The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus

by Jaime Jo Wright

  She fumbled with her key as she climbed the stairs to the porch of the costume house. Chandler glanced to the west and noted the depot was dark. A large, ominous silhouette against the skyline. She never wanted to go there again. She would turn the entire project over to Jackson, gladly. Her position too. She’d take a job at McDonald’s or become a cashier at Walmart. Those were adequate jobs. Honest jobs. Plus there were food stamps, government aid . . .

  Chandler swore as she jammed her key into the lock. None of it mattered if Peter was dead. Why did her mind instantly go to the worst-case scenario? Had she seen one too many crime shows on TV? Maybe, but she’d watched enough documentaries to know that more than forty-eight hours missing was a bad omen. Her brain replayed every news broadcast she’d seen of people searching fields, of boats with divers dragging lakes, of backyards dug up and black garbage bags covering the remains.

  Her mind was still in a struggle with Linda Pike, missing for all those years, then suddenly wrapping her bones around Chandler in a viselike embrace.

  Remember me! her remains had demanded.

  Peter’s might one day do the same.

  Chandler swore again. Then prayed. Prayed so hard that she didn’t have words and hoped the Holy Spirit truly did intercede with groans that could not be understood by anyone but God. At one time, she might have scolded herself for swearing and praying simultaneously, but she was certain God understood and even empathized. He didn’t expect perfection in prayer. He only expected prayer. Chandler hated that it could be her last recourse and only hope. But then prayer was supposed to be powerful . . . If only it had proven so in the past.

  Flicking on a light, she surveyed the costume house. Patty Luchent had worked here once. Sewing costumes, flirting with passersby, smoking cigarettes maybe . . . before her life had been cut short. Cut down. Sucked from her. Chandler didn’t know much about Patty Luchent, the legendary woman from the twenties. Who had she been? Why was she so important to Bluff River and Bonaventure Circus, when really all that seemed to matter was that she was the Watchman’s last victim?

  Still, Patty Luchent was a question mark. And one that might need answering in order to piece together who had abducted Peter. Who had put her son in the middle of an age-old haunting that refused to be laid to rest?

  Chandler glanced at the stairs that led to the ghostly second story. Lottie or Cru would probably love to be here tonight. Inside the haunted house itself. Chandler wasn’t even anxious. Let the poltergeist eat her alive.

  She marched up the stairs, turning the lights on as she entered the spacious second floor. The boxes were still in disarray from the first day she’d arrived in Bluff River. For a moment, Chandler half expected to see Patty Luchent herself, perched on top of one of the crates. Glowing. Staring at her with hollow, black eyes. Speaking to her with the willowy whisper of a soul that wished only to terrorize and seek revenge for her own murderous end.

  But the place was empty.

  Chandler fumbled around the boxes. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. If Linda Pike and her friends had stumbled upon evidence that the Watchman wasn’t who everyone thought he was, maybe some of it was here. Maybe some of it, somehow, would explain where Peter had been taken.

  The boxes were filled with old magazines, musty and unread for decades. Another crate was full of mothballs and old blankets. Half of the boxes were empty. Chandler sneezed as dust entered her sinuses. She sniffed back angry tears.

  Of course her parents would have shown up. Even though she’d told them not to.

  Chandler rifled through a trunk. More magazines. Time, Life, National Geographic . . .

  Acting as though they wanted to help. There was criticism in their eyes, though, or maybe it was her own self-inflicted sense of failure. She didn’t know.

  Another box. Old receipt books from the eighties.

  A crate. A trunk. A banker’s box of circus souvenirs.

  Nothing.

  Chandler sent a half-empty box flying across the room to match the vehemence with which Lottie claimed Patty Luchent’s spirit had first tossed the boxes.

  “What do you want?” Chandler yelled, letting the cry of agony rip from her throat, leaving it sore and tight. “Where did you take him?”

