The black carnival, p.25
The Black Carnival, page 25
His mind had always raced in the silence of the mortuary. Now the circus’s discordant melodies drowned all thoughts. The Romani music, so fantastically lamenting and celebrating, the high, eerie warbling of the singers evoking a world beyond dreams, the ringmasters announcing acts in the big top—all lulled him into eventual, exhausted sleep. His vision blurred to darkness, and so did the lantern’s light, as though its watch over him had finished.
Atherton stirred to songbird chirrups in the early dawn. A pleasant nip bit at the edges of his patchwork cocoon. A plate of mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, and a small, stout meat pie—now cold—had been placed on the upholstered coach seat beside a corked bottle of water. Dinner read a note by the battered, tin plate. Without a second thought, Atherton bolted down the meal and washed it down, only then finding a fork tucked into a neatly folded napkin.
He also found himself utterly stark naked.
Clutching a blanket around his waist, he crept outside.
It was as though the circus had never catered to a single soul. The food stalls were neatly closed. No props, apparatuses, or equipment littered the grounds. There was not a soul to be found wandering the dewy, trampled grass between the innumerable tents. His clothes, washed and still damp from the morning fog, hung from the carriage’s awnings. He slipped into them.
The circus was arranged differently than at New Sarum. The misty maze of black, white, and red stripes was somehow more intimidating, now that he was obligated to understand its intricacies. The big top was his north star, its six points fluttering with scarlet flags.
He crept through the wide, triple-ring stage. A trapeze net hung over the center stage, taut and awaiting. Venturing beneath the stands, he found the backstage. Clown alley. Vanity tables and costume racks lined the narrow space. Just as he thought it was as empty as the rest of the circus, he heard the sound of rustling fabric.
“H-hello?” he called.
“G’morning,” a croaky voice answered. Then, after Atherton turned every which way, “Up here.”
A woman peered at him over the frame of a bed constructed on two old trapezes, suspended from the rigging high in the ceiling. Sleep had made a mess of her brunette curls. She was several years older than Atherton—that was certain—but her smudged makeup made it impossible to discern. A faded, pointed black heart at the center of her lips stretched as she smiled down at him.
“You must be our new ghost courter,” she said. “Lester told me to expect you.” A charming, rugged Slavic accent tugged on her words.
“She asked that I come here before I roam the grounds publicly.”
The clown crawled out from her bed, reaching for the rope hanging from its frame. She eased herself down, her biceps bulging through a white undershirt. “You were right to come. I am Miriana. For some, Minnie. The pleasure is mine, despite the hour. I’ll forgive you—this once. Most of us sleep the morning away.”
Atherton stifled a surprised gasp. Her frilled skirt trailed as she climbed down, but no legs followed from its gray and white stripes. “Atherton Graves, and likewise. Forgive me; I meant no inconvenience.”
“Shocking, I know,” she sighed. “You’ve never had a mortified limb, have you? I don’t recommend it. Kayne said it was ergot. Bad batch of rye bread. Can you believe that? She lopped them off herself.”
At the bottom of her rope, the clown settled into a contraption beneath her bed. It was constructed of four unicycle frames welded to a padded chair. The two wheels in the front moved independently, steered by wooden handles that Minnie maneuvered as she swiveled to meet his eyes.
She cranked a red handle.
Her seat rose with a few tugs of the lever, its mechanism clunking until she met his eyes evenly.
“The others call me ‘spider.’ Not the most flattering, but it’s grown on me. Crafty, isn’t it?” Minnie tapped the device. “Ivory devised it for me. He’s an arrogant bastard, but, then again, most geniuses are. He says he’s working on a motor for it, soon as he finishes that damned ticket booth.”
“I’m terribly sorry; I had no idea.”
“Oh, save it. We’re all broken somehow. You couldn’t beat me in a footrace, anyway. I’m faster on wheels than you are on legs.”
Atherton raised an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge? I might just take you up on it.”
