A moment later five midgets rushed out. The diminutive quintet cavorted, performing acts of none too great dexterity. With a hoot and a cry the entertainers leapt, somersaulted, and cartwheeled. One walked on his hands, presenting his fat backside to the audience. Clambering together, they then formed a human pyramid; a bizarre, fleshy effigy that held for a few seconds before toppling over.
A huge roar of laughter came from the spectators.
After this display of their acrobatic abilities three of them ran off stage and returned with huge guan daos—vicious looking Chinese pole arms—with which they fought one another, their attacks and parries poorly rehearsed. The other two produced hand axes with which they started to juggle. Every so often one of them would fall over or mistime a catch, often with bloody results. They would get a laugh all the same.
And then, seemingly over before it had started, Sammy Hung and his sons linked hands and bowed in unison.
“Let’s hear your appreciation.” The aged compère shuffled from the wings, clapping as he came. “Weren’t they great?”
“Utter rubbish!” shouted a tramp in the second row. “Pathetic!” He stood up and began making rude gestures at the entertainers.
Murphy glanced over, a wry smile on his lips. He agreed with the heckler’s sentiments, but—
Suddenly the lead midget rushed forward brandishing one of the hand axes. He looked around, his eyes wild, popping from his head. “What that you say?” he screeched.
Murphy stared dumbstruck as the crazed dwarf ranted on.
“You want this? You want this between ears?”
“I dare you, you damned—”
The hurled hatchet spun and flashed end over end, thudding with a meaty thwack into the heckler’s right shoulder. Screaming his agony to the ceiling, the unfortunate then began to push his way to the aisle. With blood oozing from where the hatchet lay embedded, the man stumbled to the end of the row when a second hand axe struck with deadly accuracy into the side of his head. The force of the blow catapulted him over and into the next row where he fell upended. His legs twitched for a moment before the body slumped down into the space between the seats.
There followed a stunned silence, a silence that was soon interrupted by the sound of the angry midget and his sons cursing and stomping off stage.
The curtain fell. Two stagehands rushed out with a stretcher and took the body away.
Murphy sat, like the majority of the onlookers, shocked and horrified at what had just happened. Good God! What kind of barbarism was this? Or could it just have been no more than a well-staged illusion, a part of the act? His thoughts seemed to be echoed by some in the audience as a ripple of uneasy laughter spread across the chamber. He watched as others left their seats, moving to the side aisles, either fearful that Sammy Hung would return and vent his wrath on them, or else in readiness to leave.
The doddery old man returned. “Well, that was something else, I’m sure you’d all agree. As for tonight’s second act, we are truly honoured to have with us an undisputed master of illusion. May I present, the one, the only…Monsieur…Claude Giraudin!”
The lights dimmed.
The curtain rose.
The haunting organ groaning of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor started up as clouds of dry ice billowed across the stage.
Murphy could see that the stage had been transformed into an eerie, moonlit, cemetery-like setting: hastily put up headstones, an old plastic tree, and a spike railing. In the middle, he could discern a caped organist with a top hat, his back to the audience, a large ornate church-organ before him.
The playing stopped and the seated figure turned around.
Thoroughly grotesque—his hair patchy and straggly, his face sunken and cadaverous—he bore more than a passing resemblance to Lon Chaney Senior’s portrayal of the Phantom of the Opera.
Removing his top hat with the flair of a true showman, Giraudin then walked over to one of the headstones. Like a graveyard ghoul, he perched atop it and stared out into the crowd, his long, spindly legs stretched out before him.
Murphy didn’t like what he saw. He gulped. This whole performance was becoming too strange for him. He thought he had mentally prepared himself for some degree of oddness, but this was surpassing anything he had ever seen before.
On stage, Giraudin rose to his feet and passed his hand over his top hat with a flourish. With a wiggle of his fingers, he plunged his arm inside and pulled out not a white rabbit but a severed head! It was that of one of the Hung brothers!
A loud cry of horror went through the auditorium.
Murphy’s heart lurched inside his chest and the man on his right vomited.
