I spent three days and nights in that damned hotel room. Reading about Millie’s life consumed one of those days. The rest of the time was spent thinking about what I’d learned and contemplating what to do next.
I spent a lot of time sleeping, losing myself in dreams and memories and everything in between.
I’ve had two families in my life. I lost one when I ran off to join the circus. I lost the other to fire and deceit. Much as I would have rather avoided thinking about either of my families, they were on my mind more and more and I had no idea how to stop them from haunting me.
I had a grandniece. I studied the few pictures left of her again and again and I looked at the photos of Millie. They were hauntingly alike and completely different. I could see that they were related, could catch certain expressions in the pictures and know they shared blood, but that wasn’t enough to make me want to become a part of Meaghan’s life, was it? The girl was probably happy. Very few of the people I’ve ever met and befriended or loved could say the same.
Oh, I know it sounds like I was wallowing in self-pity, but not really. It’s just a fact. I abandoned my family to make money for them. I meant to return and never did. The people I grew to love in the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic died. They were murdered and even if a few of them survived, the same problem came back to me again. They’d been alive fifty years ago and the odds were better than fair that they were either dead or so decrepit that they’d never even know I was in the room with them if I could somehow manage to find them.
I watched the television a lot while I was in that room. A lot. There was nothing else to do that wasn’t too distracting, and the sound of voices kept me from going too stir crazy.
I was watching the local news when I heard about The Carnivale De Fantastique. The name was similar enough that it took me away from my internal musings and drew me back into the world around me for a moment.
An anchorwoman was talking about the latest show and how some people were claiming that the carnivale was the next best thing to magic. As she spoke they switched to shots of the show, a couple of scenes that were nicely laid out and colorful to say the least.
Three clowns did a crazy dance while a girl in a scanty outfit with more glitter than cloth pirouetted across a high wire. All of them were young and athletic and flexible enough to be made of rubber. I’m a circus man. Naturally it caught my attention.
I listened to the report with slight curiosity until I found out the mythology behind the show: The stories were based off the “alleged” disappearance of the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic.
Alleged. I felt my teeth grind together.
All that I had experienced, all that had happened to me and my second family came down to a footnote about maybe having existed once upon a time and just possibly disappearing one day, never to be seen again.
I felt the smile growing as I contemplated that. Not a happy smile. I have to be honest; most of the people who’ve dealt with that smile are dead and a lot of them by my actions.
While I was in that room, I saw a documentary on chimpanzees. According to that film—which I think has certain elements of hogwash—the smiles that chimps show in the wild are signs of intimidation and challenge. It was that sort of smile that played across my lips and face. I watched the flesh on my hands peel away and show the white underneath.
I didn’t leave the room. I didn’t dare. I think if I had, I’d have killed almost as many people as I did in Serenity Falls. And believe me, I killed hundreds in that particular town.
No. Instead I stayed right where I was, staring at the television set and grinning like a chimpanzee. My body rocked back and forth on the bed where I sat watching, and I took the comforter into my hands and tore it into strips of fabric, all the while watching an hour long special about the Carnivale de Fantastique and contemplating what I would do next.
I think I might have gone after the owners of the show with a hatchet, but seeing Meaghan’s face stopped me.
Meaghan, my grandniece. The last member of my family. The legacy left behind by Millie.
She was in the show.
Not the star, but oh, for me she shined so very brightly.
Millie’s ghost haunted me again, only this time she was made flesh. Her smile, her mannerisms. The girl my sister had raised and this time she’d gotten it right.
She was not Millie’s ghost. I know that and I knew it then. She was something better. She was family.
I had Meaghan’s address. I knew where to go to find her.
Finally, I would meet my remaining family. Maybe, somehow, I could make it right again, I could just be Cecil Phelps, a man with a reason for living beyond the need to kill.
Maybe I could live again. Really live.
I had a purpose. I had an address.
I sat carefully, looking at the clown that smiled back at me from the mirror. Cecil Phelps was dead. I knew that, too. He’d died in a trailer, locked in with other performers five decades earlier. I just had his mind and soul. The body belonged to another person entirely until I took it.
Still, I could have a life. I could have a family. I kept thinking those thoughts as my body grew another layer of flesh, the mask that allowed me to hide when I was out in the world where the rubes ruled.
Family. It had been so very, very long since I’d had a family.
The term “clusterfuck” came to mind. Certainly it was the word the captain had used not once or twice but roughly fifteen times during his long, drawn out rant in Michael Carver’s face. He didn’t even try to defend himself. As far as he was concerned, everything that went sour happened because he didn’t think the man he’d cuffed was really dangerous. Bad mistake, and one he wouldn’t make again if he got the chance to go after John Booker or whatever his name really was.
