The Magpye: Circus

by CW Lynch

  Able had seen his father's memories, had seen the long lineage of Kings who had considered themselves the masters of the dead. He'd seen how, eating the flesh and blood of their fathers, they had maintained a bloodline going back countless generations. They had courted magicians, amassed occult power. Every generation building on the memories and skills of those who had gone before, and on the backs and bones of those they had sacrificed. The Kings ruled. The Kings used.

  "I won't put it on you," said Able calmly.

  "You won't need to," said Mikey Bumch. "I can take it."

  And Able opened his mind.

  "I won't rule the dead."

  "Then serve us" said the ghosts in unison, and Able was certain that he heard, just in that moment, ghostly voices that were far more in number than anything he had in his head.

  Able's eyes snapped open. His pain was gone. Underneath him he felt the cold metal floor of a van and his nostrils filled with the smell of burning petrol. It was dark outside, the familiar byway that led to the circus illuminated by weak headlights.

  "Where did you steal the van?" asked Able.

  Marv twisted around in his seat. His eyes bulged as he looked at Able.

  "Holy shit…" he whispered. "Back from the dead. Again."

  Able looked down at himself. His clothes were ruined but, underneath the rags and shreds of his Magpye costume, there was only perfect milky white flesh. No wounds, no bruises. No blood.

  "He did it…" whispered Able.

  "Who did?" asked Marv suspiciously, his eyes back on the road as the creaking van whipped around a tight bend.

  "It doesn't matter," replied Able. He tried to call Mikey's ghost forward, an instant reflex, but another mind blocked his.

  "This isn't over," said Adam King.

  "No," replied Able. "You're damn right it isn't."

  HANGOVER

  Cane woke up to find his bed damp with blood and smeared tracks of grey-black brain matter. He had the mother of all hangovers, and he gagged as he rolled over into a squelching patch of something. A few nights ago, he'd woken up in between supermodels. Now, he was waking up in a nightmare.

  He staggered across his bedroom, dragging bedding behind him, and stumbled into the en-suite bathroom. The harsh white light made him screw up his eyes and he stepped blindly over to the large marble sink and its mirror. He rolled his tongue around his dry mouth, feeling clods of meat stuck between his teeth. His jaw ached as he gingerly rubbed a hand across his face. He found a day's worth of stubble, maybe more, and something sticky and dirty that stuck between his fingers.

  Cane opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. The lower half of his face was caked with dried blood. It stained his teeth a filthy brown and flaked away as he worked his aching jaw back and forth. Underneath it, of course, was The Ink.

  Ochre black against Cane's tanned skin it moved slowly, languidly, like an eel gliding through water. No shapes, no patterns, just simple broad and somehow muscular strokes.

  Cane sensed that The Ink was sated, for now.

  Shedding the soiled sheets and bedding, Cane stepped into the shower. Twisting the controls on the wall, he let the hot water cascade down and wash the blood and brain from his face, hands, forearms, and chest. He picked the strands of stringy flesh from between his teeth and flicked them onto the floor of the shower, the small pool of water around his feet running red.

  Opening the door, he caught sight of himself in the mirror again. The Ink traced its way across every inch of him, moving faster now than before. It explored, running along the edges of muscles, following the tracks of arteries and veins. He let it paint its sigils and symbols on his skin, feeling its power.

  He felt like a new man.

  Grabbing a thick towel from a hook on the wall, he dried himself off crossing back across the bedroom. Discarded on the floor, he found Patrick Keane's head. Smashed open at the top, the contents had been scooped out and consumed in last night's feeding frenzy. Brutalised, Keane's face clung onto his skull by only a few tendons and strands of muscle, looking more like a mask on a dummy than a dead man's face.

  Cane kicked the head under the bed, laughing to himself.