Giraudin grinned, his face like a skull. He looked at the head before throwing it into the crowd. With a blue flash, it vanished in mid-flight, drawing another cry from the spectators.
So it was just an illusion. Murphy settled a little. No doubt papier-mâché duplicates filled with fireworks. He was disgusted but impressed. This sure beat the petty card tricks and the ‘find the lady’ that was known to win a buck or two by fooling drunks in the bars around town.
A second midget’s head, a third, and a fourth were also removed from the hat. Giraudin studied each, at one point lovingly caressing one’s cheek, before throwing it to the audience. They all vanished as had the first. He turned and walked to the opposite end of the stage. Hat held in one hand, he raised his other arm before sticking it inside. This time he screamed; his face a portrait in pain. He pulled his arm free. Clamped on to his hand, its teeth around his wrist, was Sammy Hung’s head!
As one, the spectators screamed. Some, deciding they had seen enough, made for the exit.
Giraudin added to the screaming. Desperately, he tried to shake Sammy’s head free. The head fell back into the hat, which now lay on the floor, dragging the Frenchman with it.
Captivated by the scene before him, Murphy watched as the top hat slowly began to swallow Giraudin. This couldn’t be happening, his rational brain tried to tell him. It was magic of such a high calibre that it defied explanation. But that was all it was—a clever magic trick, performed by means unknown in order to befuddle and entertain the masses. This was something that he had never experienced before. He had always disbelieved in the reality of magic, in anything remotely supernatural—it had no place in his hard-bitten, well-ordered life. He dealt only with things that he could see, feel, talk to and, if necessary, shoot. Now, his mind floundered frenziedly, out of its depth, groping for something firm and sane on which it could anchor itself. Was it a trick? Some part of his mind demanded an answer.
Giraudin’s limbs danced in spasmodic judders as, like a constrictor snake with its prey, the hat began to expand as it drew him in. Blood poured over the brim. With a slurping noise, the stage magician was engulfed from head to waist. Somehow, he staggered to his feet, blood covering what remained visible of him—his lower half. He crashed against one of the headstones and fell to his feet.
Grimly, Murphy watched as Giraudin’s legs kicked as though he was trying to right himself once more.
Suddenly, with a nauseating slurp, the hat devoured everything bar one foot. A trouser leg and a well-polished shoe protruded at an odd angle.
Spotlights fell on the bloodstained hat. It sat alone on the stage, steaming and burping like some gorged, fat toad.
A disturbing minute passed.
Murphy stared, confused, dumbstruck and utterly disgusted.
Then it happened. Like a geyser, a torrent of blood and guts fountained out of the hat. The crowd screamed in shock and revulsion. Still the red spray came, covering the stage in its gory, lumpy soup. Had anyone been left in the front row they would have been drenched.
The top hat rested on the stage, Giraudin’s unmoving foot defying Murphy’s sense of reality. He had hoped it would move, disappear, do something, anything but lie there. If it had gone, he could have rationalised that there had been some hidden trapdoor or other concealed exit—some escap
e hatch into which the entertainer had gone.
Matters were made worse when a stagehand in a coolie hat rushed on and lifted the hat, foot and all, off the floor before scampering away again.
A disgruntled-looking man with a mop and bucket came on stage. Muttering darkly to himself, he began cleaning up the copious blood spill.
The lights dimmed and the curtain fell.
This had to be fake, Murphy told himself. It had to be. He had read in the papers about some of these shock-horror grisly shows. They were rated not by talent but on gore content; the bloodier the better. In some ways he supposed it was like the old Roman arenas—the crowd baying for blood. It made him sick, but he had to remain focused. Maxwell was getting edgy and unless he found out something soon about ‘Two-Bellies’ then Murphy’s own life could be in danger.
A spotlight fell on the stage, following the movements of the wizened host. “Well, that was something to tell the grandchildren about, wouldn’t you say? May I present this evening’s next act, Huey Labada!” He began clapping in a doomed attempt to get the crowd to do likewise before retreating offstage.