Thinking about the smarmy bastard made him clench his jaw.
Booker had played him like a fiddle and then escaped. Worse, he’d maimed a cop in the process. Wilkins lost his eye. There was no chance in hell he could keep it, and it looked like the doctors would have to do a few reconstructive surgeries before he’d ever look right again.
Personal? That would have been an understatement. It was very personal. He wanted the bastard in a cell at the very least, and if he were honest, he wouldn’t mind beating the man into a coma.
Mike kept his poker face on through the entire reaming, never once letting himself lose his temper. Every spray of spittle was another reminder that he’d screwed up.
Aside from three possession charges and a handful of outstanding warrants for everything from traffic violations to armed robbery, Booker was all they had to go on. He was the most likely suspect on the murders, but that connection was weak at best. There was no evidence aside from the fact that one of the workers said Booker and Lowman were working together right before Lowman was murdered and that information came from a man they’d had to take in for outstanding drug warrants in Florida.
And Lowman, there was a character. He’d had links to a hundred different porn sites, almost all of them dealing with children, on his computer. The FBI had already taken the laptop because they were better equipped to take care of a ring of pedophiles. If Booker was responsible for Lowman’s death, he’d done the world a favor, as far as the detective was concerned, but that didn’t make the other murders any more acceptable or legal.
The captain finally wound down and moved on to the next police officer he intended to ream. Two of them actually, the ones Booker had managed to handcuff together. Michael had no intentions of defending them either. They’d screwed the pooch on their own and they’d face the captain the same way.
There was the other body to consider, of course. The one that had been shipped up from Atlanta. He’d have to look at the files, see what he could find out about who had been added to the cast and crew after they moved up to Baltimore. One of the cast members was the victim. A girl if he was remembering properly. He hadn’t been assigned to that case, but there was always a chance that there was a connection. Now he just had to remember the name.
“Elizabeth Montenegro.” The name clicked into his head and he nodded to himself. There was a real possibility that there was a connection. He made a note to call the Atlanta PD and find out who was working that case, if anyone. He still wasn’t quite sure exactly who was supposed to be in charge of that one on either end.
“What?” Jeffries turned on him and snarled the word. Mike made himself stand still and even avoided flinching.
“Elizabeth Montenegro. Is she a part of this investigation, sir?”
“The dead girl that got shipped here?” The man still scowled, but Mike knew him well enough to understand that he was thinking now, and not just pissed off. “Maybe. Who’s assigned to that one?”
“I think you gave it to Koslowski.” Actually he knew the man had assigned Koslowski. All the other detective had done since then was bitch about being overworked and underpaid, like that was a news flash.
“Not any more. Add it to this case and get all of Koslowski’s notes.”
Mike nodded his head. He didn’t need the extra work, but if there was a connection he wanted to know about it. Still, now he had to call Atlanta and then, just to add to the grief, if there was a correlation, he’d have to call the feds. Technically it would be their show if they decided to take over.
Maybe that would be for the best. Mike didn’t like the way this investigation was going so far.
Tia walked slowly, wincing at the aches moving through her legs and stomach. Despite the pain, she was still smiling. She’d gotten down all of the parts. Now all she had to do was remember them when the time came and an audience was watching her every move.
Leslie walked next to her, wiping sweat from her face with a towel that looked big enough to cover a station wagon. “You did good. Really good.”
“Think so?” It was a serious question. Leslie was the one in charge of making sure she was good enough to be on the stage, and Leslie was also the one person she was looking to as a real friend at this point. They’d spent a lot of time together, and now they had matching bruises from a few of the maneuvers they had to do on stage.
“Yeah. You’ve got the goods.” Leslie smiled and waved at one of the cast members. Tia did too, but she still couldn’t have told you the man’s name if pressured for an answer.
The props were all in place now, and the stage was amazing. Tia felt a sudden need to soak it all in again and stopped where she was.
The final set for the performances was a frozen wonderland, walls of ice and snow that towered into the air, with a castle in the distance that also glittered in shades of white and blue.
The idea of the story was that the head of the circus fell in love with one of the performers, a gypsy fortune teller named Ramona—played by Leslie and Tia alike—while she in turn falls for John, the lion tamer. Even as all of this is going on, the circus is visited by strangers who watch and dance around the periphery until one of them, a beautiful woman, also falls in love with John. The woman is the queen of a frozen fairy land, and when the final fight between John and Alex, the head of the circus takes place, John is gravely injured. The Fairy Queen then offers to save him, but only if he’s allowed to stay with her. Everyone agrees and the entire troupe is carried away to the frozen paradise, leaving little to prove that they ever existed. As complex stories went, it was weak, but the performances made up for the lack of in depth tale. Besides, it was hard to go into too much detail when none of the performers actually spoke or sang.