  What a thing it was, after so many years, to finally have the arcane power that was his by right. After years of envy, living in Adam's shadow, and the denial that had followed after his murder. Dragging the Kings into the 21st century? Cane laughed at his own stupidity. If this was the power that the magical legacy of the Kings had to offer, then it was time to return them to the dark ages. Gleefully, Cane sought out the other heads, tossing them in the air or kicking them across the floor. Everything they had known, all their secrets, were now in his head.

  Or, they should have been.

  Cane found himself staring into the empty eye sockets of Victor Chase's skull, the second most feared man in the city reduced to a bowl of bone and left-over meat. There had been such secrets behind those eyes, in the swirls and whorls and lobes of Chase's brain. Cane shook his head, trying to recall everything that he had learnt, to bring the memories back into sharp focus, but it was no use.

  Like his own memories of the night before, Chase's were becoming blurred and fogged, slipping from his mind as easily as the blood and brain had washed from his body.

  Cane dropped Victor Chase's skull and rushed back to the bathroom, fixing himself in the mirror. He watched The Ink intently, looking for some sign. He closed his eyes, tried to focus. Finally The Ink spoke to him.

  Cane slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering the glass.

  "I understand," he said quietly, the hot pain in his fist already being soothed by The Ink.

  "Problem, Boss?"

  Cane King's eyes snapped open as he spun around to face Jack Taylor. It only took him a second to return a smile to his face. Jack Taylor didn't scare him anymore. Taylor should have been scared of him, but whatever else Jack Taylor was, he never seemed to be afraid. Maybe it was another benefit of his so-called clarity, thought Cane.

  "No problem, Jack. No problem at all. Just working out a little frustration."

  "Looks like you had a party in here last night," said Taylor.

  "You know how it is," replied Cane, knowing that Jack didn't have the faintest clue. At least, he hoped he didn't. This was Jack Taylor after all; killing people and eating their brains might just be what he did for fun. "Do you have any news for me?"

  "Not really, boss," lied Taylor. "Pretty quiet night. A little fallout from the gangs, but they'll drop into line. You're still the King, and every one of those guys had it coming one way or another." Taylor wasn't about to tell Cane about The Pit or what he'd seen there. Like any good shark, he could sense blood in the water and, right now, Cane King was bleeding out without even knowing it. Taylor didn't need his much vaunted clarity to see that killing the four biggest bosses in the city had more than destabilised things, it had lit a short fuse under the whole city.

  "Things are going to change around here, Jack," said King, pushing past his lieutenant and striding across the bedroom. Slumping into a fat leather chair, he plucked an apple from a nearby bowl and sunk his teeth into the sweet flesh. "I want a meet, all the gangs together."

  "You're sure that's a good idea, boss? I seem to recall you weren't too happy about the gangs meeting before."

  "That was different," replied Cane, taking another noisy bite of the apple. "I wasn't invited."

  Jack Taylor smiled in response, but said nothing.

  "We're going to consolidate, Jack, bring all the gangs under our direct control. Cut out middle management, you know what I mean?"

  Taylor nodded. "You'll need good men to run things day to day," he replied. "And we lost a lot of good men in the mill."

  "Leave recruitment to Garrity," said King. "There are always guys who want to make easy money. Besides, I've still got a few good men, haven't I?"

  Cane looked at Taylor, and it took every ounce of Taylor's clarity and self control not to look down at the mauled sk
ull of Victor Chase. He had been a good man in Cane King's eyes once, now he was nothing more a chew toy.

  "Of course," said Taylor. "It would be my pleasure."

  Cane raised an eyebrow. "There's one other thing," he said. "It's about my nephew."

  "Your nephew's dead, boss," replied Taylor, his voice ice cold. The word "dead" seemed to have a pretty loose meaning around the Kings of late. He'd seen one man go into the building that hid The Pit, but seen two leave. The second was in bad shape, there was no doubt about that, but there was nothing alive in The Pit at all. Whoever, whatever, had come out of there had gone in dead. He'd followed their van for block after block, finally tailing them out of the city and to the circus. That damned circus, things had never been the same since King had had him burn it to the ground.