  She fell to her knees, jeans doing little to pad her collapse. Tears burned her face, and Chandler pounded the floor with her fist. She didn’t even know who she was screaming at. Certainly not a ghost. Not Patty. Not the Watchman. They were all dead. So was Linda Pike. It was just the remnants left behind, taunting, pretending they still lived when all that remained of them were souvenirs of an era long gone.

  Souvenirs.

  Like a whisper to her soul—one she determined to credit only to God and not a lost spirit—Chandler jerked her tear-filled eyes up to stare at a banker’s box. The box itself wasn’t remarkably old. Maybe from the nineties. But inside it?

  She crawled to the box and flipped the lid off. Old brochures, some of them glossy, in bright yellows and reds and purples, splashing advertisements for the circus. Many were for the museum itself, in 1993 or 1988. She dug deeper and pulled out older pamphlets. In 1954, the circus seemed to be waning. The front of the brochure pictured only elephants and tigers. She fumbled even deeper and found old, yellowed black-and-white prints.

  Bonaventure Circus Train

  Returns to Bluff River, September 1928

  The front of the one-page print was a sketch of a train with a fabulous circus wagon perched on a flatcar. Chandler flipped it over to read the listing of cities the circus had visited through the summer. Her eyes widened. St. Louis quickly met her eye, as did several of the other cities that matched the tokens in the serial killer’s hideaway.

  Chandler grappled for her phone in her back pocket. She dialed and Hank answered, his voice gruff. Maybe he’d been asleep, or maybe it was just him.

  “The Watchman. He traveled with the circus. The circus train.”

  “I know,” Hank said.

  “But—did Denny’s grandfather?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said that Denny’s family—that Linda—wanted to disprove their grandfather’s guilt. Do you know if he traveled with the train?”

  “Yeah. He did.”

  Chandler ran her finger down the list of towns with Bluff River as the final stop. “Who else traveled with the train that summer of 1928?”

  There was a long pause, and then Hank cleared his throat. “A crapload of employees.”

  Chandler nodded as though Hank could see her. She adjusted her legs until she was sitting, as Peter called it, “crisscross applesauce” on the hardwood floor. “Was there any employee who maybe just happened to travel occasionally, and happened to hit only the cities where women were killed?”

  “What are you getting at?” Hank wasn’t following, and she didn’t blame him.

  “Think about it. Of all the towns the train passed through, why was it only big, popular cities where the assaults took place? Why not a small town? Why not a no-name town? A serial killer with the circus had plenty of opportunity over the course of the summer, but his M.O. was to assault and kill only in cities.”

  “Ooookay? There’s obscurity in large populations,” Hank reasoned.

  “But not in Bluff River!” Chandler shook the pamphlet in the air. “Bluff River is the circus’s hometown, for criminy’s sake! He’s going to get a lot of attention by killing Patty. So why do it then in the circus hometown when he could stick to big cities?”

  “You’re thinking something specific. Spit it out.” Hank wasn’t one for mincing words.

  Chandler slapped the advertisement down on the floor, her palm on top. “What if—what if Denny’s grandfather wasn’t the Watchman? What if . . . well, what if there were two killers? Think about it. Patty Luchent was found strangled with the mermaid necklace around her neck. The one you found in the depot. But the other necklaces weren’t on the bodies—they were in the Watchman’s loot from his kills. He d
idn’t leave the necklaces behind with his victims; he took them as mementos. Whoever killed Patty . . . deviated from the Watchman’s M.O. They killed Patty in a small town and they left the necklace behind with the body.”

  Hank didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, Chandler heard him sniff and clear his throat. “Are you thinking someone from circus management took Patty’s necklace after her body was removed from the costume house and stuffed it in their office in the depot?”

  “It’s a thought!” Chandler waved her hand, although the only one in the upper room to see it would be Patty’s own ghost—if she was there.

  “Then you’re implying that Patty’s murder only framed the serial killer we know as the Watchman, and whoever murdered Patty wasn’t really the serial killer at all?”

  “Yes!” Chandler nodded vehemently.

  Hank didn’t seem thrilled with the idea. “Then Denny’s grandfather was a murderer.”