Leslie stopped with her, and smiled. “Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“I can’t get over it, you know? I’ve wanted this my whole life…”
Leslie put an arm around her and rested her head against Tia’s. “See? That’s why I like you. You stop and look and it still makes you smile. Half the people with the show couldn’t care less. They’re just here for the cash. You? You love to dance.”
“I almost went out for that show, the one on Fox. ‘So you think you can dance.’”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was too busy worrying about the audition for this.” She knew how lame that sounded, but it was the truth. The Carnivale wasn’t just big, it was huge. The money, the publicity generated, it was the sort of thing that could make a whole career.
Of course, the show on TV was getting pretty big, too.
“I wanted to try out for it too, but I’d just gotten the part on here and I wasn’t going to risk it.” Leslie slipped her towel around her shoulders and did a long slow stretch, touching her hands to the floor in front of her. Tia thought about it and joined her. She didn’t much feel like it, but knew stretching was all the difference in whether or not she managed to keep all of her muscles where they belonged instead of letting them get torn to pieces.
One of the stagehands came by and let out a wolf whistle. Without even looking, both girls raised one hand in a one-finger salute. It was automatic after a while. The calls were mostly good-natured and the response was given in the same spirit.
Something moved at the corner of her vision and Tia responded automatically looking toward the movement to her right. Someone was moving behind the plastic ice wall. She couldn’t make out many details but she could see that he was looking in her direction. Dark hair, pale face, tall and lean. For a moment she thought he could be John Booker, the person the police believed was behind the killings, but she shook her head at the very notion. If the man had half a brain he was in Canada or Mexico by now.
She looked away for a second as Leslie started speaking. “So I was thinking, we have the shows starting tomorrow, but maybe we can work out a switch. I’ll check with everyone, of course, but how would you feel about doing a couple of the scenes on stage tomorrow as a practice run?”
“Like I was ready to pee myself.”
“Oh, come on. You’re ready! And this way, you can actually get a little comfortable with being on stage with an audience.”
“Maybe just a small scene or two?”
“Of course.” Leslie shrugged. “I don’t want to throw you to the lions or anything.”
Tia looked back at the ice wall to gather her thoughts. Whoever had been behind it was gone now.
“Okay. If you get all the permission and stuff taken care of.”
“Piece of cake. Believe me. They want you cool and relaxed when the time comes for you to step out on the stage.”
“You know, I still can’t believe this is all real.” Even to her own ears, Tia’s voice sounded small.
“I’m finally getting used to it.” Leslie laughed. “It’s probably the bruises.”
“Oh, those feel real. No problem there.”
They finished their stretches in silence and headed for their dressing rooms.
Behind them, the clown-faced man nodded his head. They’d do. One or the other. He didn’t much care which one.
Life on the Road: Part Seven
I don’t know if time has muted my memories or if I just got bored with my lot now and then. I have few recollections of the year that passed except as a sort of marker in my mental calendar. I was with the troupe for over a year, I know that much. During that time I spent hours and hours practicing my routines and I wound up being the ringmaster for no less than once a month. Alexander was always getting himself in trouble with the local law. It seemed to come with his job as the owner of the circus.
Life on the road was seldom easy. Most days we were traveling and when we weren’t there were tents to pitch and routines to practice. I worked hard at my routine as a clown and at least as hard at my escape act. Alex had promised me that when we reached the north again, I’d have a chance to perform at least a few times to see how people reacted.
Alex was a man of his word. After almost a year with Carter, Burt and even Doreen helping me with my routines, I got to do an escape act. I got to do it as Rufo the Clown, because that way if every stunt went completely wrong, I still could milk the situation for a few laughs.
Nothing went wrong, and I have to say the sound of applause was amazing. Clowns get laughs. Escape artists get applause. Ten minutes after I was done with my routine, I was back in the audience and getting admiring smiles from more than one of the people who’d watched me escape from a straight jacket while hanging fifteen feet off the ground.
From that day on, I was still Rufo, but I had more time on stage and I became part of the draw for the circus. I didn’t let it go to my head. Oh, I probably would have, but Carter and Doreen stopped that from happening. They reminded me that at the end of the day, I was just a person, not the make up I wore.
