I let out a long, howling laugh that drowns out the sirens starting to wail in the distance. I’m not a hero. I’m the fever that’s going to break this city. And God, it feels good to be the one holding the thermometer.
The penthouse was a scream; the funhouse is a heartbeat.
I swagger through the mouth of the giant fibreglass clown, my boots crunching on the broken glass and discarded candy wrappers that litter the floor. The air inside is stagnant, smelling of salt-rot and the metallic tang of the blood I still have under my fingernails.
“I’m home, Giggles!” I shout into the rafters. My voice bounces off the warped mirrors in the Hall of Distortions, throwing a dozen jagged, twisted versions ofme back at my face. I stop in front of one. The glass makes my head look like a balloon and my legs like toothpicks.
I tilt my head. “Looking sharp, Jexy. Real sharp.”
I move toward the back, past the rusted tracks of the ‘Tunnel of Love’ where the swan boats look like bleached ribcages. Knuckles is there, sitting on a crate of ammunition, sharpening a machete with a stone. The shhh-shhh-shhh of the blade is the only music I need.
“Status report, Knuckles! Give me the dirt! Give me the gossip! Did the mailman bring my invitation to the gala?”
Knuckles doesn’t look up. He just points a thick, scarred finger toward the centre of the “office”—the space under the missing-jaw clown.
There’s a man tied to my chair.
He’s wearing a Hillside Sanitarium security uniform—the grey one with the blue piping. He’s young, maybe twenty-one, with a face full of freckles and eyes that are currently trying to exit the back of his skull. He’s not taped like Monty. He’s tied with thick, industrial hemp rope, and there’s a Queen of Hearts tucked into his breast pocket.
“Oh ho!” I hop over a pile of theatre seats, my eyes alight with a manic, hungry glow. “A guest! And he brought his own uniform! How thoughtful!”
I walk a slow, predatory circle around the chair. The kid is shaking so hard the chair is rattling against the floorboards. Rattle-clack. Rattle-clack.
“He was sniffing around the pier, Boss,” Pip chirps from the shadows of a popcorn machine. She’s tossing aheavy brass key ring up and down. “Caught him trying to radio back to the white house. I think he’s a scout.”
I stop in front of him, leaning down until our noses are almost touching. He smells like cheap tobacco and terror. It’s an intoxicating cocktail.
“A scout,” I whisper, my voice dropping into that dark, velvet crawl. “A little bird from the cage. Tell me, little bird… how is she? How is the girl with the blue and red hair? Is she sleeping? Is she dreaming of me?”
The kid tries to speak, but his jaw is locked in a frozen tremor. I reach out and gently, almost tenderly, unbutton his collar. I find his name tag. Officer Higgins.
“Higgins,” I say, the name tasting like ash. “That sounds like a butler’s name. Are you serving her, Higgins? Are you bringing her tea and crumpets while Aris plugs her into the wall? Or are you one of the ones who holds her down so she doesn’t ruin the Doctor’s nice clean rug?”
I grab a handful of his hair and yank his head back. “Answer me, or I’ll start using these cards to perform a very messy tracheotomy.”
“She—she doesn’t talk!” he gasps, tears finally spilling over. “She hasn’t made a sound in months! Aris says she’s… he says she’s stabilised! Please, I just work the perimeter! I don’t go in the Soft Room!”
I freeze. The word stabilised hits me like a physical blow. It means quiet. It means the fire is under a lid. It means Aris thinks he’s won.
A low, guttural growl starts in my chest, building into a jagged, manic laugh that echoes through the funhouse like a death knell. I release his hair and spin away, kicking a bucket of old grease across the floor.
“Stabilised! He thinks he’s stabilised an earthquake! He thinks he’s put a leash on the sun!”
I turn back to him, my face a mask of terrifying, white-hot fury. I pull a canister of ‘The Punchline’ from my coat and hold it up to his face.
“You see this, Higgins? This is the cure for ‘stability.’ This is the alarm clock for the girls who have been put to sleep by men in lab coats.”
I lean in, my grin returning, but this time it’s sharper, meaner.
“You’re going back tonight, Higgins. But you aren’t going back alone. You’re going to carry a little gift from the Dealer. And if you drop it… well, the joke’s going to be on your entire shift.”
I pull a small, high-frequency detonator from my pocket and tape it to the canister. Then, I tape the whole package to the kid’s inner thigh, right against the femoral artery.
“If you try to remove it, boom. If you don’t get through the main gate by midnight, boom.” I pat his cheek, my eyes shimmering with a beautiful, psychotic light. “But if you do exactly what I say… you might just live long enough to see the greatest show on earth.”
I stand up, spreading my arms wide to my Choir.
“Two hundred and fifteen days! The clock is ticking, the cards are dealt, and the Doctor is about to find out what happens when you try to own a ghost!”
