The Troupe

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Yet the street ahead seemed curiously abandoned: not only was there no one on the sidewalks, but the houses and shops were dark and shuttered, like those within wanted passersby to think no one lived there at all. It’d been a busy scene when George had visited earlier that evening. Had he not seen a lady in a raincoat just over there, next to the hotel, pulling her coat tight about her chest as she shivered? And a group of children playing with a tin hoop in that alley? But now there was no one.

  George stopped. Silenus looked at him and nodded back at Kingsley, who stood ready.

  “What are you stopping for, kid?” said Silenus. “Come on.”

  “You don’t feel it?” said George. “Or hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That silence,” said George. “Before I heard it around the hotel, so that’s how I knew the men in gray were there, but now…”

  “Now what?” asked Silenus.

  George looked around them. The building faces on either side of the street seemed gray and faint, and the streetlamps were sputtering as if fighting to stay lit. “Now it’s like they’re all around us…”

  Silenus stared at him for a moment, and whipped off his hat and fumbled with the inside. “I hope you’re fucking wrong,” he muttered, and pulled out a large, scratched monocle. To George it appeared too scratched to see through, but Silenus held it up to one eye and looked through it at the hotel. Though George caught no movement in the windows, Silenus slowly took in a breath as if he did not like what he saw. Then he turned a full 360 degrees, taking in the streets around them through the monocle. “Well,” he said finally. “Things prove otherwise. You were right, my boy. Very, very, very right. As impossible as it seems, they were waiting for us. I sort of wish I had listened to you, kid, but I can’t be right every time.”

  “So they are there,” said Kingsley. “Then it’s a good thing we didn’t go into the hotel.”

  “They aren’t in the hotel anymore,” said Silenus, the monocle still stuck to his eye. “They were watching this whole neighborhood. Kingsley?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take that cannon out, and keep a sharp eye open.”

  “Won’t people see it?”

  “There won’t be anyone out,” said Silenus. He peered up at the sky and the surrounding buildings through the monocle. “When the wolves gather in such great numbers, things change… Light dies, the sky feels thin and stretched, and everything grows cold. No… no one will be outside with so many of them here. We’ll be alone. Which is what they want.”

  “But we haven’t been spotted yet, have we?” asked Kingsley as he took out his gun.

  “Oh, we definitely have. I’d say they had our scent the second we stepped on the street.” Silenus lowered the monocle and softly said to himself, “How did they resist it? Are they getting stronger, or are we weaker?” Then he put the monocle in his pocket and replaced his hat, and turned around and started calmly walking back. “Here. Come on, both of you. Walk with me. And don’t run. Not yet, at least.”

  Kingsley and George both took up places beside Silenus, casually placing one foot in front of the other. George glanced back and saw the end of the street darkening as streetlamps near the hotel began flickering out, one by one. It was as though someone were pacing from lamp to lamp, turning them off, but he could see no one there.

  “Yes, they’re following us,” said Silenus. “Don’t look. You won’t see them. They don’t want to be seen, not now. But don’t look. Since we’ve just heard the song we have some amount of protection, but if you look at them, that won’t matter.”

  “Do you have any ideas about how to get us out of this?” hissed Kingsley.

  “Not yet,” said Silenus. “But I’m thinking very hard.”

  They turned down a main street lined with shops. The people before them deserted the sidewalks, ducking into restaurants or buildings as though suddenly remembering other business. They did not seem to know what they were running from; it was an instinct, like smelling smoke and knowing to flee.

  George looked to the side and saw the smaller streets and passageways were flooding with darkness, the far corners growing dark and fading entirely until everything was pitch-black. Soon it felt like the entire world had fallen away until there was nothing left but this small, colorless island of street intersections and building faces afloat in a dark sea. He realized he was shaking.

  “Don’t worry yourself too much, kid,” said Silenus quietly. “They want me, not you.”

  “What are they?” said George.

  “They are shadows,” said Silenus. “True shadows. Not merely the absence of light, but of all things. Gaps in Creation itself, given minds and gnawing hunger, and how they hate the light…”

  “What the hell have you gotten me into?” breathed George.

  “If you’d keep your mouth shut, and let me fucking think, then I can get you out of it all the sooner,” said Silenus.

  They continued walking down the street, trying their very hardest not to look at the gathering shadow behind and beside them. Then as they passed one side street a lamp came on, illuminating someone standing below. The light was painfully bright in this muted, shadowed world.

  “Don’t look!” said Silenus quickly. “Don’t look at it!”

  George caught himself just in time. He kept his eyes fixed on the street, but in the corner of his vision he could see a figure standing below the lamp, its hands primly fixed behind its back. It appeared to be a man in a gray suit and a black bowler, but now George sensed that this was just a picture in a very real way, a thin and flimsy skin with something hiding just behind it.

  “Hey!” cried the figure merrily. “Hey you, kid! Hey, come here to us! Let us get a look at you!”

  “Don’t listen to it,” said Silenus. “And don’t look. It will want you to look.”