  "He's not dead, at least, not to me," replied King, breaking Taylor's chain of thought. "He'll always be a… part of me, you see. I'll carry him inside me until the day I die. And it's not right, his body laying there in that shit-pit. He's a King. He deserves better."

  Taylor said nothing, his face an impassive mask. He didn't play poker, he didn't see the point, but right now he felt like a man staring at a big pot with a bad hand. He either had to fold, or go all-in.

  "Boss, there's something you need to know."

  MARISSA'S KISS

  Marissa stood in the makeshift kitchen of the lair and tried for the fourth time to pick up the kettle. Her hand passed straight through it. She was becoming more immaterial by the day. She knew what it meant. It meant Marv was coming to terms with things. She didn't know how it was possible, but he was. Perhaps it was his magic, becoming somehow more refined. When the pain of his grief was a raw, open wound, it had simply erased it by bringing Marissa back from the dead, albeit a version of Marissa crafted from Marv's rose-tinted memories. Now that he knew the truth, his magic was finding a way to salve that new wound.

  Whatever the reason, it meant Marissa, this Marissa, was dying by inches. She was bleeding out of existence, one memory at a time. She tried to focus, to convince herself that she was real, and reached for the kettle again. This time she made contact, wrapping her fingers around the warm metal handle.

  "Making tea?"

  Her father's voice startled her. Of course he was there. Why else would she suddenly be solid enough to pick up the kettle? At least she was real when he was looking at her.

  "Something for Able," she replied. She couldn't bring herself to tell him what was happening to her. After keeping the secret from him for six months that she wasn't really his daughter, hiding her slow descent and disintegration to the afterlife was nothing. She poured hot water into a dented pan, a putrid stench rising from whatever was inside.

  "What the hell are you making?" asked Marv, holding his nose.

  "Broth," replied Marissa. "For Able."

  "Ah," Marv replied. Since Able had come back, both in body and mind, there had been some changes in their lair. The Magpye was rarely seen or heard from, although Marv had no doubt that the creature was lurking in Able's mind, and Able seemed to have come to terms with what Marv now referred to as his "condition". Eating had been one watershed and, whilst Marv didn't like the sight of putrefied human flesh on his dinner table, Able was at least eating with them. Living under a circus built on a cemetery was turning out to have some advantages. Able had offered to eat alone, naturally, but it had been Marissa who insisted they all eat together. Their little family; a magician; a ghost; and whatever Able was plus the countless phantoms he carried around; seemed to have found some sort of strange equilibrium. It had been almost three weeks, and Able seemed to be back to his original self. There had been no talk of vengeance and, most importantly, no talk of the Kings.

  It seemed like it was over.

  Marv had decided to give Able another two weeks and then he'd try to get him to leave the circus for good. There was still LA, still a chance for all of them.

  "I'll let him know it's ready," said Marv, eager to get away from the smell of Able's broth.

  "No," said Marissa, "I'll go."

  She'd wafted past Marv before he had a chance to argue and when part of her arm passed through the stonework of the archway, neither of them mentioned it. You never admitted when a trick was blown, Marv told himself, even if you were sure the audience had seen how it was done.

  With a sigh, he headed to his own small room. Books were piled up everywhere, all of the burnt or torn, but readable for the most part. It was harder to destroy a book of magic than most people thought. Alone here in his cell, Marv had already spent weeks researching for something, anything, that would help Marissa, but to no avail. With Grace dead, Marv didn't dare reach out to any other magician. Whilst they all loved their secrets, they loved getting hold of other people's secrets more, and Marv didn't dare let anyone know the truth about Marissa until he understood what he was dealing with.

  ***

  Marissa found Able working on Zip Nolan's airship. Able still seemed to enjoy being Zip and it kept him busy, out here working on the machine. Marissa and Marv had both agreed that keeping Able busy was a good idea.

