back of the circus.
I started digging through my suit pockets while Will just stared at me like I was crazy.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
“I have the key to this cage, somewhere,” I explained. “Zeda gave the key to me so I could break out Matilda—she’s a lemur. It’s like a monkey. This is her cage—”
“What the heck are you talking about now? Keys? Monkeys?” But he was looking expectantly at me while I checked my jacket pockets again. “Well? Where is it?”
But then I remembered. The key was in my jeans—which were in my backpack.
Which was with Lloyd.
I slapped my forehead. “The key is with the murderer. In my bag.”
“The murderer?” Will practically shouted. “What are you talking about?” All this was obviously getting to him.
I put my hands on the bars of Matilda’s cage and shook them as hard as I could. They didn’t budge. We weren’t going anywhere. I slumped down next to Will and sighed.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I said. “And I guess we have the time for it now.”
Then I dumped everything on him—the places the circus had been, the museums that had been broken into and robbed, the picture of the person breaking into the art museum and how it had looked like Mom. I told him about Mom’s double and Sharkman, and how Bart had hypnotized me and how he and Mom had left holding hands.
“And then they locked me in that tour bus and that’s where you came in,” I finished. It was a relief to tell someone everything. I’d kept it all in my head for so long, it had started driving me a little crazy.
“Wow,” he said, dumbstruck. “I just…I can’t believe you did all that alone. Geez, Ryan!”
“Well, I tried to get you to come with me, but then you pulled that swimming pool joke and—”
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible Page 25