The curtain rose.
A man in a pin-stripped jacket, looking every bit an archetypal mobster, stood on the stage. In his left hand he held a Thompson submachine gun. Cradled in his right arm was something from a child’s nightmare. The thing was lumpy and potato-shaped. What face it had resembled a cross between a battered child and a drooling bulldog. It was dressed in an old-fashioned convict outfit complete with arrow-stripped markings, a cap, and a ball and chain manacled around one ankle. Whereas most of the body looked stunted and deformed, its arms looked like human arms and moved accordingly.
The theatrical backdrop was of a dimly-lit Chicago street. Sound effects included the wail of a police car in the distance.
“Alright you guys,” said the ventriloquist. “Listen up. I’m Huey Labada.”
“An’ I’m his sidekick, ‘Two-Bellies’,” said the dummy.
Murphy’s heart skipped a beat. He stared hard, trying to discern the dummy’s features. Was it just his imagination, or was there a vague resemblance between it and the photograph Maxwell had given him of the missing ‘Two-Bellies’? But how could that be possible? This grotesque thing was no larger than a five-year old child.
“We’ve got a great show for you folks, tonight,” said Labada.
“Have we?” asked ‘Two-Bellies’.
“Sure have. But first we’re gonna take care of that mug who works in the jewellery shop. The one who set you up and put you in the slammer.”
There ensued a long, drawn-out theatrical scene that involved Labada and his ‘dummy’ in a mock hold-up of a jewellers, the part of the shop owner being played by the little old man who had introduced all of the acts so far. The lights then dimmed and the backdrop altered, so that the images of shadow-puppets could be projected on to it. Whether this was done by cast members offstage or via some form of cinematography, it was hard for Murphy to discern. It was impressive nonetheless, and although not a Broadway production, the scale of it took him completely by surprise.
However, like all of the previous acts, it ended tragically and bloodily. For, in the final scene, Labada and ‘Two-Bellies’ were cornered by the police, the latter depicted through a combination of real actors and more shadow puppetry. There ensued a ferocious gun-battle, the sounds of the pyrotechnics and special effects deafening.
Riddled with bullets, Labada staggered dramatically to the front of the stage and collapsed in a pool of blood, landing atop the deformed dummy-thing.
Labada’s demise was followed by some hesitant applause, although by now the theatre had emptied somewhat, many individuals having seen enough.
Once more the curtain descended.
A riot of crazy notions swam darkly in Murphy’s mind. There was a feeling of sick apprehension in the pit of his stomach. His brain heaved and twisted with something he was unable to fully control or understand, as though something was tugging at his sanity. He doubted whether he could watch much more of this bizarre horror show. And then there had been that thing, ‘Two-Bellies’. It surely wasn’t coincidental—however was it the link he needed?
The old man returned. “And now for Madame Li Sung.”
The drapes were lifted, revealing a tranquil temple garden scene: fountains, topiary-styled hedgerows, and a distant pagoda. Faint chimes tinkled.
An exotic, tattooed Chinese woman in a purple silk kimono descended gracefully from the ceiling on invisible wires. At least Murphy assumed there were invisible wires. A stagehand then wheeled out a large cabinet, assisting the woman inside before padlocking it, turning it around to show there was no apparent means of escape at the rear. Then, with a puff of smoke, she reappeared at the opposite end of the stage, winning a round of applause.
Li Sung did a few more minor feats of escapology, contortionism, and acrobatics.
Murphy relaxed a little. This was more like it. A beautiful woman performing what he considered safe, normal trickery. It wasn’t quite on Houdini’s level, but it sure beat the violent, anarchic slapstick of the previous performances. He was far more comfortable watching this.
That sense of comfort evaporated when a sinister-looking guillotine was trundled on stage by her accomplice.
If the previous acts were anything to go by, Murphy had a bad feeling about how this was going to end. His suspicions were to prove right, for, after failing to escape from the locking mechanism which held her head in place, the blade sliced down—cutting through air, then silk, then flesh, decapitating Li Sung.
