“I’ll remind you both we have a spirit to summon,” Steve said through gritted teeth, like an angry parent.
I shifted from one foot to the other and then remembered something I had to do.
“Hey, before you go, would you guys mind blocking me for a second?” I asked. “Puck, could you hold your cape out?”
“It’s a cloak,” Puck sniffed, but he did it anyway. While the three of them stood there, I ducked behind them and pushed my backpack as far under a dumpster as I could, hopefully where no one would see it and steal it. I scrambled out to find Puck raising his caped arms high, like a giant bat. And he was hissing.
“Uh, what are you doing?” I asked.
“If they’re going to stare, I might as well give them something to stare at,” he answered, grinning at a little boy who looked truly afraid. Calyxtus looked annoyed, her black lip curled. I sensed another argument and headed it off.
“So, where are you headed?” I asked.
“The shadows,” said Calyxtus, nodding to the east. “We’re going to find a quiet place out here where we can commune with the spirits.”
“And then?” I asked.
“And then it’s up to Zacharias Prizrak as to how he wants to proceed.”
“Ah, okay,” I said awkwardly. “Well, thanks again. I have to get inside before, well, before it’s too late.” I hoped that sounded ominous enough for them.
“What are you going to do?”
“The less you know the better,” I said. “It’s too, uh, intense.”
Steve nodded at this, as if it all made complete sense.
“Give them a plague of foul nature,” said Puck gravely. “For all of us.”
“Yeah, I, uh, will,” I said, nodding. “And good luck with the whole Zacharias Prize-hat thing.”
“Prizrak,” muttered Calyxtus.
“May your fortune be in life—and not death,” said Steve.
I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound very encouraging. I gave them a half-wave before stepping into the river of people headed to the circus.
Closer to the entrance, it was chaos. It was completely dark out by then, but hundreds of strings of bare lightbulbs criss-crossed above, bathing everyone in an orange light. The show hadn’t started yet and organ-y circus music mixed with the noise of the crowd in a loud, crazy whoosh. People pressed against each other, all trying to get through a narrow outer gate. Kids squealed, parents shouted, trying to keep their groups together. Up ahead, ticket takers funneled people through a few lines, barking at people to pick one line and stay in it.
I was happy for the crowd—they were my camouflage—but I was also paranoid.
What if someone knew who I was?
Even in the dim light, twelve hundred miles from home, my freckled lip felt like a spotlight, a homing beacon for anyone looking for me. And then there were Sharkman and Not-Mom to look out for. They wouldn’t be out here, but I had to be on my toes. At any moment, someone might recognize me and drag me off to Bartholomew. I kept my head down as I passed two uniformed guards, but they didn’t look in my direction.
I was letting myself be pushed forward with the crowd when I saw the tent—just a smallish, round, red canvas tent. Lights shone through a tear in the roof.
It wasn’t impressive at all.
Why weren’t they using the fancy, red-and-blue striped dome tent from the photos on the website? It must have been more of Bartholomew’s lies! I bet the pictures on his website were from a much better circus.
That’s also when I saw the No Trespassing sign—and nothing but darkness beyond. That’s where I needed to be—around the side of the tent, away from the lights and the people. That’s where I would make my own way in, back where the performers were.
I glanced to make sure the guards weren’t looking and then ducked around the sign.
I pulled up my hood and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust. As I picked my way around the tent stakes and ropes, I rehearsed my story in my head, the if-I-get-caught story: I’m just a local kid, I didn’t have any money to see the circus, I thought I could just peek in a little. I’m really, really sorry, and it will never happen again. It wasn’t great, but I was going to stick to it.
Or run, whichever was easier.
I thought there’d be a whole swarm of trucks behind the circus tent—the trucks that carried the performers and equipment—but so far there was nothing.