Minnie’s full lips cracked into a smile. Black and red diamonds hung from faded lines beneath her rich amber eyes. Her voice fell to a thoughtful murmur. “It’s been ages since we took on a new member. A man with blood on his hands, no less. Have a seat.”
Obliging her at the nearest vanity table, Atherton found his countenance in the mirror. He was due for a shave. Indigo and black bruises pockmarked his face.
A slender, feminine figure appeared behind him. A cadaverous hand with bright, blue veins fell on his shoulder, and his heart lurched with a tired thump. He turned away from the reflection.
Minnie pulled on another lever. The mechanism shuddered, her seat sinking down to its base with a jolt.
“That's always fun. You look nervous,” she said.
“I’ve never worn makeup before. A clown’s, leastways.”
“Have you seen our clowns? They aren’t your normal fare. I don’t relish turning our cast into a cliché. All our performers wear makeup. Nothing to be nervous for.” She reached for a cup of brushes, a tin of black greasepaint, and a small basin with murky water. “Just small accents, Mr. Graves. We don’t hide who we are. We beautify it. After I’m finished here, nobody will look twice at you.”
Minnie wiped at his face with a cloth dipped in clean water. “It’s a funny thing. As soon as you stand out of the crowd, that’s the moment folks assume they know everything about you. At precisely the same moment, they fail to see anything.”
After applying a layer of foundation, she drew the first line of cool, wet greasepaint beneath his lips.
“And what do you see, Minnie?”
“Whoever you are, Atherton Graves, you kill to protect your own.” Pinching his chin between forefinger and thumb, she made him meet her eyes. “The real question is: would you do that for us?”
By the late morning, all the strung lights and fixtures had come alive on their own accord. Atherton scoured the grounds in hopes of finding the clown to whom he owed his life. If Boo seemed like a tall tale as a guest, he was even more so within the circus itself.
Atherton went to the Cascading Perils first.
“It’s rubbish, innit?” Marvin folded his arms, letting his cascade of seven knives fall to the ground, each one landing point-first into the grass. Atherton darted to avoid one. “He hasn’t put the time in, simple as that. Yet he juggles as if he’s been doin’ it all ’is life. Five, six, even seven. It’s that bloody cap of his. He cut a deal with some magician way back ’for he came here. The Devil knows what he gave in return. His soul, likely.”
Behind him, a knife thrower, Ruth, hummed her agreement as she flicked stilettos. Even her partner—strapped into a spinning wheel as blades landed between her arms and legs—nodded in affirmation.
“Well, I have some words for him,” Atherton said, wincing as the blades thudded closer to flesh. “Where might I find him?”
“Last I saw him, he was in the den with Tristana,” Ruth said, pinning her partner’s trousers to the wheel with another throw.
“The den?” he asked.
“You really are green, ain’t you?” Marvin laughed.
A lifetime of inhaling the stench of decomposition couldn’t prepare him for the air in the menagerie. While perusing the creatures inside Blasphemous Beasts, Atherton found Tristana, a beast handler.
Muddied riding boots hugged her thighs, scarred like the rest of her body. She rivaled Thomas’s height.
“Make no bones about it,” she said, slopping gloop into a feeding trough for Bartholomew—a boar so wide and tall it warranted a cage half the size of most tents. “Boo’s a demoniac. Not that anybody believes me, anyhow.”
“A what?” Atherton asked, pinching his nose against whatever breakfast was being served to the beast.
“Look. Any witch worth her salt has handled a few demons, kid, and that man shares a body with one. It’s in the hat, and he never takes the damn thing off. Aye! Bethie!” she called to the giant sleeping in her cage. “I’d clear out of ‘ere if I was you.” Tristana strapped on a leather mask. “Her morning breath is something fierce.”
“Ruth said I’d find him here,” Atherton said, holding back a gag as the beast yawned awake.
“Never trust blade twirlers,” she said, “I’d check your pockets, if I were you. The jugglers like to play dipper when the crowds are out. Nimble fingers. Worse than the freaks, even. That’s where I saw him last, mind you.”
