Hunter (9780698158504)

by Carroll, Michael

  Masatoshi had an almost identical—but much sharper—knife that he used at the start of his shows to slice through melons and oranges in midair.

  For his first few weeks with the carnival, Lance’s work had consisted mostly of helping out anyone who needed him, and there had been no shortage of requests. His arms ached from painting the wooden stalls, his back had a constant twinge from carrying lumber and huge stacks of metal-framed seats, his feet were sore and blistered from being always on the move. But he hadn’t felt so relaxed since he’d left Max Dalton’s apartment.

  He had been given the spare bunk in Masatoshi’s midsize caravan, his first real bed for almost a year.

  He was one of four “runners” now working for the carnival, though the others were considerably older than Lance and tended to stick together after hours. Lance spent what little spare time he had reading and listening to the radio, searching for any signs of Slaughter’s whereabouts.

  He didn’t see very much of Morty, the carnival’s owner, or Jerry, the foreman, who always seemed to be in the middle of repairing equipment or booking new locations. Instead, he took his instructions from Nigel, the tattooed man who performed as the carnival’s geek.

  During his shows, Nigel would astound the audience by eating lightbulbs. The first time Lance saw him do that, he was convinced that Nigel was superhuman. There was no way an ordinary human being could bite into a lightbulb and then chew up and swallow the glass.

  It was only on his third viewing of the act that Lance saw how it was done. Nigel would screw a bulb into a socket attached to a car battery, and the tent’s spotlights would be dimmed so that the punters could see the bulb light up. Nigel would then unscrew the bulb and—in the second or two before the spotlights came back to full brightness—quickly and deftly swap the real bulb for a fake one.

  “They’re made out of sugar,” Nigel had told Lance. “And no, you can’t have one. They cost seventeen bucks a pop.”

  Not all of Nigel’s routines were tricks. His act also consisted of swallowing swords, eating fire, lifting heavy blocks via a chain attached to his tongue stud, and hammering six-inch metal spikes up each nostril.

  The only job that Lance didn’t care for was cleaning the spikes after the show.

  From New Mexico, the carnival had traveled east into Texas, stopping in six towns across the state, and was now outside Lafayette, Louisiana, for a two-week-long engagement, the longest the carnival had set down since Lance joined it.

  Now Nigel entered the tent and watched for a few minutes, then said, “Getting better. You’ve got a knack for this, Newbie.”

  Masatoshi agreed. “In a year or two, we could be thinking about a double act. Gonna have to practice a lot more, though. Five, maybe six hours every day. At least.”

  “Something to consider,” Nigel said, nodding. He looked Lance up and down. “You’re starting to get some muscle definition too. Masatoshi, I think it’s time we started training him.”

  “What kind of training?” Lance asked.

  Masatoshi said, “Me and Nige work out every morning. Do a bit of karate, judo, jujitsu. Keeps us fit and gives us a reason to get up on the cold mornings.”

  Nigel added, “And the punters aren’t going to be interested in a flabby knife thrower. Pity the acrobats left—they knew how to keep fit. You can train with us, Hunter. Half an hour every morning. You up for that? Every morning.”

  “Yeah. I’ve done a bit of martial arts. It could be fun.”

  “Then hit me there.” Masatoshi held up his right hand, palm out, and Lance high-fived it. “No, I meant hit me. Punch me. Let me see how strong you are.”

  “Oh, right.” Lance made a fist and punched Masatoshi’s hand. It was like hitting a wooden plank. Lance grimaced as he vigorously shook his hand, then sucked at his knuckles. “Man, that hurts!”

  Nigel said, “It’s all in how you brace yourself. Right, Masatoshi?”

  “Yep. That, and doing it for fifteen years without missing a single day. Don’t worry, Hunter. We’ll make a man out of you soon enough.”

  “You tried him with the throwing stars yet?” Nigel asked.

