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Chapter Seventeen
The red and green lights imbued the Hall of Oddities with a truly hellish look.
It created most of the agitation inside The Menagerie, a collection of beasts too fantastic and unusual to believe. Chickens with lizard tails and bat-like wings cackled in their pens as they flapped their leathery wings in dismay. Tiny rabbits with horns ran around their enclosures, ostensibly seeking to escape the eerie lights and buzzing atmosphere around them. The goldfish bowl was also in motion, and the seahorse, which actually had a horse’s body and four equine legs and hooves, kept leaping up from the bottom and paddling around, in obvious distress.
But I couldn’t focus on any of them for long. Ned’s jingling spurs were within earshot again and I had to flee or hide. Catching a fleeting glimpse of Ned, I could see he was in terrible shape, owing to his run-in with the horse earlier. His left arm hung at the wrong angle and seemed to be out of its shoulder socket. He limped on his right leg, but still managed to move extremely fast. Nothing seemed to be wrong with his right hand, however, which held the pistol, and when he caught sight of me, he raised his gun and aimed.
I was grazed by the first shot, which tore off some of my scalp and made me feel dizzy. I stumbled behind the goldfish bowl to avoid Ned’s second shot and gasped with fright as the bullet pierced the glass and ricocheted off the back wall, which was what I stood behind. The bowl shattered and in the flood of water, I watched the poor, tiny horse get carried away by it. All at once, the creature began to grow in size. It seemed like the air, itself, was causing the strange specimen to enlarge and change. When it stood up (which was an amazing feat, all on its own), it stood the size of a forty-pound dog and its tail and head, which were formerly those of a seahorse, now looked like a normal horse. It kept growing before it charged directly at Ned. It nearly reached the ceiling when it overcame him.
Ned hastily got out of the way, and an idea hit my brain. I ran over to the hybrid chickens and opened up their coops. All the chickens I’d ever raised on the farm could be very testy animals when confronted or cornered. I hoped this unusual breed would prove no exception. When the cluster of fowl charged Ned, he scattered all of them with a shot from his gun. Meanwhile, I’d already moved on to the rabbit cage, allowing the tiny, horned, white bunnies to escape. To my surprise, they did exactly as the chickens, in spite of the shots aimed at them. Covering Ned’s feet and legs, the defiant little rabbits gored him with their razor-sharp horns and bit him with their tiny, jagged teeth. Ned collapsed to the ground and screamed loudly before dropping his revolver.
By instinct, I rushed over to the fallen gun and scooped it up. Ned was overcome by the innumerable bunnies, all now chewing on him in a very grizzly display. He pulled them off as much as he could with his uninjured hand. The ones on his face left bloody chunks of missing flesh when he batted them off with one hand.
I aimed the revolver at his face, but he looked at me with no alarm. Cocking the gun, which echoed across the room, he ceased to struggle any longer because we both knew what was going to happen. At such close range, even a novice like me couldn’t miss the target.
The blast of the gun was much more impressive than I expected when I shut my eyes and pulled the trigger. The bloody mess that became Ned’s face will live forever in my worst nightmares, and I dropped the revolver like a hot potato. The tiny rabbits swarmed over Ned once more, tearing holes in his clothes and flesh. But I’d seen enough carnage.
The whinnies of two horses guided me back to the entrance of the caravan. Looking outside, I saw the former seahorse standing next to Saccharo, Brandeis’s trusty steed. The seahorse was even bigger than Saccharo. It was as large as a draft horse. Both of them approached me, and I reflexively backed away. But Saccharo stared at me with his big, gentle eyes. As the horses came closer, they rubbed me with their heads and licked my hands.
The moment ended when the former seahorse tossed its head and took off towards the outer perimeter of the circus. Saccharo followed suit and raced in that direction. The bigger horse chased Saccharo playfully, although Saccharo stayed in the lead until both of them vanished into the surrounding hills.
To my alarm, I felt all kinds of creatures swarming at my feet before the tiny, horned bunnies and lizard chickens ran out of the tent as swiftly as water. My stomach churned with dread, but I went back to the location where Ned had fallen. There were few traces of him left: a stained, well-worn Stetson, his boots and spurs, and the trusty revolver he’d lived and died by. Inevitably, my eyes drifted to the door of The Dark Room.