At the carnival’s freak show, The Blessed, Atherton found Zada, a one-eyed tarot reader. She manned a stall with a sign stating, The Divining Cyclops!
“Boo’s a specter, aye. The specter of t’all,” she said.
“Of what?” Atherton asked.
“This place,” she said, shuffling a tarot deck. She flourished the cards as she spoke, twirling them about with hypnotic precision, making them disappear and manifest with a flick of her fingers. “He’s everywhere, see? There one moment, gone the next. An’ he always knowin’ what’s the going-ons. If you wipe your backside in the grounds, sure as sin, he knows ‘bout it.”
“What makes Boo so special? He’s just a performer, after all,” Atherton said.
“You shouldn’t speak of things you ain’t knowin’ nuffin’ of,” Zada snapped. “They say he was born in Gehenna ’n Lester plucked ’im right out. You two ain’t so different ’nyhow.”
“What do you mean?” Atherton asked.
“You ’aven’t heard, eh?” The woman’s face lit up, her single eye fluttering while a devilish grin stretched across her face, revealing more missing teeth than not. “Boo was brought to Bedlam like an orphan, see. But he weren’t always that way, eh? The bobbies, they found ’im in ’is own home, alone, after neighbors made a complaint about a wretched smell. Well, he weren’t alone, strictly speaking.” The cyclops brought a card up and drew it along her throat. “They say he cut ’em a smile each. His parents. Poor things. ’N all he had was that bloody hat on ’im when the peelers showed. Shiverin’ in their blood. Scared stiff he was. Just a lad. And ’is poor sister, her parents ’ad gone mad with grief. They’d drug her out of t’grave after she’d died, kept ’er in the house like a mantelpiece. That’s what’d gone ’n took away Boo’s words. Aye. He don’t speak much, ’less he likes you. But mind you, I wouldn’t take it lightly. It ain’t the simplest thing, eh, talkin’ to seers.”
“Boo does readings, too?” Atherton asked.
Zada shook her head. “You’re missin’ the point. The Devil put ’is eye in that poor boy, for what he put ’im through. That’s what I think. That’s why he wears the cap, eh? It tells ’im things what haven’t happened yet.”
In a single stroke, the fortune teller unfurled six cards onto the table. “Now, how’s about a reading, eh?” Turning one over, she revealed the Hanged Man.
“Maybe another time,” he stammered. “I heard from the den that I’d find Boo here.”
“Tristana told you that, eh? That old didikko thinks she’s a laugh. Boo’s a freak in ’is own right, but he don’t hang around ’ere much. He takes to the magicians an awful lot, though. Likes to watch ’em before his shows. You might ask Vira over at Curiosities. And tell ’er she owes me a half crown.”
“For what?” Atherton asked.
“She’ll tell ya.” Zeda winked.
Atherton parted the violet banners into the Cabaret of Curiosities. Geometric sigils were stitched in boggling sequences along each one. The air was rife with incense and vanishing powder—combustible substances set alight to distract the eyes.
“Boo? If you’ve a mind to thank him, I’d spare your breath,” Vira said from her stage. A plume of black smoke erupted from her feet. The next moment, she was standing in front of Atherton, curls of vapor trailing from her black-and-red striped capelet.
Her large, brown eyes bored into his. “Don’t look so spooked, lad—it’s only mirrors. That’s what the audience says, at least.”
“Why am I wasting my time?” Atherton asked.
The magician folded her arms. Her dark skin had a silver edge from the ghostlight inside. With an inquisitive look, she edged closer to him, too close for Atherton’s comfort. “He don’t talk much, least of all to new folks. They say—”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Atherton interrupted. “I just need to know where I can find him.”
“Oh, look who knows so much already.” Vira sat down and crossed her legs, though there was no chair beneath her. She produced a nail file and went to work on her thumb.
Atherton ventured a hand into the space beneath Vira’s backside, feeling nothing.
