She looked away for a second as Leslie started speaking. “So I was thinking, we have the shows starting tomorrow, but maybe we can work out a switch. I’ll check with everyone, of course, but how would you feel about doing a couple of the scenes on stage tomorrow as a practice run?”
“Like I was ready to pee myself.”
“Oh, come on. You’re ready! And this way, you can actually get a little comfortable with being on stage with an audience.”
“Maybe just a small scene or two?”
“Of course.” Leslie shrugged. “I don’t want to throw you to the lions or anything.”
Tia looked back at the ice wall to gather her thoughts. Whoever had been behind it was gone now.
“Okay. If you get all the permission and stuff taken care of.”
“Piece of cake. Believe me. They want you cool and relaxed when the time comes for you to step out on the stage.”
“You know, I still can’t believe this is all real.” Even to her own ears, Tia’s voice sounded small.
“I’m finally getting used to it.” Leslie laughed. “It’s probably the bruises.”
“Oh, those feel real. No problem there.”
They finished their stretches in silence and headed for their dressing rooms.
Behind them, the clown-faced man nodded his head. They’d do. One or the other. He didn’t much care which one.
Life on the Road: Part Seven
I don’t know if time has muted my memories or if I just got bored with my lot now and then. I have few recollections of the year that passed except as a sort of marker in my mental calendar. I was with the troupe for over a year, I know that much. During that time I spent hours and hours practicing my routines and I wound up being the ringmaster for no less than once a month. Alexander was always getting himself in trouble with the local law. It seemed to come with his job as the owner of the circus.
Life on the road was seldom easy. Most days we were traveling and when we weren’t there were tents to pitch and routines to practice. I worked hard at my routine as a clown and at least as hard at my escape act. Alex had promised me that when we reached the north again, I’d have a chance to perform at least a few times to see how people reacted.
Alex was a man of his word. After almost a year with Carter, Burt and even Doreen helping me with my routines, I got to do an escape act. I got to do it as Rufo the Clown, because that way if every stunt went completely wrong, I still could milk the situation for a few laughs.
Nothing went wrong, and I have to say the sound of applause was amazing. Clowns get laughs. Escape artists get applause. Ten minutes after I was done with my routine, I was back in the audience and getting admiring smiles from more than one of the people who’d watched me escape from a straight jacket while hanging fifteen feet off the ground.
From that day on, I was still Rufo, but I had more time on stage and I became part of the draw for the circus. I didn’t let it go to my head. Oh, I probably would have, but Carter and Doreen stopped that from happening. They reminded me that at the end of the day, I was just a person, not the make up I wore.
Rufo was the escape artist. Cecil was just one of the gang. I think I liked it better that way. I’d seen a few of the performers who thought they were something special, and I’d seen the way they were treated for it. Royalty, or the attitude that you are royalty, has no place in a traveling circus.
We’d done most of the circuit again before we finally headed for the Northeast. The reasoning was simple enough, you really couldn’t get a lot of people to head into a circus tent in the winter months and a lot of the upper states tended to stay damned cold for a long time. So it was May or June before we hit Maine and a few weeks after that when we came to Serenity Falls, New York.
Serenity Falls was a pretty town. I remember seeing it as the train let off the cars for the show, and I looked out the window of my trailer as we were hauled up a mining company’s access rails to the site of the Pageant Farm.
We set up the same way we always do, and we had our show the same as we had in every other location, but the fun times didn’t happen this time around.
See, it was in Serenity Falls that I was murdered.
I guess I should try to explain that a bit. We pick up strangers from time to time, provided they met the approval of not only Alex, but the majority of the troupe. That’s how I came to be a member of the circus family and Alex never changed that particular rule. If he thought someone had merit, he was certainly within his rights to decide if they could become a part of the proverbial family, but instead he let everyone have their say.
One of the people he picked up and we agreed to let stay around was a man named Billy Raker. Billy was a clown by trade and a damned good one. He had a routine down that left people speechless with laughter. Have you ever seen a person laugh so hard that tears came from their eyes and they couldn’t catch a decent breath? Billy saw it all the time and he was the one responsible for it.
Despite that, I didn’t like Billy very much. He had a certain air around him that was well…slimy. I wanted to wash my hand after we were properly introduced and shook. I wasn’t the only one, either. But he was a draw, and Alex promised that if he kept getting the people in there, he’d not only agree to let me leave when we hit New York City, he’d also introduce me to a few of the right people to know.
Did I still have plans of being a big star on Broadway and having my name as well known as Harry Houdini’s? You better believe it. I’d miss a lot of the people at the carnival, God, how I’d miss Doreen and her sweet smiles, but I’d have left just the same. I was quietly in love with Doreen but as time went on I realized she thought of me only as a friend and nothing would change that. I’m not quite masochistic enough to want to spend my life pining away for a woman who doesn’t love me back. I might have been, but there was my family to consider as well, my real family, and Millie, who deserved so much better than she had at home.
