Originally published in Twice Cursed.
The road into Pleasance does it no favours.
The big old welcome sign telling you where you are and how many souls are living there looks as if it’s not been maintained for some time—peeling paint, colours bleached by sun and wind and rain. The grass is high along the verge, the treeline thick and dark, and the scent of rotting vegetation carries on the breeze.
I’ve never been here before, but I’ve been lots of places like it. They all smell the same—desperation turned in on itself. Needless to say I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be; doesn’t mean I’m not a little resentful, but I try to keep that to a minimum. Resentment just leads to worse things.
“Ichabod?” I say and receive absolutely no reaction whatsoever. So I clear my throat and yell, which has a spectacular effect on the bat-faced man snoozing beside me on the bench. Hurts his ears no doubt. He jerks awake, pulls at the reins and the two old roan mares, who’ve been doing perfectly well without his attention, protest the violence. They stop, look around and glare; stomp their feet in a delicate don’t fuck with us jig. “Ichabod, the next left, I think. Looks to be a field there.”
“Do you think I can’t see that?” he grumbles, even though his eyes have been closed for quite some while. “When exactly do you think I got demented, missy?”
If I were of a differing temperament—like my mother (and likely her mother before her and so on and so forth)—I might slap him up the side of the head. But he’s ancient, is Ichabod, and even given to impromptu naps as he is he still knows the old ways and the things we’re bound to do. He’s been at this longer than me, after all. So, I just pretend anticipation isn’t making my skin dance, clear my throat like that might pass for an apology, and he gees up the horses.
A ways ahead, the trees taper back and the road dips, widens, spears into what passes for the built-up area, darting off left and right to form streets on a neat grid. Very tidy but a tidiness from another era when some city planner with a penchant for sharp corners and straight lines held sway. That individual is long gone, I’m willing to bet. From the tiny knoll we’ve surmounted, I can see houses and shops, a brickworks chimney and a sawmill even further on; how much employment might they offer? Pleasance has the air of a spot that could be dying but doesn’t know it yet. Towards the outskirts on the other side are farms and pastures, cutting into the woods; from above it’ll look like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Then up on the left a dirt track runs along beside the three-strand barbed wire fence. Ichabod takes it without comment and we follow until there’s a sagging ingress. Nothing else around, no houses, no barns. The pasture’s close enough to town for kids to find us; far enough there’re no witnesses. I climb down, feel the buzz pressing up through my boots, tell it to hush, and examine the gate. It’s rickety, and I’m trying to find where to put my fingers without getting splinters.
I fail. “Son of a bitch.”
“Tsk. Language,” admonishes Ichabod and I raise a middle finger in his direction without turning around. The wooden barrier protests but I’m gentle, lifting and carrying it like an aged aunt who has trouble getting out of her chair; the hinges squeak.
After the wagon rolls through, I close the gate again, amble as if there’s nothing fluttering inside me like want, and survey the area. Over by that stand of trees there’s a creek, I can hear it trickling in the early afternoon’s silence. No sign of cattle or sheep, no grazing animals. No one around.
In roughly the middle of the field I take the knife from the worn leather sheath at my belt. I hold my breath like I always do, and whisper the words he taught me but once. I don’t know their meaning because my lessons were brief and time was short; I only know what they do. The blade’s weirdly hot-cold on my palm as it slices. It heals fast, never leaves a scar. Anything that’s done to me now just slides right off—doesn’t mean nothing hurts.
Blood wells dark and red-blue, and I make a fist, release it, make a fist, release it, watch the little waterfall hit the grass, get soaked up like the earth’s greedy. I do this until I’m starting to feel dizzy, then wrap my pocket handkerchief around the hand.
I retrace my steps quickly, carefully, and climb up beside Ichabod once more. He’s alert, watching avidly. Leaning over, he says, “There’s just something a little bit spectacular when you do it. The old man? He was very workmanlike, but you, Evangeline? You’re an artist.”
Which makes me proud, though maybe it shouldn’t. But it does, and I watch too as if it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Deep breath, Evangeline, I think as the little circus begins to grow up from the ground and that tiny red sacrifice I give whenever we arrive at the place we need to be. It curls like a mist, all blues and purples and pinks, shading into vibrant oranges and reds, then yellows and greens, and back again and again. Swirling until things become solid and settled.
First come the little concession stands: Samuel’s Sweet Shop for all your sugary needs; Pearl’s Popcorn; Cora’s Candy Cotton; Harry’s Hushpuppies and Corndogs; Fidel’s Libations for the thickest malts or a jar of the best moonshine this side of any river you care to mention. Next, the games: the shooting gallery; the dime pitch; the milk bottle knockdown; test your strength and ring the bell. Each and every one rigged in some way, shape, or form. On occasion the luck runs in the other direction, and we hand over a goldfish in a bag, a giant teddy bear, a fairy doll on a beribboned cane. The prizes look shiny and new, but anything you win from the Tissot Family Circus won’t exist in the morning; that’s just how it is. Doesn’t matter—we’re never around the next day, are we?
Now the carousel, brightly coloured and lit up like a small city, all those carved horses with golden bridles, hollowed-out swans, swirling teacups for folk to sit in. It remains my favourite—always was even before. It was the very first thing my eyes lit upon all those years ago—well, the second after the Impresario—but it was my first view of the circus per se. There’s something magical about it, the music and the movement, the speed, the sense that you’re no longer in the world, and that’s got a lot to recommend it to a lot of kids. Adults too. But kids especially.
