by CW Lynch
The first guard stepped out from behind the cage, his assault rifle trained on Magpye. He was smaller than the others had been, but wiry. A scrapper. A scared scrapper, backed into a corner.
"I know who you are."
"I doubt it. Seeing as I don't. And if I were you, I wouldn't pull that trigger."
Magpye heard the second guard step out behind him. He was moving slowly, carefully, but couldn't disguise his footfalls in the inch or so of gas that was on the floor.
"Don't need to shoot you," said the first guard, taking a step forward. "Just need you to stand still."
Magpye ducked, and Piotr's arms closed on nothing but air as he lunged for Magpye. Tipping himself forward, Magpye tucked into a roll before exploding upwards, legs extended, the metal heels of his boots connecting with the first guard's jaw. Bone splintered and Magpye heard the sound of the guard's jaw dislocating from his skull. Landing on his feet next the guard's unconscious body, Magpye turned to face Piotr.
The big Russian took a careful step forward. The children, still docile, watched him. This one they know, Magpye realised.
"You don't take the children," said Piotr, his accent thick. "They belong to me."
"We'll see."
Dorothy's ghost stepped forward in Magpye's mind. In death, he was somehow even larger than he'd been when he was alive. He cracked his spectral knuckles loudly inside Magpye's head. "He's a big one," said the ghost. "I'm going to need a knife."
Circling Piotr, Magpye reached into his jacket and pulled a short blade. The Russian looked at it.
"I cook with bigger knives than that, little man."
He rushed forward, trying to get inside Magpye's reach and remove the blade's advantage. Magpye spun away and brought his leg up in a snap kick. The boot connected with the Russian's side, but it was like kicking a wall. The Russian smiled, grabbed Magpye's leg, and twisted, sending the masked man onto the floor.
"Told you he was a big one," said Dorothy.
Magpye rolled onto his back just in time to catch Piotr's foot coming down towards his face. He threw a gauntleted forearm up, blocking the blow. The big Russian pushed down, using his weight to force Magpye's arm across his own throat. Gasping for air, Magpye fumbled with the knife in his free hand.
"Behind the knee," sighed Dorothy. "We've been through this. Lateral and medial hamstring tendons."
Vision blurring, Magpye jammed the short blade into the back of the Russian's knee and yanked it across. The knife was sharp, parting the flesh easily. Magpye dug in deeper and pulled on the blade again, this time feeling the resounding snap of the severed tendons. Piotr toppled, clutching his knee. Blood mixed with the gasoline. Rolling quickly over, Magpye shoved the blade into Piotr's other knee. It took just one tear to finish crippling the Russian. Face down, struggling to breathe as gasoline found its way into his mouth and nostrils, the Russian was finished.
Magpye struggled to his feet, gasping for breath. He steadied himself on the cage for a second. It was done. As his breathing slowed to normal, he felt a small cold hand resting on top of his. One of the children, one somehow more lucid than the rest, was looking up at him. Ten, maybe eleven, she had a defiant expression on her face under a mess of unkempt blonde hair.
"Have you come to take us?" she asked.
"No," replied Magpye. With a smile, Dorothy receded into the strange and etheric regions of Magpye's mind and, unbidden, a small fragment of Able Quirk took his place. It was one of the few pieces of Able that had survived. It was the part that remembered the fire, the part that remembered his friends dying. Perhaps it was the best part of him, the part that knew only grief and loss, not revenge and hate. "No, I'm not here to take you."
"Are you going to kill us?"
"No."
"Are you going to kill him?"
Magpye followed the girl's gaze. Piotr had rolled himself onto his back and was awkwardly trying to pull himself away like some strange crippled fish, floundering in the shallow pool of gas. He was a long way from the unconscious guard's gun, and he knew it.
"Yes," replied Magpye. "I am going to kill him."
"Good," replied the girl. "He's a bad man."
"So am I."