I pulled my stethoscope out from under my sweatshirt and put the earpieces in. The stethoscope made me feel even more like James Bond than the suit. I crept along, running the round chest-piece along the canvas, listening for the right spot to go in. I didn’t really know what the “right spot” would sound like, but I was pretty certain I’d know it when I found it.
Voices that were a roar before were crystal clear through the stethoscope. Kids whining for cotton candy. Parents telling them no. Benches squeaking. Babies squawking. I continued around the back of the tent, pausing every couple dozen feet to listen, searching for a way in. Soon, I ran into an intersection where a rectangular tent jutted off from the main circular one. Right there, at the corner where the tents met, I could hear two voices directly on the other side of the canvas. I held my breath, knowing I was just inches from them. They were whispering.
“It’s the one on the right that’s out. It just blew.”
“Didn’t I tell you to re-check them all beforehand?”
“Did you hear what I said? I said it just blew out. What was I going to do beforehand? See into the future?”
Cursing followed and I grinned, moving ahead. I’d made it past all the tourists and the commoners—I’d found the workers in the staging area.
Bartholomew was probably getting ready to go out, and there was no reason for security guards to be in back with the performers. No one would notice me once I was inside and backstage because everyone would be too busy. At least that’s what I hoped.
I kept poking along, listening for a safe, silent spot. I heard things being dragged around and assembled, people giving directions, but nothing helpful. I didn’t hear my mom or anyone talking about her. Finally, though, along the back wall of the rectangular tent, things were quiet. No voices, nothing moving.
This was the spot.
I took off the stethoscope and pulled out Will’s pocketknife. Kneeling on the ground, I put knifepoint to canvas. This was it.
This. Was. It.
My heart pounded. My hands shook. I was moments from trespassing, from destroying property.
Moments from seeing my mom.
Come on, Spartacus, I ordered myself. Do it.
Somehow the name made me feel a bit braver.
I took a deep breath and plunged the knife in.
I peered under the flap I’d made in the tent and saw I’d cut my way into a bathroom. It was a small, dark space with a metal trough for a urinal, a portable sink, and a makeshift door made out of a curtain.
Perfect.
I wriggled in through the hole I’d cut, pulling the suitcase behind me.
I peeked behind the curtain door, half hoping Mom would be standing right there. But the canvas corridor was empty, no one in sight. Funny; I’d thought there would be people bustling around.
Now for the tough part. I had to walk among the circus folk—and it was only a matter of time before someone saw me and asked what I was doing there. To buy myself more time, I had to blend in.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, I expected to see someone looking more mature, like a high schooler working for the summer, but the kid staring back at me looked all of ten years old. Dirty, pale, scared. I pulled my sweatshirt off and stuffed it next to my suitcase under the small, metal washstand. Underneath, I wore my white shirt and tie, exactly the same outfit I’d worn to the funeral. I straightened
the tie and flattened my hair with water from the sink. I tried to wipe a smear of dirt from my forehead and discovered it was a bruise (maybe from the car accident?). Then I tried some different facial expressions, trying to capture the maturity I felt—my best was a half-scowl that kinda made me look like Will.
I decided it was good enough.
Taking a deep breath, I strode, purposeful and scowling, out from behind the curtain and toward a bundle of black and red stilts leaning against the canvas. I hefted a heavy set onto my shoulder, hoping to look like I worked there, and then kept walking, following a string of red light bulbs.
The corridor led past a series of curtained rooms. I made my way carefully, sneaking a look into each one. The first was an empty dressing room with a couple of makeup tables with those mirrors with lights all around them. The second was full of costumes: feather boas, all kinds of hats, huge pants, masks. In the third room, a lady stood with her back to the door. She had a pirate ship tattooed on her back and was pinning purple flowers into her long brown hair. I peeked into the next room. Inside, was a small, old man sitting in a child-sized lawn chair. He was smoking a cigar. And he wasn’t just small—he was a bona fide little person, as small as a kindergartener.