  “We remember you,” called the figure. “Do you remember us? We met outside of the theater. You were the fan, weren’t you? We said we’d pay you, but we never heard back from you, such a pity. Imagine meeting you here. Imagine that.”

  “Oh, God,” said George.

  “Just keep moving,” said Silenus. “Don’t look.”

  “We’d still pay, you know,” said the man. “We saved up, just for you. Leave that liar and that dying man behind, and come here to us. We won’t hurt you. We can’t say the same for them, but you can be safe.”

  “Bastards,” whispered Kingsley.

  “Look at us, child,” called the man. “Would we hurt you? Would we hurt a nice young man like yourself ?”

  George shut his eyes and kept walking forward, guided by the faint footsteps of Kingsley and Silenus.

  The man laughed. “But hey, you know what, we thought you looked familiar. And now that you’re standing next to that awful liar, we see why! The resemblance is very faint, but we can see it! Family, how funny! But now, you know, maybe we can’t let you leave. Not if you are what it looks like you are.”

  At that, George opened his eyes and looked sideways at Silenus. Silenus appeared confused, but he did not look at George, nor did he say anything until he spied a large sweetshop at the corner ahead.

  “Do you both see that big window there?” he said quietly. “There in that shop, on the other side of that corner?”

  “Yes,” said Kingsley and George at once.

  “All right. What we’re going to do is walk toward that very quickly. We’re not going to run. If we run, they’ll do something. We’re going to get to it as fast as we can without running. Okay?”

  “And then what?” said Kingsley.

  “You leave that up to me,” said Silenus. “All right? Let’s go.”

  They picked up the pace very slightly, moving quickly toward the corner. The man behind cried, “Hey, now, where are you going? Are you leaving us so soon? You know there is not far to go…” Then the light behind them winked out, and though George wanted to look back and see if the man was still there, he refrained.

  When the
y rounded the corner, Silenus said, “Stand right there in front of the window, both of you. And look in.” George did as he asked, and saw that they were staring in at their own reflections. Silenus took off a glove, stuffed it in his pocket, and took out his monocle. “Here,” he said, and handed it to George. “You seem more sensitive to them than either of us. After all, you can hear the bastards. Now just keep an eye on them, and tell me when they’re close.”

  George looked at the lens in his hand. It was scuffed to the point that it was opaque, but he put it to his eye and peeked through. The world was rendered milky white, with no distinguishable buildings or forms in it, but among all the whiteness he could see black figures and dark shadows slowly moving toward them. He gasped and took his eye away and saw he’d been staring into a brick wall.

  “What is this?” said George. “It can look through the wall?”

  “It’s lightning glass,” said Silenus. He produced a small knife and made a very small incision on his finger, and let the blood dribble down to collect in the palm of his hand. George winced, but Silenus said, “It’s what’s left behind when lightning strikes sand dunes. If you polish it the right way, it becomes very sensitive to light and dark. Especially the darkness that follows the wolves.”

  “They’re wolves?” said George.

  “That’s one word for them, yeah,” said Silenus. He picked up a handful of soil from the gutter and began mixing it with the blood in his hand. When it began to turn to clumps, he spat into it and kept mixing. “Are you going to keep a fucking eye on them or not?”

  George brought the monocle back up again. He saw the mass of darkness grouping at the alleys on the other side of the sweetshop. “They’re getting close,” he said. “Why are they moving so slow?”

  “Because they don’t want to give us any way to escape,” said Silenus. “All right, I’m ready here. Both of you hold still. Just look in the window, and do not blink.”

  George put down the monocle and watched. Silenus reached toward the glass and began to paint the mixture of blood and earth and saliva around their reflections in the window, drawing along their edges. He did it very carefully, making sure to account for every bump or bend in their forms. His own was the most awkward, as he was painting himself with his arm outstretched. Once he was done, he blew on the outline of blood and dirt and began picking at one corner of it.

  “What are you doing?” asked George.

  “Shut up,” suggested Silenus.

  “Yes, please do,” said Kingsley.

  George was about to make an angry reply, but stopped when he noticed something: although they had all spoken, none of their mouths had moved in the reflection.

  Once Silenus had picked at the corner of the outline enough, he took it between his thumb and forefinger and began pulling. George had expected it to flake away, but the outline seemed to hold together, as though it were made of resin. But then George saw Silenus was peeling away more than just the outline: there was something else coming off the glass, something ghostly and illusory…

  When Silenus had gotten the thing off the window it collapsed in his hands like cloth or loose paper, and he began trying to stand it up on the sidewalk. When he finally got it upright, George saw they were staring into faint versions of their own faces, though Silenus’s was partially obscured by his arm, which seemed to be reaching out toward them. George looked back at the window and saw it was now blank. The reflections were gone; if he’d been seeing things correctly, their images in the window had been pulled from the glass to now stand on the sidewalk. They were faint, distorted things with the wrong dimensions in places, and they were all joined together at the hips, but other than that they looked almost exact.

  “W-what?” asked George faintly.