One eye on Piotr's progress across the floor, Magpye pulled a thin piece of metal from his belt and got to work picking the padlock on the door. Piotr probably had the keys, but Magpye didn't want to get within reach of the Russian giant's arms again, even if he was crippled. Besides, picking locks was the first thing that Marv had got him to do, after he'd found him. He'd said it was therapeutic, that all problems were a type of lock and he just had to learn to open them. He'd found the leap from lock picking to marshalling the voices of ghosts in head to be very different, but Marv was still a good teacher. The lock popped off before Piotr had made another yard across the floor.
Magpye squatted down, bring his masked face level with the little girl's own. She didn't flinch. It wasn't the drugs, somehow she was not desensitised like the others. She had simply seen far worse things than a man in a gas mask, covered in blood.
"Get out," said Magpye. "Take the others with you."
The little girl didn't need to be asked again. She yanked on the collar of the boy next to her and led him out of the cage. The boy behind him followed. Then a girl. Then another boy. Whatever had been done to them here, it had prepared them to follow orders. Magpye wondered if their minds were even blanker than his had been, before the ghosts. Maybe there was nothing there anymore, just a blank page. For the sake of those that had gone before, he hoped so.
The girl deliberately led her parade past Piotr, spitting in his face as she went. Magpye unbolted and unlocked the rear doors of the warehouse, then pulled them open. Cold air rushed in, a refreshing change to the sickly stench of the warehouse. The girl stopped, looking up at the starry sky.
"Where should we go?" she asked.
"Not far," replied Magpye. "There are people coming, good people. They'll take care of you."
"What about you?"
"I take care of myself."
Magpye stalked back into the warehouse, watching the last of the children go. He did not dare count them. He had stopped counting the casualties a long time ago. The number didn't mean anything anymore. Instead, he measured the balance in victories like this one, and in the bloody acts of revenge that the ghosts demanded.
Standing over Piotr, blocking his reach to the unconscious guard's loose gun, it was Dorothy's voice that Magpye heard next. "I recognise him," he said. "He was at the circus."
"You watched them burn," Magpye growled. "You watched us burn."
"You're crazy," Piotr spat back. "Just hurry up and fucking kill me if that's what you're going to do."
Magpye reached into his coat and pulled out a cellphone. Owen had given it to him, said it wasn't traceable back to either of them. Magpye didn't care. One day soon he was going to write his name across Cane King's face and tell everyone what he'd done. Righteous fury knew no bounds and no quarter, that's what the ghosts said. Magpye hit the speed dial.
"It's us," he said flatly. "It's done. You're going to need a bus. And fire engines."
Magpye snapped the phone shut before Owen White could answer.
"Fire engines?" spluttered Piotr, "You crazy fuck, you can't..."
But Magpye was already walking away, his steel-capped boots sloshing through the pool of gasoline. He heard Piotr floundering behind him, trying to pull himself out of the warehouse. Magpye reached into his coat and pulled out one of Malcolm's pistols.
"Trick shot time," he whispered. "Yee-ha."
He fired over his shoulder, the bullet ricocheting off the metal stairway and hitting the floor, kicking up sparks and instantly igniting the gasoline. He heard Piotr screaming, but it was immediately distant. A wave of heat hit him.
Fire. Fire was memories.
FLAME
Memories passed through the mind of the Magpye like corpses down a flooded river. Against the background torrent there were o
ccasional shapes, sometimes faces, twisted and turned and battered in the foaming flood of random thoughts all mixed together. Somehow, he controlled it all, made form from the chaos. One ghost at a time, one memory at a time, he, they, had built the creature they called Magpye. It was neither a him, nor an it. It was a they, and each fought for its place.
The most singular voice was Able. He had been there first, after all, and it was his body. But he was as much a ghost as any of them, convinced that he had died and been reborn as this thing. Before the fire, before the circus was put to flame and all his friends and family had been killed, Able had never heard or seen a ghost in his life. So this new Able, this Able that could sense the dead and make them his through their dead flesh and old blood, this had to be a new Able. A different Able.