Accompanied by a splash of blood and much screaming from the audience, her severed head rolled to one side.
Down came the curtain.
Murphy rubbed his jaw. This Chung-Fu was one sick individual. Yes, it was all trickery—dummies and fake blood—and he bet that right now the various performers were backstage in their squalid dressing rooms, smoking cigarettes and removing their make-up, no doubt getting ready to hit the bars—but the man was still sick. This bloody production was testament to that. Looking around him, he could see that less than a dozen others remained in the audience, those strong-stomached ones who had chosen to stay to the end. And a few who were probably too drunk to move.
The old man returned once more.
“And now, for the highlight of tonight’s cabaret. With no further ado, may I introduce that master of Oriental magic, Chung-Fu.” He threw down his knobbly walking stick and raised his hands. Holding his pose, he began to levitate.
Murphy stared, intrigued.
Then with a bang and a flash of smoke and a roll of drums from some hidden orchestra pit, the old man cast off his tattered robes. A bright, almost blinding light shot forth, and when Murphy’s sight cleared, he saw that a mid-air transformation had taken place.
The old man was gone and another, much younger man, the man he had seen on the poster, Chung-Fu, was there. Dressed in a truly expensive silken robe of purple, gold, red, and black, and wearing his tasselled cap, he stared out, his eyes piercing. Tracing a mystic sign in the air before him, the magician conjured flames from his hands before descending to the stage. Strange Chinese words came from his mouth.
Shadowy snakes and tigers sprang into being behind the menacing figure, silhouetted against the curtain. And then it seemed as though the shadows detached themselves, spilling out to embrace the walls of the theatre, to encircle those within.
“What the hell?” muttered Murphy, staring around at the encroaching darkness. Over to one side he could see some other men getting ready to leave.
Fang-filled, monstrous shadow-shapes flowed and slithered. Like a voracious mould they seemed to spread and drip, flowing down walls and oozing across the stained, popcorn-littered carpet of the theatre. Some of the shadows seemed to fight each other, the larger, fiercer ones devouring the lesser ones.
None of this was real, Murphy tried to tell himself. A demonical miasma had fallen, and icy fingers crept up his spine, ru
ffling the small hairs on the back of his neck. Terror surged through him as he continued to watch the spreading of the ghastly shadows. This was sheer nightmarish horror and he knew it.
“Well gentlemen,” spoke Chung-Fu. “I see you’ve enjoyed tonight’s cabaret. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t still be here.”
A thickset man in the second row got up, fastening his raincoat.
“I’m afraid you’ll find that you’re unable to get out.” The conjuror smiled wickedly.
“What d’ya mean?” shouted the man.
Chung-Fu paced to the edge of the stage. “I mean this is the end. For you all.” The sorcerer pointed and stared.
Whether it was due to some form of hypnotism, Murphy couldn’t tell, but the man with the raincoat seemed to stop, become immobile.
“To some I am a devil. To others I am but Chung-Fu. Regardless, it is my place to prepare you for my next show. You’ve damned yourselves by staying and drinking in the bloodshed and the violence. You had the chance to leave, to follow your better judgement, but instead you chose to stay. And like those from my last performance, you will become part of my new act.”
“Not bloody likely!” Another man got up and made a run for it. Others screamed and clamoured to get out. This was now a stampede; a mad exodus of theatregoers desperately trying to get out.
All hell broke loose.
Snapping shadows flowed from the walls and, horrifyingly, Murphy saw one unfortunate swallowed whole, disappearing into a tenebrous maw. Gun in hand, he made a dash for where he thought the exit lay but in the poor light it was hard to be certain.
It was chaos. Screams and wails reverberated around the walls of the flea pit. Some were trampled in the side aisles. Another man was dragged, kicking and screaming, by a shadowy tentacle that pulled him against a wall. With unbelieving horror, Murphy saw the individual engulfed, absorbed by shadow. One moment he was there, the next, nothing but inky blackness!
The Chaos of Chung-Fu Page 2