  Lance said, “No way. Throwing stars are way too dangerous! They’re pointy all the way around—knives are only pointy at one end.”

  “Well, ninjas are never going out of fashion,” Masatoshi said. “Yeah, we’ll give that a shot. Your act can’t consist of just one thing, Hunter.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of their caravan. “Go get ’em. Shelf above the sink, on the left.”

  Grateful for the break, Lance left the tent and strode across the field toward the line of caravans. He nodded to some of the people he saw, waved to others.

  As he neared the caravan he saw Morty talking to Madame Purrina, whose trained housecat act was one of the carnival’s highlights. Madame Purrina’s four cats—a ginger, two Persians, and a black-and-white shorthair—seemed to obey her every instruction. They could climb ropes, circle the ring while running on top of beach balls, and perform a synchronized—though very short—dance on their hind legs. The climax of the act was the “cat-whispering” section. The cats could select individual small toys out of a large pile; the audience would shout out which items they should fetch, and Madame Purrina would whisper instructions to the cats, who would then dart off and come back with the correct toy.

  At first, Lance was sure that some sort of superhuman trickery was involved, that maybe Madame Purrina was using telekinesis to nudge the cats in the right direction, but when he asked Masatoshi about it, his friend laughed. “Telekinesis? It’s much more mundane than that. You’ve got to apply Occam’s Razor. You know what that is?”

  Lance had nodded. “Sure. If you don’t know the answer to something, then the truth is most likely to be the simplest explanation.”

  “Right. You don’t go making needless assumptions about mysteries. If you see a man with a cast on his arm, which is more likely? That he broke his arm, or that he’s wearing the cast to hide the fact that he’s a robot from the future and his artificial skin was damaged in a freak snowboarding accident?”

  “So how do the cats do it, then?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Two days later, Lance found out the secret: The cats had been trained to fetch the toys in a specific order. Lance and the other runners were planted in the audience. While the crowd shouted out their suggestions, the runners knew the correct order and Madame Purrina would pretend to pick them at random. “Did someone say the yellow duck? OK, Balthazar, yellow duck. Yellow duck, Balthazar!”

  During the show, Madame Purrina dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl, complete with shoulder-length gloves, voluminous coal-black hair piled high on top of her head, high heels, and stockings. Now, at a little after ten in the morning, Madame Purrina was in her civilian clothes: jeans and a T-shirt, with her long hair pinned back. In this mode, she also went by her real name, which was Kevin.

  Morty stopped Lance as he passed. “Busy, Newbie?”

  “Yeah, Masatoshi wants me to get his throwing stars.”

  “Oh, right. You’re still trainin’ with him. Nigel says it’s goin’ well. We finally found somethin’ you’re good at, huh? Anyway, when you get a few minutes later on, Kevin has a job for you.” As he walked away, he patted Kevin on the shoulder. “You look after them kitties, Kev.”

  Kevin walked with Lance the rest of the way to the caravan. “That town we passed through last night? The pet shop was closed, and the kitties are going to go hungry.”

  Lance stopped in front of the caravan’s door. “Sure. Just write down what you need. Though I can’t carry too much on the bike. I can’t take one of those forty-pound bags of food.”

  “Nah, the stuff my kitties eat doesn’t come in bags that size. It’s specialized. I only feed them the best.”

  Lance reached into his pocket. “Yeah
, I suppose you can’t just give them any old . . . Oh, great. I left my key back in the tent. Lend me a couple of your hairpins?”

  Kevin reached up and removed two of his pins. “What, you’re going to pick the lock?” he asked, laughing.

  “Yeah.” Lance quickly bent the pins into the correct shape and unlocked the door. He straightened the pins into their original shape, and handed them back.

  As he climbed into the caravan, Kevin asked, “Does Morty know you can do that?”

  Lance opened the small press above the sink, and called back, “I don’t think so. It’s not the sort of thing you tell people about.”

  “Can you pick any lock?”

