Hang Wire

by Adam Christopher

  Terry blinks, and when he looks at his boss it’s like he’s just woken up. He looks around, glancing at Highwire, his eyes roving over Sara and Kara standing by the tent. Then his gaze locks over Newhaven’s shoulder. Highwire follows his gaze; there, by one of the trailers, stands Joel, the carnival manager. He has his hands in his pockets and is smiling, his own black stovepipe hat at a jaunty angle.

  “Ah, sorry, Jack,” says Terry. He rubs his face. Newhaven peers at him and then turns to Highwire, his face dark.

  “The fuck you do to him, jerk off?” He waves at Sara and Kara. “Hey, peaches and cream, go get Nadine. Get her to bring the first aid kit. Jesus.”

  The girls nod and walk away, but Kara turns and looks over her shoulder at Highwire. He frowns, and she glances over toward the carnival and holds her wrist out to the side, pointing at it with her other hand. Nobody is paying her any attention. Newhaven is fussing over Terry, and when Highwire looks toward the carnival, the carnival manager is gone. He glances back at Kara, nods his understanding. They want to meet, at the carnival, after the show is done.

  Newhaven pats Terry on the back, and Terry nods. “Go clean up, pal,” says the ringmaster before he turns on Highwire.

  “One day, that’s it,” he says, cigar drawing a figure eight in the air. “One more day, and then you’re out. I don’t care how much money you bring in. We can manage without it and without you.”

  The Big Top flap opens again and Newhaven jumps; it’s just Jan and John, coming to see the fuss.

  “Yes, sir,” Highwire says, and Newhaven’s mouth twitches. He likes being called sir. He mumbles something and then stomps away.

  “What was that about?” asks Jan. She and John exchange a look.

  Highwire cracks his knuckles. “Nothing. I’m ready for rehearsal if you are.”

  The acrobatic couple pause like they expect Highwire to say something else, but then John nods and holds the tent flap open for his wife to duck under. He disappears into the Big Top and lets the flap close, leaving Highwire alone.

  Highwire looks over toward the carnival, toward the Ferris wheel and the top of the big dipper, both still, their lights glowing perhaps a little fainter now.

  There is trouble at the circus. And he is not the only one who knows it – Sara and Kara want to talk. Perhaps they have sensed the power stirring too. Perhaps they’ve seen, heard something more concrete.

  There’s a connection with the Hang Wire Killer too, the missing reel of cable. Highwire is surprised that the police haven’t been to visit. Or perhaps they have, given that he can’t remember the days, only the nights.

  He lifts the opening of the Big Top and steps inside.

  — XII —

  DALY CITY, CALIFORNIA

  TODAY

  Mrs Winters’ house was a bungalow in a leafy suburb, just south of San Francisco proper. It was a nice area, and in the early afternoon, nearly deserted. Barefoot, bare-chested, Bob went unnoticed as he walked down the street. He’d only seen one other person, an old guy in short-sleeved shirt and brown shorts riding a mower around the grass outside a church. The church was new and looked just like the bungalows that flanked it, white weatherboards glowing the sun. The old man hadn’t seen him, busy as he was negotiating his vehicle around a sign proclaiming IF YOU WALK THROUGH THE FIRE I’LL COME TO THEE. As Bob walked past he wondered how many gods that piece of advice might apply to. He thought it would probably have applied pretty well to him, actually. Back in the day.

  He remembered how the villagers and tribesmen used to walk over fire for him. Fire and water, Bob was lord of them both.

  Was being the operative word. Sometimes he missed it too. He frowned, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his old jeans.

  Fire was why he was here, in this quiet suburb. Mrs Winters had invited him. He should have ignored the invitation, but she knew. Knew who he was, what he could do. Why else would she have invited him? Why else would she think that her daughter could be resurrected? If she’d been sent by Them – hell, if she was one of Them – then it was a really damn strange way to get his attention, if that was indeed what They wanted.