Rufo was the escape artist. Cecil was just one of the gang. I think I liked it better that way. I’d seen a few of the performers who thought they were something special, and I’d seen the way they were treated for it. Royalty, or the attitude that you are royalty, has no place in a traveling circus.
We’d done most of the circuit again before we finally headed for the Northeast. The reasoning was simple enough, you really couldn’t get a lot of people to head into a circus tent in the winter months and a lot of the upper states tended to stay damned cold for a long time. So it was May or June before we hit Maine and a few weeks after that when we came to Serenity Falls, New York.
Serenity Falls was a pretty town. I remember seeing it as the train let off the cars for the show, and I looked out the window of my trailer as we were hauled up a mining company’s access rails to the site of the Pageant Farm.
We set up the same way we always do, and we had our show the same as we had in every other location, but the fun times didn’t happen this time around.
See, it was in Serenity Falls that I was murdered.
I guess I should try to explain that a bit. We pick up strangers from time to time, provided they met the approval of not only Alex, but the majority of the troupe. That’s how I came to be a member of the circus family and Alex never changed that particular rule. If he thought someone had merit, he was certainly within his rights to decide if they could become a part of the proverbial family, but instead he let everyone have their say.
One of the people he picked up and we agreed to let stay around was a man named Billy Raker. Billy was a clown by trade and a damned good one. He had a routine down that left people speechless with laughter. Have you ever seen a person laugh so hard that tears came from their eyes and they couldn’t catch a decent breath? Billy saw it all the time and he was the one responsible for it.
Despite that, I didn’t like Billy very much. He had a certain air around him that was well…slimy. I wanted to wash my hand after we were properly introduced and shook. I wasn’t the only one, either. But he was a draw, and Alex promised that if he kept getting the people in there, he’d not only agree to let me leave when we hit New York City, he’d also introduce me to a few of the right people to know.
Did I still have plans of being a big star on Broadway and having my name as well known as Harry Houdini’s? You better believe it. I’d miss a lot of the people at the carnival, God, how I’d miss Doreen and her sweet smiles, but I’d have left just the same. I was quietly in love with Doreen but as time went on I realized she thought of me only as a friend and nothing would change that. I’m not quite masochistic enough to want to spend my life pining away for a woman who doesn’t love me back. I might have been, but there was my family to consider as well, my real family, and Millie, who deserved so much better than she had at home.
I wanted to be a star and I wanted to be rich, so yes, I’d have left.
I never got the chance.
Instead, the new clown and the man who’d recommended him, a loser names Lonny Whitaker, snuck out one night and killed five children. I learned about that later, of course. After I died. Before that, all I knew was that the first show went very well. We had a grand old time as they saying goes, and we got more than a small amount of applause.
It was business as usual, in other words. After the show I got together with Doreen and Carter for a few rounds of poker with a penny ante. Nothing too major, but a chance to relax a little with my friends. I made it a point not to look too closely at Doreen. It was easy to get drawn into her, even if you were trying not to let yourself. We’d already gone through a few times when being around her had made me act stupidly. Not too dumb, just like what I was, a kid with a serious crush on the pretty girl who lived in the area. I’d never gotten obsessed. I was too busy dealing with other things to get that involved in how I felt about her.
Besides, there’s nothing quite as distracting as being smitten when you’re trying to save yourself from death by stupidity. Thinking about pretty girls would never have worked out well for me when I was doing the straightjacket routine. And of course, I’d be leaving when we hit New York.
I had thought of a thousand reasons not to fall in love. Most of them almost made sense at the time. In hindsight, they were all foolish. We’ll get to that later.
The first day was a good one. The night of poker was pleasant and left me only a few dimes poorer than when I started. Then, the next morning, we heard about the five children from the Pageant farm that disappeared.
Want to know something? No one was surprised when the people of Serenity Falls started looking at us as the source of their troubles. No one.
I was a little surprised by the group of men who came to see us, but only because they had the guts to actually show up in their regular clothes instead of in white sheets.
Their leader was a big man in his mid forties, I guess. Like most of the blue-collar types in Serenity Falls, he had a crew cut and a broad face. Not ugly, but the expression on his mug when he showed up could have been carved from the granite they quarried in the area.
I wasn’t there when the screaming started, but I got there quickly enough. It was a show day, so I came out of the trailer wearing my clown makeup and ready to perform. The locals weren’t much in the mood for me or anyone else who was trying to be peaceful. After one of the rubes got close enough to Alex to spit in his face, I stepped in to try to calm things down.