  “Most of them, yeah.” He found the cloth-wrapped bundle of throwing stars, and climbed back out of the caravan. “Hey, probably best not to tell anyone. If anything goes missing, people will just blame me.”

  “No, he has to know! Newbie, can you get out of a straitjacket? ’Cause I’m thinking it’s been a long time since this carnival had an escape artist.”

  Lance shook his head. “I don’t know. . . . I’m good with knots and locks, but performing . . .”

  Kevin finished the sentence for him. “You’re trying to keep a low profile. I get that. I mean, who isn’t? You think I disguise myself as a showgirl every night because I enjoy it?” He hesitated for a moment. “Well, actually, I do enjoy it, but that’s not the point. So who are you hiding from?”

  Lance began to walk back toward the tent. “The whole world.”

  Kevin fell into step beside him. “Me, I’m avoiding my ex. Not that I owe her money or anything. She’s just annoying. Real high-maintenance, you know? Everything’s always about her, you know what I mean? Whatever you’re talking about, she switches the subject around so that you end up talking about her. Like, she’s always known that I wanted to do the act with the cats—I grew up on a farm and we always had loads of cats—and I thought she was backing me all the way, until I bought the camper and she took one look at it and said, ‘There’s not going to be enough room for all my clothes!’ And next thing I know, I’m being asked to sign divorce papers.”

  Lance said, “Yeah, some people live in their own world and we’re just lucky to be allowed to visit it.”

  “Right. She was the only person I ever met who could start a new job in the morning, then by the time she got home that day she’d have made three new best friends and a couple of mortal enemies. Man, she was crazy sometimes. But she was gorgeous too, you see. That’s something you gotta watch out for, Newbie. The beautiful, exciting, dangerous girls seem like lots of fun when you first meet them, but after a while you get used to how they look and all you’re left with is the crazy part. Of course, that goes the other way around too: They meet a carny like us and they think it’s all glamour and showbiz, but the show’s only on for a few hours a day. Rest of the time we’re all pretty much ordinary.”

  They stopped outside the tent, and Kevin said, “Anyway, I’ll write down the names of the cat food. They’ve got enough to last for a few more days, but, y’know, better to have some in and not need it than need it and not have it. That’s something my ex could never understand.” He began to mimic a high-pitched voice: “‘Why are you buying more cat food? You never buy me anything! You love those cats more than me!’ And I’m thinking, ‘You’re not wrong there.’ I mean, what’s it sound like to you, Newbie?”

  To himself, Lance said, It sounds like you’re still in love with her. Aloud, he said, “Sounds nuts.”

  Kevin cocked his finger like a gun, and pointed it at Lance. “Exactly!”

  “I should be finished here in an hour. I’ll come get the list then.”

  “Cool, thanks. And talk to Morty about the escape artist thing. You could wear a mask, if you don’t want anyone to know it’s you.”

  “Masks aren’t really my kind of thing,” Lance said.

  • • •

  On the morning of the carnival’s second-to-last day in Lafayette, the resident palm reader emerged from her tent and stopped Lance as he passed. “Oh, hey, Newbie. . . . Over here.”

  Mary-May was a bent-over old woman whose age Lance guessed to be somewhere between seventy and a billion. She dressed in many layers of scarves, cloaks and skirts, all of different styles and colors. Her long gray hair protruded from a once-white turban that was a little too large for her; she was constantly nudging it back into place. She peered at Lance over the thick, black-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of her nose—she had another pair on a string of frayed blue wool around her neck, and a third pair attached to the collar of her outermost cloak with a bulldog clip—and asked, “What in the world are you doing?”

  Lance looked down at the handcuffs that bound his wrists together. “Just practicing. Watch.” He turned around in a circle, and by the time he was facing Mary-May again, his left hand was free.

  “Trick cuffs?”