  The sidewalk ended as Bob approached an intersection. He looked right, he looked left, he looked right again. There was no traffic, just a few cars parked nearby, settled in for a day of sunbathing, the air already shimmering over them. Bob glanced skywards, and saw nothing but a blue dome, dark enough at the apex to remind him of the sea. He hadn’t walked this far from the ocean for quite a while. Despite himself, he was nervous.

  Bob stepped off the curb and crossed the street.

  Truth was he wasn’t even sure if They were still around. He was here to find out for himself. If she knew who he was, who They were, then he was powerless to stop Them doing what They wanted anyway.

  Bob stopped in a cool spot under a tree, brushed his hair from his eyes. In the dappled light he curled his toes on the sidewalk and watched the ground.

  There was something else, wasn’t there? Something… moving. He’d ignored the signs, perhaps afraid of what they meant, not wanting to relive 1908 or 1989, unwilling to accept that something was about to happen again. It was an amorphous, nebulous feeling. There was something wrong in San Francisco. Mrs Winters’ desire to dig beneath a fire troubled him. He knew what that meant. He’d seen it before.

  Bob felt his shoulders rise as he tensed up. He blew out a breath and looked around. Looking ahead, he saw his destination was just a couple of houses down on the other side of the street. He walked to the curb, looked right and left and right again. He crossed the street.

  Maybe if Mrs Winters was one of Them, she’d been sent to help. That would make three in the city, which was a damn sight more help than Bob had had in the past.

  Feeling a little better, Bob trotted up the garden path that led to Mrs Winters’ front door. The house was the same as the ones on either side of it. White board, two level. Not new but not old either. Bob wondered how long she’d lived in the house, and whether it was the same one she’d brought her daughter up in. Her daughter, one of the victims of the Hang Wire Killer.

  Bob wondered if the killings that had struck the city had anything to do with what it was that he could sense. Something moving. Something moving under–

  “You’re right on time, young man.”

  Bob looked up in surprise. The front door was open and in its frame stood Mrs Winters. She must have been watching from the windows, Bob thought. She was dressed in a vintage ball gown that Bob had no doubt she’d bought new.

  “Ma’am, you’re putting me to shame,” said Bob.

  She looked him up and down and winked before hoisting the edge of her gown and turning around.

  “Nonsense, you’re just right,” she said over her shoulder. “Now come on in and help me with the fire.”

  As he followed Mrs Winters through the hallway, Bob found himself smiling at the old fashioned floral wallpaper, the heavily patterned carpet. Bob remembered when that kind of interior decoration had been in fashion, and guessed it would have been half the woman’s life ago, at least.

  Not for the first time, Bob lamented the insignificant lives of those he walked among, those he had made his home with.

  “Here we are. I’ve made space for us.”

  Mrs Winters disappeared through a side door in the hall, the edges of her puffy gown squeezing through in a cloud of silk and ruffles. Bob followed, and then stopped in the doorway.

  Sometimes the insignificant lives of those he walked among surprised him, still, after all of this time.

  It was a dining room, wide and long, stretching clear from the back of the house to the front, with large bay windows that looked out onto the front garden, and a door at the back next to a serving hatch in the wall, presumably leading through to the kitchen. Below the hatch was an alcove for an elaborate sideboard.

  The sideboard in question lay on its front on the floor. The heavy piece of furniture had been toppled forward and then someone h
ad taken a hatchet to its carcass, leaving nothing but a splintered frame twisting under its own weight.

  The wood of the sideboard lay against a large pile of broken furniture – chairs, a multi-leafed table, clearly what should have sat with some elegance in the impressive room – in the middle of the floor toward the back of the room.

  The dark, patterned carpet that started in the hall had continued into this room, but as Bob stood in the doorway his toes were over the roughly cut edge. The carpet, cut and lifted from the floor, now sat in a soft, folded stack against one wall like rolls of whale blubber. The exposed floorboards were dull with age and dusty, an unreflective, unpolished mass of grayish brown wood.

  Bob stepped into the room. He could see more bits now: a different set of chairs and a smaller table; the headboard of a large bed, split into three pieces, the broken edges of each piece a bright pale yellow against the mahogany veneer.