And so the memories of the old Able were lost in the flood of ghosts that raged and foamed and threatened to burst the banks of his very mind in their desperate hunt for revenge on those that had wronged them. Submerged beneath so many others, old Able hardly spoke at all.
But fire, fire always brought him forward. Fire was how he had "died" and how the new Able had been born. New Able, Magpye, and the ghosts. Too many people for one head. Too many by far.
Able had been a quiet kid. Devoted to his mother and to his strange non-nuclear circus family, he'd quietly learnt the various skills and trades that were the cornerstones of circus life. There were other kids around, but none of them worked as hard as Able for his keep. He could rig, and was fearless of heights, could walk into the cage of any animal without a care, and could set up for any act in the entire show. For every acrobat, every clown, there was a guy like Able behind the scenes somewhere. They kept the circus running and, when they needed to, they kept the circus safe. Able could spot a pickpocket faster than anyone and he'd turfed out his fair share. He wasn't a tough guy, but he didn't need to be. Everyone knew that the circus took care of its own, especially this circus.
Unlike other circuses, this one didn't travel. It hadn't moved in generations, so Able had been told. Other circuses didn't, wouldn't, come to this city, and so this one had stayed. But for the stories that he heard of the city and everything he read in the newspapers or heard on the old TV that his mother kept in her caravan, the city always seemed a faraway place. Its poison never really reached the circus and so they existed in a sort of malignant symbiosis. The circus and city, each the estranged twin of the other, each the other's twisted mirror image in some ways.
The city people came here to escape, Able thought. Who wouldn't want to come to place where fantasy was the norm, where magic and excitement and danger were guaranteed, all for the reasonable price of a ticket? Who wouldn't want to come here when the place that they came from was synonymous with fear, and nightmares, and corruption?
The city needs the circus. That's what they all believed. That's why they thought they were safe, why no one ever came looking for trouble. But they were wrong. One day, trouble did come to the circus.
It had been a night like any other. The last of the audience had drifted away, the lights from their cars lost in the ever present toxic glow of the distant city, their laughter no longer echoing. Props and equipment were checked and put away, money was counted and divided. Exhausted, the circus folk headed to their caravans for a few precious hours of sleep before another early start and day of preparation. Able had finished his work and was heading back to the caravan that he shared his with mother, hopeful for some hot food before bed, when he heard it.
A gunshot.
Gunshots were not uncommon, of course. Although he would never admit it, Malcolm practised from time to time, and some of the other men hunted for rabbits and the like. Circus life was tough life. Meat was meat, and meat was for the pot. That's what Able's mother had said. Another memory, another fragment. That was the curse of being the Magpye. All these ghosts, all these memories; he could remember his mother's thoughts on meat and a hundred other trivial things but not, for even a moment, her face or her laugh or the feel of her hand in his as a small boy. The dead were so much flotsam, drifting in the foam, ruined by the river. Face down his mother's corpse rushed by, leaving only thoughts of fire. And gunshots.
The gunshot had been unlike any he had heard in the circus before. Too low and loud to one of Malcolm's trick pistols, but not one of the hunters' shotguns either. Able's body had tensed the moment he had heard it. A gunshot, in the circus. A stranger with a gun.
He'd run towards the sound, nimbly avoiding boxes, hopping over ropes. His mind held a perfect map of the circus, every last inch of it. He could run through it blind-folded. He had, from time to time. In the dead dark of the circus he stopped, and listened to the night air. Waited. A second gunshot came soon enough. Then another. Then another. And soon the whole circus was full of gunshots and screaming.
He remembered Dorothy, in his nightdress, shotgun cradled in his huge arm, calling out. Dorothy wasn't afraid of anyone. He remembered Magda screaming, looking for her husband, already lost. He remembered a clown, nameless to him now, as the first person he had seen die. A clown, half in his make-up and half out, clutching his stomach, trying to stop his intestines from spilling out into his wide-waisted clown's trousers. He'd fallen at Able's feet, gasped his last onto the dewy grass. More gunshots, more screaming.