  Able was talking to the ghosts when Marissa walked in. His voice, then another, then another. His voice tripped up from time to time, one voice trying to talk over another, but all through the same voice-box and tongue. He was arguing. They were arguing.

  "I can't do it. I don't even know how."

  "You did it before, Dorothy. More than once."

  "That was different. Those girls needed help and it was either me or a bottle of gin and a hot bath."

  "Or a coat hanger."

  "I don't care about any of that. I just want him out."

  "We need him out."

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  Marissa cleared her throat. She didn't worry about how it was that she had a throat, it was enough that she could clear it, and that was that.

  The voices stopped and when Able turned around he was just Able. Not Zip, or Dorothy, or Malcolm, and thankfully not Magpye. Marissa knew that there were other new ghosts as well. Able talked a lot about someone called Rosa, he said that she was helping him to make sense of everything that was in his head now. There was a part of Marissa that was jealous of that.

  And then, of course, there was Adam. Nobody talked about Adam.

  "I brought you some broth," she said, pretending that she hadn't heard the conversation Able had been having with himself. "It's safe, for you I mean."

  Able smiled, the same old genuine Able smile that Marissa had grown up with. It was warm, even on a face as pale and cold as Able's now was.

  "Thanks," he said simply, taking the steaming bowl from her. He dipped his fingers into the liquid, seemingly unaware of how hot it was, and fished out a small chunk of withered corpse-flesh.

  "You checked?"

  "A mechanic," said Marissa, smiling. "I thought he could help you with your project, maybe?"

  Able popped the sliver of dead mechanic into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. "Maybe," he said. "I think Zip has it covered."

  "Just Zip?" asked Marissa. She wanted to know what it was that Able had been talking to the others about. She trusted Able but, no, she didn't trust them. She didn't even trust the ghosts that she knew, ghosts like Dorothy and Malcolm and Magda. Marissa, this Marissa, wasn't the same girl who had died that night, so why should they be the same people either?

  Able plucked another chunk of flesh from the bowl, ignoring Marissa's question. Able had always been good at avoiding answers to difficult questions. Marissa flicked him playfully on the forehead to get his attention. Her heart, or at least Marv's memory of her heart, skipped a beat as she saw the very tip of her finger vanish inside Able's head. He didn't seem to notice.

  "How does it feel?" she asked hastily. "To have them all up there?"

  Able scratched absent mindedly at the point where her finger had passed through his skin. "I never knew my father," he said, "And now I do, for what he's worth. Before then he cou
ld have been anything or anyone, and I had dreams that he was a good man. In that way, I've lost him more now than if I'd never known him. Hell, Marissa, before that night I'd never lost anyone before…"

  His voice trailed off for a minute. Marissa wondered if it was his own memories he was struggling to process or those of one of his ghosts. Thoughts of death and loss were precisely the types of thoughts that she and Marv had been trying to keep out of Able's head these past few weeks.

  “When I see their memories, or when they talk to me. In the moment I only feel what they feel but afterwards, if I think about it, there's just an emptiness. The space where they were, left empty in my head. I suppose it feels a lot like grief," he said finally.

  "That sounds like grief, Able, yes," replied Marissa kindly. In so many ways, despite everything he had been through, he

  "They're just memories, Marissa. Like you. Just memories that… keep on remembering. Their thoughts, their voices. If you try, you'll be able to hear them too. They are in your head just as much as they are in mine."

  "They're in my heart," said Marissa. She reached out to take Able's hand, to place it to her chest where her heart would, where it should have been. She stopped short, fearful that her hand would pass through his and damning herself for even trying. Marv talked about a life after this, but in this moment Marissa couldn't see any way out of the limbo they had built for themselves. Fugitives from the police, hunted by criminals and worse, a magician and a dead man and a ghost. It would have been a joke, if anyone could think of a punchline.

  "I'm not sure I have a heart, any more. I think maybe that's the one part of me that got broken and stayed broken."