  Added to the furniture were clothes, great piles of them. And tablecloths, wooden picture frames with paintings and photos still in them. In the middle, facing the door, was a small wooden frame with a portrait photo of a young woman in it. Lucy, Bob supposed.

  Mrs Winters moved to the bay windows, and laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about that, Mr Bob,” she said, waving off the pyre. “I was just getting ready for later. We’ve got plenty of room.”

  Mrs Winters looked at Bob, her arms held out in a familiar pose. She was ready to dance.

  “Lady, look,” said Bob. He walked over to her, his eyes on the pile of broken wood. Had she done all that herself? How long had it taken her? Then he remembered her strength at the beach. He looked at her outstretched arms and slipped his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans. “You asked me to come and help, and here I am. But I think we need to talk about some other things as well, don’t we?”

  Mrs Winters nodded quickly and then lifted her chin back into a perfect ballroom poise. “Oh, yes, there’s lots to talk about. But first we have to dance. It won’t work if we don’t dance.”

  Bob ran his tongue around the back of his teeth. He felt nervous and unprepared, like how he’d felt when he’d woken from his deep, deep sleep, the sleep of a lifetime.

  But maybe living down on the beach, becoming Bob, local tourist attraction, was the same as sleeping. He knew They were sleeping, all of them, and maybe he was too. And that’s how it happened. That’s how it had come back. Bob had let his guard down. He knew now what the thing stirring beneath the city was and what it was capable of.

  San Francisco was in great danger. He needed to talk to the other one. Not Mrs Winters, she clearly wasn’t one of Them, although she was affected by it, maybe even powered by it, caught in its field of influence.

  Mrs Winters cleared her throat. “You’ve walked from the beach to my house in your bare feet, and I am waiting for my next lesson. So, if you don’t mind?”

  And with that she closed her eyes, her arms still up, her head still held to one side. Bob shook his head, took her hands, and stood awkwardly, wondering how exactly he could prevent what was to come. Was that even possible? It hadn’t been before. But now he was not alone in the city. That had to be some comfort, right?

  Mrs Winters opened one eye and peered at Bob. She squeezed his hand. “Viennese Waltz to start, if you please.”

  Bob smiled tightly.

  “Anything you say, Mrs Winters.”

  After they danced, Mrs Winters lit the fire.

  Bob let her do it. He had a feeling. If what he suspected was true, then he knew what was about to happen wouldn’t obey the usual laws of physics. He needed to be sure, and then when he was he could go and find the other and talk to him.

  Bob watched as Mrs Winters got on her knees and began fussing at the edge of the pile of dead furniture. Now she was old, frail, the strength and speed displayed during the dance and down at Aquatic Park gone. Her breathing had become heavy. Bob sat on the floor, legs pulled up to his chest, and didn’t interfere. He hadn’t for a long time. When he’d first come down, he’d wanted to become like them, be one of them. That was the whole point. But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t be. Bob had tried to live a normal life while everyone around him grew old and died. And then more people would come, their microscope lives infinitely short, and again, and again. Bob realized what was happening: the more he tried to be like them, the more he found himself distanced from them by time and decay and death.

  So one day he stopped trying to be the same as them. He built the hut on the beach so he could live by his old home, the sea. That was years ago, and he watched the city grow around him. By the time there were authorities who might question what he was doing, he was part of the scenery. Then came the curious, a few at first, the wealthy who could get over to the park to gawp at the strange and handsome vagrant who lived in the hut. One night, a woman came alone, late, and instead of staring she knocked on the hut and they talked, and then they danced. She taught him ballroom, visiting at night for weeks, months. And then she stopped coming and later, years later, when she must have been long dead, Bob remembered her and thought of her often, and when the tourists came he decided to pass his knowledge – her knowledge – on. So the ballroom dancing began; a gimmick, a trick for visitors, but it made Bob happy. And, oddly enough, through the memory of his teacher and the contact with those he taught himself, he felt more connected to people than he ever had been when he was trying to fit in with their society.