  “But only of one person! Patty Luchent. Not of a string of murders.” Chandler’s conclusion brought with it a warped sense of celebration.

  Hank wasn’t sharing it. “And one murder is better than multiple?”

  Chandler stilled. He was right. This wasn’t good news. It made the story more complex, more sordid, and more intolerable. “It’s better than having a propensity to kill, isn’t it?” It was a weak offering.

  Hank sighed into the phone. “Okay. So, say it was someone in circus management who was the serial killer, and Denny’s grandfather only committed one murder for whatever motive and tried to pin it on the serial killer. Then you’re implicating a circus higher-up, Chandler. Someone who would have visited only the major cities and not actually ridden the rails with the circus the entire summer.”

  “Like a Ripley. Or maybe one of the circus management staff?” Chandler knew it was outlandish, and she clenched the phone tighter. “If whoever took my son figured this out when Linda figured it out, and they wanted to keep it quiet . . . well, we stumbled on the same thing Linda did—assuming she was snooping around the old depot and found the hideaway. Who is still living who would care about keeping it quiet if the killer was a circus bigwig and not just a general laborer like Denny’s grandfather?”

  Hank grunted. “I don’t know.”

  “But I’m not crazy, am I?”

  “This whole flipping thing is crazy and confusing,” he mumbled. “Lemme make a few calls.”

  “It’s almost one a.m.” Chandler tried not to crumple the old paper in her hand.

  “Who cares.” It wasn’t a question. It was a silent declaration that Peter’s life was at stake. This was more than the preservation of Denny’s grandfather’s legacy, or even a resolution to Linda Pike’s murder. It was the life of a little boy. A little boy who pretended to be Nitro Steel, and who still believed he could fly.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  PIPPA

  What are you doing here?” The wind chased away Jake’s shout as he hopped over a deep rut in the road, the chilly air penetrating the thin cotton of his white shirt and blowing the shirttail flat against his back.

  Pippa perched on the corner, arms wrapped around her body, her hair damp from the spitting rain. The length of it stuck to her face, bordering her chin, plastered and still cold from the wetness. Penn danced around her feet, and her whines carried through the darkness and storm.

  She’d done it. She had left the house, her father shouting her name. Pippa didn’t care anymore. It was her final act of breaking into her own freedom. But now that she was free—free of him and his controlling secrecy—she didn’t know where to go except to her roots. And even those were elusive and maybe not even buried firmly in any soil to speak of.

  “Pippa?” Jake bounded over another rut. He must have spotted her from his room in the guesthouse. She had been aimlessly standing at the corner, the rain pelting her face. She was free, though, and it was all she could think about at the moment. Free, without aid from anyone, not even the Watchman.

  Yet she’d run from Ripley Manor into a different kind of prison. One that no level of independence could break her from. It was a lost sort of freedom, purposeless and confused.

  Jake approached Pippa and bent to investigate her face. The night enveloped them as thunder crashed overhead.

  “We need to get to shelter,” he said.

  Pippa shook her head, hugging her body tighter.

  “Pippa, come on.” Jake reached for her arm, and she jerked back. Away from him.

  She felt him skim her body quickly and she read his mind. He was looking for bruises, for signs of assault. He was trying to interpret her lost expression in the darkness and fearing his nightmare had come true again. That she was his sister—battered from the Watchman’s greedy hand. He was wrong. She wasn’t. The Watchman had never hurt her. He had only watched over her. Guarded her. He only seemed to care for her! It didn’t piece together with the image of a brutal murderer.

  “I’m all right,” Pippa assured Jake, barely audible above the wind.

  “He didn’t hurt you?” Jake half shouted back, rain whipping into his face.

  “No. He—the Watchman . . .” She choked. Thunder cracked in unison with the reactive jerk of Pippa’s body. The zebra toy her father had thrown against the wall, its etching of attachment, invaded her mind. “He loved me,” she finished.

  “Who loved you?” Jake’s response was thunderous, not unlike the storm.