I slid in between the ringleader of the mob and the ringmaster of the circus, facing the bear of a man who was screaming accusations. “Listen, whatever’s happened, we didn’t do it. We’re a circus, folks. We’re just here to entertain.” To make my point, I handed over an elephant head made of balloons.
Maybe the guy had a problem with elephants, because his face turned red and his hand wrapped around the central part of the peace offering and he squeezed until I thought for sure my fingers would break. I tried to pull back, but he held on tightly.
Finally I defended myself. I kicked the man in his testicles as hard as I could. He dropped down fast, groaning and coughing, and I stepped back, trying to see if he’d done my hand any permanent damage.
I didn’t go far before the man who owned the farm had a shotgun pressed to the side of my face. I felt the barrel slide along my cheek, then up my nose until the red ball at the tip got knocked away.
I stopped moving. Everyone stopped moving. I don’t think anyone there really expected the situation to get out of hand. I know how weird that sounds, but there’d been none of the odd sort of vibe we all got from time to time, the warning bells going off and telling us it was going to be a very bad day.
I don’t think anyone there that morning was expecting more than some chest beating and maybe a few fists. And out of nowhere, the man who we’d paid to allow us on his property was shoving a very intimidating weapon in my face and asking, just as cold as you please, “What happened to my little ones. Tell me, please.”
The man was looking at me with eyes that were worried not for his own safety but for little children. I think that was what stopped everything from going crazy. That and a few of the townsfolk who maybe didn’t want blood on their hands when they weren’t even sure a crime had been committed.
Another of the townsfolk calmed everyone down, and despite the tensions, we all agreed to help look for the little kids. All I could think of was how desperate I would have been if Millie disappeared like that. There were plans to head back toward Illinois in the not too distant future, and I made my own plans. If New York didn’t work out, if I didn’t get a crack at serious money and stardom, I would drop by the homestead and see my family. I had just sent them most of my earnings for the last few months, and I wanted to see how they were. Despite the distance between me and my father—physical and emotional alike—I was even starting to miss my old man.
The show was put on hold. We spent the afternoon looking for the missing children without success. The night’s performances were cancelled as well and we considered pulling stakes and leaving the area, but in the long run it was too late in the day.
The only good news was that the carnival’s efforts in searching seemed to take care of a lot of the tension between the rubes and my second family.
At least it seemed that way until I felt the flames.
I awoke to the sound of Bert and Carter screaming, along with Markus Chambers and Lou Crompton. Just five clowns, that’s all we were. Five guys eking out a living and thinking of better days, maybe, or a brighter future.
Our brighter future came in the form of fire, yellow and red tongues of flame that blackened the trailer’s walls and sent thick coils of smoke into the air. Tears burned in my eyes and smoke tried to claw down my throat. I coughed and gagged and looked on as Carter tried to extinguish the flames running up his long sleeves. He never made it. The fire spread too quickly, devouring his flesh and clothes alike. Poor Bert tried to extinguish him, but it did no good. I think Lou was already dead by the time I woke. I think he died in his sleep only five feet away from me. Markus lived longer, but he couldn’t do any good for himself or anyone else, trapped as he was, and burning in the blankets he’d covered himself with.
I tried to give us an out. Broke out the single window in our trailer and tried to unlock the door from the outside when I realized it wasn’t budging from the inside.
My fingers reached through the window and struggled to get to the doorknob, but it was useless. My arms weren’t long enough.
I coughed and hacked and spit at the foul tastes scorched into my mouth, they wouldn’t go away.
Bert screamed when Carter died. I was trill trying to reach the door.
I saw the other members of the Carnival of the Fantastic outside the trailer, saw them trying to reach us, but the flames were too high, too hot.
They were still trying to reach when my hand started burning. I remember pulling it back inside and looking at it, wondering why it didn’t hurt more. I guess that was because by them my legs were already on fire, and you can only feel so much pain at any given time.
Oh, I wish I could explain how much my body hurt, how much my soul burned, too. Not with pain, but with rage.
I burned and I howled for as long as my lungs would let me, and in the end, it meant nothing. In the end, I was dying, and dying, and then I was dead and the flames kept licking at my roasting body as my spirit slipped away from the corpse I had become.
I died in flames. Four other men joined me.
I used to believe in Heaven. I used to believe that if you tried to live a good life, you would be rewarded in the afterlife.
I had perhaps a full minute of freedom outside of my body before I felt the pull of dark hands, dragging me down and into a different place that never had anything to do with a benevolent God.
I died and I went to my own special kind of hell.
Rage? Oh yes, there was rage and there was pain.
And then, ladies and gentlemen, I pulled my greatest escape trick of them all.