“I hear Ivory’s got you in shackles to his talking boards,” she said. “If you ever want to learn real magic,” she said, brandishing a gun, “you can always work for me. Fine piece of iron, this.”
Atherton’s eyes widened. He patted down his chest, finding his holster empty. Just as he reached for it, it had vanished from her hands.
“Looking for that?” Vira asked, pointing toward him.
Reaching into his holster, he found the revolver returned. “What in God’s name?”
“The Devil’s name,” she corrected. “God doesn’t snoop around here much. Oh, and don’t forget these,” she said, dumping the six rounds from the chamber into his hands.
“Before I go, Zada told me to tell you that you owe her a half crown.”
“So I do,” Vira smirked, tossing him a coin. “Be a good lad and run it for me.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what did you bet on?”
“You coming back. In any case, you might try the morgue. Last I saw him, he was helping Thomas and his crew with a shipment.”
“You—we have a morgue?”
“You’re an undertaker, aren’t you? You’ll be right at home.”
And he was, though he hadn’t missed the smell, which was precisely how he found the place. Bordered by the caravans he’d slept beside, the unlabeled tent was barricaded by empty crates and large, wooden parcels, as well as gurneys and other equipment he knew too well.
“Hey, pip! You’re not allowed in there!” Thomas called too late, as Atherton had already let himself in.
Kayne looked up from the spread of textbooks and illustrations on her desk.
Taking in the sight of a dozen cadavers being worked over by her apprentices, Atherton stiffened, emitting a rather surprised, “Oh.” As he padded forward to greet her, a hanging skull knocked against his.
“Just what do you think you’re up to?” Thomas asked, clamping down on his shoulder.
“Well, I—”
“Mr. Graves is a most welcome guest,” Kayne insisted, pushing his hand off.
“The boy’s only just arrived,” Thomas protested.
“Don’t you have work to attend to?”
“My work is guarding this place!”
“Then take a break!”
As Thomas skulked off muttering about death workers, Atherton braved the manic excitement alight in Kayne’s eyes.
“How are you settling in? It’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? Have you considered joining my anatomists? Spiritualism isn’t an exact science, you know. But here, we demystify the innermost workings of human physiology itself.”
“Yes, h-how exciting.”
“Come, come. You are just in time to witness an unprecedented experiment. Observe the machinations of death defied before your very eyes. Here you are—these will help. Ladies!” Kayne snapped her fingers and handed Atherton a pair of welding goggles.
His eyes were drawn to a wooden table at the far end of the tent. The cadaver resting on it was a young man. A bracelet of stitches on both wrists marked hand transplants, the mottled, gray hue of the fingers mismatching the evenly gray complexion of his body.
Two apprentices moved to either side of the table. There were over a dozen straps by his arms, legs, and chest. One belted the gentleman in, while the other apprentice began cranking a lever that hoisted the table up until the whole construct was upright.
“Are you afraid of him escaping?” Atherton asked with a chuckle, putting on the goggles.
Kayne put on her own set. “We have learned from experience, I’m afraid.”
Though he laughed, her confused expression suggested she wasn’t joking.
Two great, bulbous electric conductors with copper arcs running along their steel frames were behind the operating table, hooked up to a galvanic reactor twice as large. With great care, the apprentices went about placing rods inside incisions throughout his body.
“We are doing what Galvani himself only dreamt of,” Kayne explained. “An intertwining of Gehennic theory and galvanic practice. Observe.”
Upon closer inspection, Atherton saw occult symbols etched into the table. They aligned with his hands, feet, and torso. Rather like a crown, the most complex sigil enshrined his head.
Connected to the arc reactor were two vials of foggy, glimmering substance.
“What’s inside those?” Atherton asked.
“Why, that will be your speciality, my dear. Ghostlight.”
Taking a vial of blood from a nearby stand of equipment, an apprentice uncorked it and poured. The fluid flowed until every gouge in the wood brimmed with it.
Then Kayne shouted, “Ready!”
Her apprentice placed her hand on a lever connected to the reactor and nodded.
“Lux!” Kayne commanded.