  Moisture spit in their faces as a gust of wind flattened Pippa’s dress against her legs. “The Watchman.” And with that declaration came another. The one she’d wanted to believe for so long and now chose to cling to as truth. “He’s my father.”

  Jake rubbed her upper arms. She was shivering, whether from cold or shock or both, she didn’t know.

  Concern and a growing fury etched themselves into the lines of his face. Droplets of rain dripped from his beard and his hair.

  “Who is the Watchman?” he yelled as lightning flashed overhead. A steely set to his jaw told Pippa that his intent to know wasn’t born out of concern for her own past, but for Bridgette’s.

  Pippa stuttered, trying to find an acceptable answer. “He’s—the one. The one who’s always watched out for me. You think he’s a killer, but he’s not! He’s my father.”

  Jake tossed a glance over his shoulder at the guesthouse and the row of animal lodgings across the street. “Pippa, c’mon.”

  “No.” Pippa pulled further away from him. “I found proof that my father loved me. Richard Ripley hid it from me. All these years!” She yelled over the wind and swiped at wet hair that slapped against her face. “He kept it to himself and refused to tell me. How could he do that? Keep me from my own father?” Pippa’s shoulders lifted in a sob. “He always promised he was being honest. He promised. But he wasn’t! He hid it from me. I’m not enough for him. I’ve never been enough!”

  Jake jumped when lightning shot across the sky like a sword of iridescent fire. He palmed her cheeks and bent until their noses almost touched. The rain continued to lash them.

  “Pippa, you’re enough.”

  “No.” Her head turned from side to side in denial. “I’m not.”

  Jake touched his forehead to hers. Lightning illuminated his face momentarily, and the rain stung her eyes.

  “Listen to me!” He was shouting. The wind had increased into a constant gale. “You. Are. Enough!” He enunciated each word as if they were their own sentences.

  As she stared at him, she felt his hands wrap around her arms, her gauzy dress sleeves wet, but his hands lighting her on fire.

  “You’re enough, Pippa. You’ve always been enough.”

  They burst through the doors of the horse barn, Penn on their heels. The rain chased them with thick drops laced with the fragile beginnings of ice. Jake pushed into her as momentum moved him forward. Pippa met the wall of the barn with her palms and spun just as Jake pressed against her. His hands braced on either side of her. His eyes drilled into hers, gray and tur
bulent like the storm outside. As if they could meld with hers and become one vision. The rain pelted the floor behind him. Lightning brightened the sky and emphasized the steady rise and fall of his chest. It matched hers. Moment for moment. Raindrop for raindrop. Warm in the cold, wrapping them in an intimate embrace. The dance of breaths, hers mingling with his. Even the horses were silent amid the violence of the storm and the calm within the shelter of the barn.

  Jake’s fingertips soothed her wet skin as he pushed a dripping strand of hair behind her ear. His eyes never released hers. They captured her with unspoken desperation, need, as if honesty would only wound the moment. He bent his head next to hers, his left arm still braced against the wall, his face against her cheek, rough and strong. His breath was warm against her cold ear, with the faint scent of tobacco and spice.

  “What were you thinking? Out there? Coming to the circus in the storm?”

  She wasn’t thinking. She hadn’t been thinking. Drenched in rain, beaten by the argument with her father, running, always running.

  “I want to be free, Jake. I want to be seen, to be someone, to be needed and wanted,” she whispered.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice ragged.

  Pippa could feel his mouth move against her hair. He nuzzled her temple, drawing in a deep breath as if he were memorizing her and fighting against the pull of her.

  “This is where I came from.” Pippa couldn’t help it. Her hands traced paths up his chest, so thick, so strong.

  He dipped his head to the base of her neck where it met her shoulder, bare from the scoop of her neckline. His lips kissed away a raindrop.

  She trembled.

  “It’s not safe for you to be out alone.” The words moved against her skin.

  She didn’t answer. Thunder rumbled and matched the erratic pace of her heartbeat.