Able remembered running back towards his own caravan, looking for his mother. This wasn't some kids come back looking for a little trouble, or some pickpocket who thought the circus was fair game. This was something else, something unreal. He remembered running into Malcolm, naked except for his boxer shorts, boots, and a cowboy hat. He was smiling. "Got three of them kid, three of them already." He hadn't see Malcolm again after that until he was licking his blood off the side of a burnt out caravan, months later, hoping that Malcolm's ghost was wearing trousers.
He remembered the shapes the shadows made as they leapt and danced around him. He remembered the red light of fires and the growing heat. Fires all around him, caravan after caravan going up. An explosion, on the other side of the big top, and cheering. They had cheered, he had remembered that. People running everywhere, so much screaming. More gunshots.
Able remembered his mother's caravan and his relief that it was still standing. He remembered his mother, silhouetted in the doorway. No face, no smile, no eyes for him to remember, just a blurry shape yelling at him to go to Marv's old caravan. Marv had boarded it up when he'd left, put three padlocks on the door. Able had a way in though, a trick panel in the floor of the caravan that Marissa had shown him when they were just kids. Marissa said her dad had told her it was part of some old trick, a moveable trap door. Able's mother said Marv was the type of person who always knew where the nearest door was. Able had never understood what she'd meant. Just another thing his mother said that he could remember, even though he couldn't remember her face.
Things his mother had said ... why had only the trivial and stupid ones stuck? He remembered arguing. Arguing in the middle of a fire-fight, that was her alright. He remembered another voice too. He couldn't call to mind the words that were said, just the voice. Just the voice telling him something that gave him a sick, empty feeling in his stomach and that made him run, made him run oh so fast. He remembered being angry, even in the middle of the chaos and the fire. He remembered thinking that he didn't care now if the circus burnt to ashes because the circus was nothing. The circus was a lie. Everything was a lie.
Able remembered reaching the caravan, scanning around for any sign of someone watching him. He was alone, the attention of the strangers centred somewhere on the other side of the big top. He remembered crawling along the ground, unhooking the latch on the secret door. He remembered climbing up into the cool, quiet silence of Marv's old caravan. Marv had left a lot of his magic props behind, stacked up on every available surface. Posters were on every cabinet door, all Marv's old glories. Memories, all stacked and stored and pasted up on the walls. Able wished he had a place like this now, a place full of his ow
n memories. But now, just like then, what would he do when he got there?
He waited, listening to the sounds outside, trying to peek out through the boards Marv had fixed across the windows. Through the gaps, the circus was nothing but fire and shadows, black silhouettes against the raging flames. They were burning everything. Why hadn't they torched this caravan too? More gunshots outside. How long had he hidden there, whilst his friends were murdered? How many of them died wondering why nobody came to help? Had his mother died, wondering if her son had made it out? She was another one of which there was no trace, her existence wiped away so cleanly that she hadn't even left a stain for Able to find.
He remembered the trap door opening behind him, remembered steeling himself. This was it, this was the moment. And after that... nothing.
A shape, a figure. Man? Woman? Able didn't know. Whispers, anger, secrets. Then the box, Marv's magic box. Tip it over, get inside. “We'll be safe, trust me, we'll be safe.”. Had Able said that? Had he? She? Gunshots. Bullets coming through the walls, trails of firelight behind them in the darkness of the magician's caravan. The figure falling, the magic box toppling down. Trapped.
This was how Able Quirk died and Magpye was born.
GRACE FARAWAY
Cane King threw the phone across his office and watched it smash against the far wall.
"Problem, Mr. King?" asked Taylor, filling the silence whilst his boss calmed and restored the polished veneer that so few saw crack, let alone fall away completely. King ran a hand through his blonde hair, took another deep breath.
"That was Victor Chase," King eventually replied, his voice full of venom, sinuously twisting the mob boss' name. "He says I owe him a warehouse. And some kids."