  Mrs Winters, apparently happy with the arrangement of kindling and rags in the room, reached for a box of kitchen matches by her side. She took one out, struck it on the third try, and lit the fire. She didn’t move from the pyre, which was dry and already cracking with flame. Bob drew his legs a little tighter to his chest. Within moments the whole room would be ablaze, and soon enough the whole house. In any other circumstances, it was arson, and suicidal.

  In any other circumstances. But he knew what was about to happen. And so did she. He pointed at the fire “How do you know about all this?” he asked.

  She smiled, the expression flickering at the corners, like there was something on her mind. Her eyes, glazed, told Bob what he needed to know. She was being influenced by something else. Not controlled, because the sleeping monster beneath them had no mind, couldn’t operate people like puppets. No, just… influenced. Caught in the field of power.

  Mrs Winters ignored Bob’s question and turned back to the fire. She put her hands out to the growing blaze, like she was warming them over a Girl Scout campfire, out in the woods.

  Except this fire wasn’t hot. While Bob could feel the warmth against his bare chest and face, it wasn’t hot like a furnace, more like a brilliant summer’s day. The smoke gathered against the ceiling, rolling into a turbulent gray cloud a foot thick and growing no larger.

  The fire was growing quickly, consuming the old clothes, the splintered furniture, everything. The flames were tall and licked at the smoke above. But whatever heat – whatever energy – the fire possessed, it was being contained rather than radiated.

  Or, Bob thought, not radiated but directed.

  He sighed. How long had the danger grown, under the city? How long had he been on the beach, dancing on the sand, oblivious to the approaching Armageddon? He’d been asleep, like he had been before.

  But now he knew. Mrs Winters was under its spell; the fire proved it. But if she was connected to it, and she had come to him, then did it know who he was? They had both lived in the same place for long enough, one deep below, one in the city above. If Mrs Winters was connected then perhaps Bob was too.

  No. It didn’t think. It had no awareness. Not of itself, not of Bob. Not of Mrs Winters.

  Bob watched the flames as they ate through the broken shell of the sideboard. The fire spat a shower of sparks as a stack of three dining chairs finally lost structural integrity and slumped into the body of the fire. Out of the corner of his eye, Bob saw Mrs Winters smile as she tracked the path of the sparks as they swirled in a spiral toward the ceiling,
caught on a hot thermal that by all rights should have set the house alight like the pile of dry firewood it was.

  Bob knew what had to come next. “Mrs Winters?” He watched the light of the flames dance over her pale skin. Her cream ball gown was a rippling kaleidoscope of yellow, of orange, of red.

  She flicked her eyes toward her houseguest and then back to the fire. “Patience, young man.”

  “How did you know–”

  The old lady clicked her tongue. “You got sand and salt in your ears or something? I said patience.”

  The fire was dying now. A few black skeletal remains of the dining set and sideboard were the only items left taller than a foot. Above, the smoke had dissipated impossibly in the closed room, revealing a small circular burn directly above the fire, as if the whole thing had been a candle sitting on a table. Bob looked down, traced his eyes around the edge of the fire. Nearly perfectly circular, the blaze had charred the floorboards badly, yet hadn’t spread more than a half-inch out from its periphery.

  “Almost time,” said Mrs Winters. She sat up from her haunches and pushing her legs back. Her eyes were fixed on the charred floorboards.

  “Mrs Winters, why did you come to me? What do you need me for?”

  The old woman turned to Bob and smiled, and then the smile broadened and her eyes closed and she began to laugh.

  “I’m looking for my daughter, Bob. I’m looking for Lucy. I guess she led me to you. I knew you could help. I just knew you could. Will you help me?”

  Bob frowned. Mrs Winters reached down and brushed aside the charcoal at the edge of the fire, revealing more of the burned floorboards beneath. She turned to Bob and pointed; her hands were black with ash.

  “Here. We start scratching here.”

  Bob looked at the floorboard, split and black. Beneath would be the foundations of the house, and below that, the ground.

  He hesitated. He knew what lay under the ground. He knew the power that fire had, how it could be used.

  “Oh here, let me.” Mrs Winters reached her lumpy, arthritic fingers into a gap in the board created by the warped wood. She pulled once, twice, and part of the board came away in her hand, nothing more than crumbling carbon.