  “No, they’re real.” He held up his right hand and allowed the cuffs to dangle from his wrist. “They’ve been modified a bit, but only to add more links to the chain. If the chain’s too short I can’t bend my hand back far enough to use the key.”

  She nodded slowly. “Very good. And of course you’ve got more than one key hidden on you.”

  “I’ve got seven,” Lance said.

  “What’s your name again, Newbie?”

  “Hunter.”

  She took a step back toward her tent, crooking her finger in an invitation to follow. “Come in. I’ve got a few minutes to spare.”

  Lance followed her into the dark tent, and she pointed to one of two wooden folding chairs on either side of a small round table. “Sit.”

  Lance sat. “You’re going to read my palm?”

  Mary-May lowered herself into the other chair. “No. That’s just for show. For the punters. The lines on your hand mean nothing. They’re just lines.” She pushed her glasses back up her nose. “But I’m not a fraud.”

  “I never said you were. I—”

  “You have enough experience to know that there’s more to life than just the physical. You’ve seen some strange things, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah. A few.”

  “When I was your age, there were no superhumans. That we knew of. But there have always been people like me. People with the sight. Do you understand, so-called Hunter?”

  Lance nodded slowly. To himself, he said, She knows a lot more than she should.

  “You’ve been with us for a couple months now, and I’ve been watching you. You’re a smart boy—you’re learning quickly. But anyone can see that. What most folk can’t see is the stuff you’re hiding inside. . . . You’re looking for someone. For revenge, I think. What . . .” She hesitated. “Someone close to you. No, more than one. Your family. They were killed, and you’re looking for the killer.”

  He stood up. “Sorry, but I’m not comfortable talking about this.”

  She looked up at him. “No, no you’re not.” She paused again. “I’m not going to tell anyone, Hunter. The mysteries and secrets of the world beyond that are revealed to me are . . .” She paused. “Sorry, force of habit. I’m used to talking like that to make the punters think I’m more mysterious.” She gestured to the chair again. “Please. Sit. It’s been a long, long time since I last met anyone like you.”

  Lance sat down again, a little farther away from the table this time. “Like me?”

  “You have a gift. Not like mine, but there’s something there. Something different about you. Folks like you and me, we’re not superhuman, as people think of them. And you know this, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re lost, Hunter. You want to find the . . . woman, yes? But you don’t know where to start. Perhaps I can help. Give me your hand.”

  “You said that the lines are just lines.”

  “It’s not the lines on your palm I want.
Touching your skin helps me to see a little clearer. Oh, I don’t see much, just brief images. Flashes, you could call them.” She smiled at him. “The truth is, with most of the punters I see more than I let on. Folks are scared of accuracy in my profession. They prefer vague answers that can be interpreted in different ways. Of course, sometimes I don’t see anything at all, so I have to make it up.”

  “Ah, right. Cold-reading,” Lance said. “That’s something I know about.”

  “Now. Your hand.”

  Lance removed the cuffs, then stretched out his right hand across the table, palm up. Mary-May held it gently with her warm, dry fingers and closed her eyes.

  Lance waited, watching her. What’s she seeing? He wondered. Is she actually searching or is she just putting on a performance?

  After what felt like five minutes, when Lance was starting to think she had fallen asleep, Mary-May said, “There’s a cold place. Freezing. And fire. Much fire.” She briskly shook her head. “No, no, that’s not right. . . . Not quite. There’s a blue-skinned man. Your friend. And . . . Oh. Your memories have been altered.” She opened her eyes. “Someone has taken something away from you, Lancelot McKendrick. Do you know what that means?”

  Lance nodded, less concerned that she had somehow divined his real name than with the content of her message. “Yeah. I think I do. My parents and my brother were murdered. Someone offered to take away the pain.”

  “That person did you a disservice, boy.” She let go of his hand, and sat back. “Pain—physical pain—is like . . . like a fire alarm. You cannot deal with the fire merely by silencing the alarm. The fire still rages. This is also true for emotional pain. Do you understand?”