I wanted to be a star and I wanted to be rich, so yes, I’d have left.
I never got the chance.
Instead, the new clown and the man who’d recommended him, a loser names Lonny Whitaker, snuck out one night and killed five children. I learned about that later, of course. After I died. Before that, all I knew was that the first show went very well. We had a grand old time as they saying goes, and we got more than a small amount of applause.
It was business as usual, in other words. After the show I got together with Doreen and Carter for a few rounds of poker with a penny ante. Nothing too major, but a chance to relax a little with my friends. I made it a point not to look too closely at Doreen. It was easy to get drawn into her, even if you were trying not to let yourself. We’d already gone through a few times when being around her had made me act stupidly. Not too dumb, just like what I was, a kid with a serious crush on the pretty girl who lived in the area. I’d never gotten obsessed. I was too busy dealing with other things to get that involved in how I felt about her.
Besides, there’s nothing quite as distracting as being smitten when you’re trying to save yourself from death by stupidity. Thinking about pretty girls would never have worked out well for me when I was doing the straightjacket routine. And of course, I’d be leaving when we hit New York.
I had thought of a thousand reasons not to fall in love. Most of them almost made sense at the time. In hindsight, they were all foolish. We’ll get to that later.
The first day was a good one. The night of poker was pleasant and left me only a few dimes poorer than when I started. Then, the next morning, we heard about the five children from the Pageant farm that disappeared.
Want to know something? No one was surprised when the people of Serenity Falls started looking at us as the source of their troubles. No one.
I was a little surprised by the group of men who came to see us, but only because they had the guts to actually show up in their regular clothes instead of in white sheets.
Their leader was a big man in his mi
d forties, I guess. Like most of the blue-collar types in Serenity Falls, he had a crew cut and a broad face. Not ugly, but the expression on his mug when he showed up could have been carved from the granite they quarried in the area.
I wasn’t there when the screaming started, but I got there quickly enough. It was a show day, so I came out of the trailer wearing my clown makeup and ready to perform. The locals weren’t much in the mood for me or anyone else who was trying to be peaceful. After one of the rubes got close enough to Alex to spit in his face, I stepped in to try to calm things down.
I slid in between the ringleader of the mob and the ringmaster of the circus, facing the bear of a man who was screaming accusations. “Listen, whatever’s happened, we didn’t do it. We’re a circus, folks. We’re just here to entertain.” To make my point, I handed over an elephant head made of balloons.
Maybe the guy had a problem with elephants, because his face turned red and his hand wrapped around the central part of the peace offering and he squeezed until I thought for sure my fingers would break. I tried to pull back, but he held on tightly.
Finally I defended myself. I kicked the man in his testicles as hard as I could. He dropped down fast, groaning and coughing, and I stepped back, trying to see if he’d done my hand any permanent damage.
I didn’t go far before the man who owned the farm had a shotgun pressed to the side of my face. I felt the barrel slide along my cheek, then up my nose until the red ball at the tip got knocked away.
I stopped moving. Everyone stopped moving. I don’t think anyone there really expected the situation to get out of hand. I know how weird that sounds, but there’d been none of the odd sort of vibe we all got from time to time, the warning bells going off and telling us it was going to be a very bad day.
I don’t think anyone there that morning was expecting more than some chest beating and maybe a few fists. And out of nowhere, the man who we’d paid to allow us on his property was shoving a very intimidating weapon in my face and asking, just as cold as you please, “What happened to my little ones. Tell me, please.”
The man was looking at me with eyes that were worried not for his own safety but for little children. I think that was what stopped everything from going crazy. That and a few of the townsfolk who maybe didn’t want blood on their hands when they weren’t even sure a crime had been committed.
Another of the townsfolk calmed everyone down, and despite the tensions, we all agreed to help look for the little kids. All I could think of was how desperate I would have been if Millie disappeared like that. There were plans to head back toward Illinois in the not too distant future, and I made my own plans. If New York didn’t work out, if I didn’t get a crack at serious money and stardom, I would drop by the homestead and see my family. I had just sent them most of my earnings for the last few months, and I wanted to see how they were. Despite the distance between me and my father—physical and emotional alike—I was even starting to miss my old man.
The show was put on hold. We spent the afternoon looking for the missing children without success. The night’s performances were cancelled as well and we considered pulling stakes and leaving the area, but in the long run it was too late in the day.
The only good news was that the carnival’s efforts in searching seemed to take care of a lot of the tension between the rubes and my second family.
At least it seemed that way until I felt the flames.
I awoke to the sound of Bert and Carter screaming, along with Markus Chambers and Lou Crompton. Just five clowns, that’s all we were. Five guys eking out a living and thinking of better days, maybe, or a brighter future.