  “Now, kid, where are they coming at us?” said Silenus.

  George jumped and looked through the monocle again. “From that alley there,” he said, and pointed.

  “All right,” said Silenus. Then he whispered into the ears of each reflection. Up until now they had been static and frozen, but when they heard what he said each insubstantial face looked miserable and terrified.

  “I know you don’t like it, but you got to,” said Silenus to them. “Besides, you wouldn’t have lived long anyways. Just until we passed out of the window. All right?”

  The Silenus reflection nodded stiffly. “All right,” said the real Silenus. “Now—go.”

  The three reflections turned around and began marching toward the alley George had indicated. They moved awkwardly, as they were essentially one mass with six legs, but they managed to stay upright.

  “Back up,” said Silenus to George and Kingsley. “Up against the building, so they won’t see you.”

  They flattened themselves against the wall and watched the progress of their reflections. When the three ghostly shapes made it to the alley they looked directly down it at whatever had been hunting them, and turned and ran away down the street.

  There was a chorus of growls and cries as the things in the darkness gave chase. The mouth of the street grew murky, and Silenus whispered, “Don’t look! Look away and shut your eyes!”

  They did as he said. The sound of hundreds of feet on paving stones filled the air, and if George’s ears were right it sounded as if the feet were clawed. The wind whipped around him and a chill trilled through his bones. He suddenly felt old, older than he ever had in his life, and he wanted to do nothing more than lie down on the sidewalk and never get up again. It was in this moment that curiosity overtook him, and George cracked open one eye, intending to look back. But when he did he saw Kingsley had already succumbed to that same impulse, and was staring over George’s shoulder at whatever was chasing their reflections down the street. His face was fixed in utter terror, and sweat ringed his brow. Then he saw George was watching him, and he scowled and shut his eyes and looked away.

  Eventually the sounds and the chill faded. Silenus opened his eyes and looked around, then let out a breath. “They’re gone,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” said George.

  “I’m sure,” said Silenus. “I told our reflections to run clear across town if they could. They seem to have bought the ruse. Stupid things. We can breathe easy for a bit.”

  Kingsley mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “How did they get so close? You said that after the song was sung they couldn’t get within miles of us.”

  “I know that’s what I fucking said!” said Silenus. “That’s how it’s always been! Something’s changed, but I don’t know what.”

  “Or maybe it’s just not working anymore,” said Kingsley.

  “That’s something I don’t want to consider,” he said. “Listen, the trick I just pulled won’t last forever. Let’s hurry back to the train station before they figure it out. Come on, kid.” He and Kingsley turned to make their way down the street.

  But after being ridiculed, choked, and forced into a dangerous trap at gunpoint despite his protestations, George was no longer feeling so amenable to the man he’d spent over half a year trying to find, whether he was his father or not. “Why should I?” he asked.

  Silenus looked back. “Eh?”

  “Why should I come with you? What good would it do me? You’ve done nothing but abuse and ignore me since I met you. I tried to save your life, and you went and nearly got me killed anyways. So why should I?”

  Silenus walked back, nodding his head. “Fair points, fair points,” he said. “But you’re forgetting, of course, that the wolves now think you’re with me. So they’ll be looking for you. And while you might not know exactly what they are, you know they’re bad news, and I think I’ve got a little more experience with them than you have. So it’s probably in your best interests to tag along with us, at least until you’re safe.”

  George knew that these were very valid observations, but he was still reluctant to follow him.

  “Come on, kid,” said Silenus, now quieter. “I didn’t know. These are dangerous times.
I had to make sure.”

  “Why do you want me to come at all?”

  Silenus paused. His face was still and closed again, and George could tell he was thinking hard. “Let’s just say you’re quite the specimen. But in any case, it’d be a poor thing to leave you behind with the wolves hot on your scent.”

  George considered it. “If I come with you, will you hurt me again?”

  “I can’t promise that I won’t. Sometimes what needs to be done needs to be done, even if it’s unpleasant. But I will promise to try my best to keep you safe, until I no longer can.”

  “You will?” asked George suspiciously.

  “It’s what I promise everyone who travels with me. Now come on before they double back, all right?”

  George sighed. “All right.”

  They jumped on a different streetcar and huddled at the end as it took them to the station. Silenus was grim and lost in thought, but he looked better than Kingsley, who sat crooked in his seat with one hand gingerly exploring his side. His skin was pale and waxy, and he kept licking his lips and whispering something, as if he was speaking to someone who was not there.

  When they were near the station they heard them: first one howl, then two, then many, long, keening cries from somewhere far out in the city.

  “Are those wolves I hear?” said one passenger.

  “It can’t be,” said a woman. “There are never any wolves so far into town.”

  George expected Silenus to say something, but he did not. He simply lifted his eyes and gazed in the direction of the howls, and settled down farther in his seat.

  CHAPTER 6

  “He sees what he wants to see.”

  When they got to the train station, Colette and Franny ran to Silenus and began asking questions, while Stanley slowly sauntered up behind them.