I moved on to the last room. I took a deep breath, hoping to find Mom on the other side. I opened the curtain an inch—and almost screamed when I saw a headless woman propped up in a chair. I clapped my hand over my mouth at the same time as I realized it was a dummy. It was just a very, very realistic dummy. Cool things filled the room. There was a shrunken head on a plant stand, a birdcage stuffed with fake white doves, a bunch of chainsaws, and an umbrella stand full of swords.
I stepped back into the hallway. Well, that was all the rooms. For some reason, The Incredible wasn’t that big. Where were the sad animals Calyxtus had talked about?
Maybe they kept them somewhere safe, like in trucks.
But I didn’t see any trucks, I remembered. You’d need trucks to keep animals and equipment in, wouldn’t you? You’d think they would have been out back, but there weren’t any.
My thoughts were interrupted by someone running in my direction. I flattened myself against the curtains to make room as a girl about my age ran by, her black hair streaming behind her.
“Remmy?” she hissed. “Remmy!” She didn’t so much as glance at me.
Whoa; that was close.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” a voiced boomed from the direction of the main tent, startling me. “Please Silence Your Phones. The Show Will Begin Momentarily.”
I briefly wondered if it was Bartholomew, but realized it didn’t matter. I picked up my pace. Soon, the hall ended and I found myself in pitch-black, open space, filled with people. At the far wall was a large, red-curtained doorway.
The entrance to the stage! Mom had to be nearby.
Everyone was too busy to notice me, so I edged into what must have been a staging room, holding the stilts upright so I could peek around them. A few people wore red headlamps and glanced at clipboards. A small group of performers hopped and stretched, like runners getting ready for a race. A few others milled about, mumbling lines to themselves.
Where were the hundreds of performers? How was it that there were all those reviews of how verifiably incredible The Incredible was? How it changed lives and people were so impressed?
Bartholomew’s World-Renowned Circus of The Incredible was pretty pathetic. They must hide the sorry truth about their pitiful, scrimpy squad with even more lies.
That’s when the noise from the audience suddenly shifted. The sound of shushing flowed through the tent walls like the sound of the ocean. What followed was a long, expectant silence.
It was starting!
For a split second—even though I’d figured out that The Incredible was probably more like The Ho-Hum—I imagined what it would be like to be on the other side at that moment, right after the lights go out but before the show begins—watching the circus like a regular kid, with Will and Mom and Dad.
Beyond the curtain, out in the main area of the tent, a strobe light began to flash, sending darting shadows into the staging room. I stayed pressed against the wall and scanned the faces around me for my mom, and for Sharkman and Not-Mom, but it was almost impossible to tell who was who. Nearly everyone wore makeup or a mask.
My eyes landed on a female mime in an old-fashioned tuxedo. Too small, too young. Then there was the woman closest to me, wearing a black leather swimsuit, with a giant, ten-foot snake draped around her shoulders. The snake could probably swallow a Labrador and still have room for dessert. The lady was letting the snake smell her face with its darting tongue. Interesting, but not my mom.
Suddenly it made sense why I hadn’t seen Mom yet. Obviously, she was already out there onstage with everyone else. Up in the catwalks or under the stage, waiting to explode out of something. I relaxed a bit, knowing my chance would come, even if it meant waiting for her to return at intermission or the end.
When the introduction music started on the other side of the curtain, everyone tensed, including me.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” came the announcer’s voice from onstage. My grip tightened on the stilts.
“We are charmed to entertain you on this very curious evening! The fine performers you are about to see have prepared a veritable feast for your five senses! There will be Outstanding things here, in this very ring, Unusual things that you may not understand—Terrifying things you’ll wish you didn’t understand—and Astonishing things you may never wish to see again. But I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that you have arrived, out of sheer serendipity, at a Spectacular event you’ll never forget. We’re sorry Bartholomew couldn’t make it, but we know you’re going to have more fun with us as we bring you—The World-Renowned Sideshow of Curiosities and Mayhem!”