Taking a very deep breath, I walked inside the ominous site.
I had no idea what I was seeking, but I didn’t expect to find what I did. No need for the spotlights in The Dark Room, because every inch was brightly illuminated under the glare ofallthe overhead lights. Every shelf was filled with dolls, each on full display like a collector’s museum.
I searched the shelves for the one doll I wanted to find above all the others. What I saw stopped me cold. I hoped I was hallucinating again, and not really seeing two dolls with extra-long hair that cascaded over the shelves. Upon closer inspection, though, there was no doubt as to their identity. Vernice and Bernice sat side by side, their hands clasped together, surrounded by their flowing locks. Immediately, I turned my attention to the dolls sitting beside them. A ragdoll that once was ‘The World’s Largest Woman’ was also seated there. Two shelves down, a porcelain doll without any clothes but a bra and panties caught my eye. I examined her and recognized the detailed tattoo of the United States that covered her torso.
“No! No, no, no!” I called out, loath to admit what I was currently witnessing. But my eyes weren’t lying. Two male dolls that resembled Zeke and Hep were sitting further down the shelf. Those two unfortunate stagehands were relegated to the same fate. I hoped with all my heart that one of the troupe members, in particular, had been spared this fate. I hoped she’d managed to escape the grim future that awaited all the others.
Something ruffled my hair that was long and thin, like a pencil. When I looked up to see what it was, my optimism vaporized like ether. There, a porcelain doppelganger of Jiang, including her long fingernails, looked back at me. She was holding out her arm and as she pulled it back, her fingernail dropped from my hair. It was then that I noticed the small, gray sock monkey that was nestled inside her right arm.
I backed away in horror, my grief mingling with renewed outrage. It wasn’t fair, none of this should have happened. Nobody deserved such a fate! My knees buckled, and I fell down, sobbing.
“Why not me?” I repeated the words loudly. “Why not me?!”
With my hands over my face, I wept bitter tears, feeling utterly defeated. I hated losing control of myself but what I saw on those shelves made me feel even more wretched. All my future plans were dashed, my alliances were mere memories, and the sacrifices of so many friends became an oppressive, inescapable reality, I withdrew mentally and went numb, both in my head and body.
A soft, small hand reached out to me. Seeing to whom it belonged thrilled me, because I’d found Amelia. I couldn’t snatch her up fast enough and began hugging her with all my might.
“Can you tell me why, Amelia?” I asked in a raspy voice. I was hoarse in my throat and my red eyes were raw as I added, “All the things you showed me about Brandeis. Can you tell me why?”
A familiar but unwelcome sensation made me look at my wrist, and I put Amelia down to inspect it more closely. The scythe appeared and burned brightly, as if it were mocking my plight. I reacted at once and began to scratch the despised sigil furiously. It simply resulted in a sore wrist and bloody fingertips that stung.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why was I marked? Or Brandeis, for that matter? What did we do to deserve this?” My words trailed off when a new revelation came to me. “What did we learn from this? Is that the point?”
Amelia just looked back up at me, blankly as I exhaled with audible defeat. “Oh, Amelia,” I said as I picked her up, “each one of us, Rex, Laurent and me, each of us was a harbinger of death. And those lives… they were the very thing that Mr. Grey was complaining about. Not meeting the quotas!”
A series of slow claps came from the entrance. “Once again, you fully appreciate how the mechanism works,” Mr. Grey announced, putting his hands down as he looked at me with nothing in his eyes.
The back door suddenly swung open and the old woman that had worked as a fortune teller in the wagon full of shawls walked in. She looked thoroughly exasperated.
“Discipline is no solution. That will not secure your investment or prevent it from further encounters of risk and danger,” she warned Mr. Grey. “You’re extremely slow to learn, Mr. Grey.”
Snatching up Amelia, I ran over to the old lady in desperation. “Please, whatever he plans to do, don’t let it happen,” I said. The words spewed from my mouth like a geyser.
“Now why would a shrewd investor like me want to get involved with you, child?” the old woman asked. “After all, you’re a critical factor in the continuing success ofCirque du Noir.”