Our brighter future came in the form of fire, yellow and red tongues of flame that blackened the trailer’s walls and sent thick coils of smoke into the air. Tears burned in my eyes and smoke tried to claw down my throat. I coughed and gagged and looked on as Carter tried to extinguish the flames running up his long sleeves. He never made it. The fire spread too quickly, devouring his flesh and clothes alike. Poor Bert tried to extinguish him, but it did no good. I think Lou was already dead by the time I woke. I think he died in his sleep only five feet away from me. Markus lived longer, but he couldn’t do any good for himself or anyone else, trapped as he was, and burning in the blankets he’d covered himself with.
I tried to give us an out. Broke out the single window in our trailer and tried to unlock the door from the outside when I realized it wasn’t budging from the inside.
My fingers reached through the window and struggled to get to the doorknob, but it was useless. My arms weren’t long enough.
I coughed and hacked and spit at the foul tastes scorched into my mouth, they wouldn’t go away.
Bert screamed when Carter died. I was trill trying to reach the door.
I saw the other members of the Carnival of the Fantastic outside the trailer, saw them trying to reach us, but the flames were too high, too hot.
They were still trying to reach when my hand started burning. I remember pulling it back inside and looking at it, wondering why it didn’t hurt more. I guess that was because by them my legs were already on fire, and you can only feel so much pain at any given time.
Oh, I wish I could explain how much my body hurt, how much my soul burned, too. Not with pain, but with rage.
I burned and I howled for as long as my lungs would let me, and in the end, it meant nothing. In the end, I was dying, and dying, and then I was dead and the flames kept licking at my roasting body as my spirit slipped away from the corpse I had become.
I died in flames. Four other men joined me.
I used to believe in Heaven. I used to believe that if you tried to live a good life, you would be rewarded in the afterlife.
I had perhaps a full minute of freedom outside of my body before I felt the pull of dark hands, dragging me down and into a different place that never had anything to do with a benevolent God.
I died and I went to my own special kind of hell.
Rage? Oh yes, there was rage and there was pain.
And then, ladies and gentlemen, I pulled my greatest escape trick of them all.
Chapter Eight: Looking for Millie (Part Eight)
I took a bus to see my grandniece. I couldn’t very well take the car, you see, because it was starting to stink a bit. Summer heat and raw flesh don’t go so well together.
The bus let me off in a little town outside of Baltimore, and from there I walked to the apartment where my last flesh and blood lived. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was better than I could afford.
I stared at the building for a long time, trying to get up the nerve to knock.
Then I left, found a hotel and decided to try my luck the next day.
The second time around, I finally got up the nerve to knock at the door. There was no answer.
A little after that, I realized she was on tour with the circus that had made me so angry, and I cursed myself for my stupidity. Thing about the TV is, I didn’t have one growing up. The few times I’d ever watched one it had been something of a special event, and it was as big an affair for the family as going to the movies. Somehow I’d gotten it in my head that the events on the screen were always filmed before they were seen, even the news.
It wasn’t too hard to find out where the Carnivale de Fantastique would be playing. I found out the name of the city and I got myself on another bus.
Miami had changed a lot since I’d last been through the area. Really, the whole world has changed so much I sometimes can’t even recognize it, but Miami? I may as well have been on foreign soil.
It took me a while to find the theater where the Carnivale was performing. The crowds were huge and the excitement from the people waiting in line was electrifying. I could remember the feeling of having an audience that was excited to see a show, and this dwarfed the sensation.
I didn’t have the money to gain legal entry, but that had never stopped me before. I made my own way inside the show and settled in to w
atch the performance. There were clowns, people in bear outfits, men and women dressed for work on the high wire, and everything in between. I looked at the clowns first. None of them would have made it in the real world. They all looked too much alike.
Meaghan would be dressed in a different outfit. She would be dressed as a female demon of some kind. According to the program book I lifted, she was one of the seven demonic enchantresses that sent the Carnivale de Fantastique into the show’s title: Infernal Temptations. Apparently in this version of their story, the entire troupe was lost when Halston made a deal with the Devil. I looked at the names of the succubae and was a little surprised to see that Meaghan played the part of D’ReAnne. Not that far off from Doreen. Was it a coincidence? I contemplated that question and then decided that I really didn’t care one way or the other.
My grandniece was playing a demon from hell. That was just fine with me. It was all make believe, right?
I watched the show without saying a word. Most of the audience was a lot ruder. A few times I heard people’s cell phones ringing, but most of them had the good grace to turn them off quickly. One young man not only didn’t turn it off, he had the gumption to answer it and start talking. He sat two rows away from me and I heard almost all of his conversation with a girl named Heather before he finally shut the thing off.
Has the world gone mad? I mean, honestly, who needs a phone in the middle of a night out with friends? Seems the height of rudeness to me. I decided I’d have a talk with the boy about his manners when the show was done.
I was more impressed than I’d expected to be; believe me, I went to the Carnivale with every intention of being disappointed. Yes, I was there to see my only remaining family, but since I was there, I decided to judge the show against the life I had lived. They got it all wrong, of course, but I didn’t much care. The performers were all top notch. There were a few stunts handled on that stage that I would have bet good money couldn’t be done before I saw them with my own eyes.
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