As the performers rushed out through the curtains, my mouth hung open. I struggled to understand what I’d just heard.
Sideshow of Curiosities and Mayhem? I repeated to myself. Wait. Had they changed their name?
I saw the audience through a gap in the curtain. Their faces flashed orange, reflecting flames on the stage.
A sideshow? What’s a sideshow? And what had the guy said about Bartholomew?
I started breathing quickly as the snare drums rat-a-tatted wildly. Now I understood why there were hardly any performers or workers. And no animals. No big trucks.
They’d left. They’d canceled their show. This wasn’t Bartholomew. This was a sideshow, whatever that was.
Stupid tears pooled up in my stupid eyes so I could barely see. I stood there like a moron, still holding the stupid stilts.
Then the drums faded and everything went silent, like I had just dived underwater. The room was spinning—it felt like the performers were circling around me. A woman in a red tutu bumped into me as she rushed by, but it all felt so far away. I fell over much more easily than I should have, dropping the stilts and mumbling “Sorry, sorry,” the whole way down to the ground.
They told me later it was a nervous breakdown, but I knew it couldn’t have been that bad.
I knew all about nervous breakdowns. Dad had one once at Will’s statewide triathlon when Will’s bike wheel came off. It was right at the start of the race, too, when the racers had just taken off and the crowd was cheering. Will’s bike made a big snapping sound and Will went down hard while his wheel went rolling away.
Then Dad kind of made a snapping sound, too. He just lost it, flinging his hat to the ground and shouting, “Re-Ride! Re-Ride! Re-Ride!”
Some other fathers came and took him away and I had to pretend I didn’t know him. He’d always taken Will’s bike riding a little too seriously.
Yeah, there was no way I’d been that bad.
But apparently the circus people were worried the audience would hear me. As they led me out a back door in the
tent, I was yelling (according to them) the whole way, “You deserve this, Poop Lip! You really, really do! You stupid idiot!”
Which is pretty ridiculous. I might have been a little upset, what with coming a thousand miles to save Mom, and finding out she’d just left town, and being a criminal and a runaway and, basically, a complete failure. Sure, I was upset. But would I really go out of my mind and forget what I was doing and start shouting? Would I call myself Poop Lip? Did I really think I deserved to fail like that?
I guess the answer in my mind was Yes. Yes, I did.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up, sitting on the back bumper of a parked semi.
And I don’t mean waking up like you do in the morning. It was more like I just gradually faded back into my body—which was already in the process of doing stuff without me. I was sitting up in the back of the trailer with my legs hanging off the edge. Cupped in my hands was a mason jar filled with something cool. I smelled it. Lemonade.
How long had I been here, drinking lemonade? Where was I?
It was dark and we were outside, not too far from the circus tent. The occasional burst of music and cheers from the show interrupted the quiet.
Wait, we?
I did a double take. A small boy sat beside me, smoking a cigar. I could see the orange of the tip burn as he inhaled.
“Life’s just like that sometimes, you know?” he was saying at a fast clip. I felt like maybe we’d been talking for a while, but I had no idea what we were talking about.
The child waved his cigar in the air. Scratch that. It was a man, a very small man, waving his cigar in the air. I remembered seeing him in the dressing room earlier. Right.
“You see that opening, that light,” he continued, “and know life is about to change. You think, Ah, I made the right choice! And then bam! Just like that, you’re having a nervous breakdown backstage at the wrong circus. Or, in his case, stuck, staring up at the fangs of death.”
I nodded politely and then looked to where he was gesturing with his cigar.
A few feet from the trailer, a flashlight was set up on a tripod, shining down on a hula-hoop laid out flat on the ground. And in the center of the hula-hoop, half-emerged from a crack in the asphalt? A rat. A large, gray, squeaking rat. Its front paws scrabbled at the ground; its back end squeezed—and stuck—in the crack in the pavement. A few inches away from the rat, a dirty white cat sat very still, unblinking.
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible Page 14