Next, the cages and pens: a zebra and a giraffe; two big cats; three bears; and a small pool and slide set up with an ill-mannered troupe of otters and seals. There’s a petting farm with lambs, goats, calves, a donkey, a sleepy opossum with the good deal of personal charm required to overcome his looks. And a camel that thinks it’s a dog and acts accordingly—which is fortunate because Lord knows a camel has not really got the temperament for being petted.
Then at last the Big Top, pushing up like a big old pointy mushroom. Here, the clowns will carouse; the acrobats will tumble and do handstands and contort themselves like they’re made of rubber; Tilda will run her prancing ponies around the ring; the lion and tiger will sit on stools and pretend to be vicious; the fliers will take to the wires and tightropes high above the audience and the sawdust on the ground—no net because it’s not like it matters if any of them fall.
Finally, everything’s in place, looking as if it’s all made of something more than blood and magic. A small circus, certainly, but a perfect distraction for somewhere like this. I release my breath only when the little ones begin to appear, stepping from air as if through a door, their costumes bright and shiny, covered in spangles so they catch every beam of light. Faces turn towards us, smiling, waving, not a one over seventeen, but oh, they do love to put on a show. Love to be seen no matter that no one understands their true nature, or maybe because of it. Maybe because only the wrong person saw them in life.
All waiting for their time to be done, but knowing it might never be.
I wave back—there’s always the same sense of relief that things worked—then climb down. The pulse shoots up through me as soon as my feet touch the ground. I can’t help but think that this might be the night. Might be the one. That I might find the one I need.
“You off, then?” Ichabod asks casually.
I nod. “Just a quick recon. Get the lay of the land. Drum up some business.”
“Watch yourself, Evangeline.”
I shrug. “Make sure they don’t roam.”
•••
I walk in the middle of the main street—no traffic at this point in the day, which is fortunate—so I can get a good view of what’s on either side of me. Not too close to the mouths of alleyways; once bitten, twice shy. And it’s easier to feel the buzz beneath the soles of my boots—something about the centre line makes it more certain. Still quite weak, but definitely there, a thud and a thump to tell me I’m on the right path. Whenever we’re on those long straight highways, I’m fine to ride up with Ichabod if there’s no choices of left or right, but when we come into cities? Places with twisty avenues and thoroughfares? Then I spend a lot of time walking, building blisters on my heels, thighs chafing rosy.
There’s a corner store with a notice board outside. Lots of tinted sheets of paper there, affixed with thumbtacks. I veer from my comfort zone and head over, examine them to find the oldest ones, the ones no one needs anymore. Sure enough: four out-of-date bake sales, three trucks for sale so faded they’re barely readable, and too many church groups holding dances to count.
I leave all the ones about lost pets. None about missing children, no milk carton faces staring out at me. This is the sort of place where kids either don’t get found, or their bodies turn up but their murderers never do. I think about how desperate you must be in a town so small that everyone knows everybody else at least to nod to, to put up flyers to remind your neighbours that your child is gone. Pondering, as I remove leaflets and tacks, if my parents bothered with any such thing, or if my father would have considered it advertising the shame I’d caused him by getting “misplaced.” I wonder now, as I occasionally do when I’ve got too much time on my hands, if he ever suspected his own brother.
I think about the lives these sorts of kids—like me—won’t have. Sometimes we get to choose our paths, but families have a lot of influence. Your father’s a doctor or a lawyer or a mechanic, so you become a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or your mother’s Suzy Homemaker and you think you can’t do any better than cooking and breeding and cleaning. Sometimes it’s easier to go into the shrink-wrapping someone prepared earlier—you don’t have to think of a different shape to take on. Or your family is forceful as a Jell-O mould and presses you the way they want. You might not feel able to resist. You might spend your life living out a cookie-cutter version of your parents’ existence, and that’s what you pass on to your own kids. Or maybe you wanted something different and even though you didn’t get the chance to reach for it, you encourage your children to find their own way; do your best to give them wings. Sometimes you get a few years to yourself, then it’s time to become “responsible,” follow in someone’s footsteps and the family business just eats you up.
Sometimes all your choices are just taken away.
Shaking my head to clear the thoughts for a while, I imagine the brightest pinky-purple I can and pull a flyer from the deep pocket of my green hippie skirt. Exactly the colour I’d imagined. Not too purple, though, because even black can be hard to read on a dark background—just purple enough, this, to make the lettering pop.
The Tissot Family Circus!
Ride the Carousel of Light.
Games of chance, skill and strength!
Prizes to win!
See the lions and Tigers and bears!
Watch the death-defying Adelita!
Tilda and her Prancing ponies!
Laugh at the Zany antics of our Clowns!
Come one, come all!
In Pleasance for One Night Only!
TONIGHT!
Follow the lights…
Random capitalisations and so many exclamation marks—who could resist?
I make a few more and pin them in a row. Eye-catching. Carefully pocketing the remaining thumbtacks, I head back to the centre line and continue on my way. Every so often I find another store of some description, produce another poster, pin it up, do that until I’m out of tacks. By then I’ve found the schoolyard, and just in time, kids are pouring out the main door. Small school, but large enough—people in places like this never stop breeding, it’s about the only thing left to do.
I stand outside the fence—I know better than to go in—try to sense the thud beneath my feet, but it feels weaker. Harrumph. The first line of kids sees me, slows down, remembering to be wary of strangers, no doubt. I smile. Hand in my pocket, I pull out one of those pinky-purple sheets, hold it up, turn it around and around so they can see: No strings attached. Then I fold it and fold it and fold it until it’s a tiny square. I make a fist and stuff that neat square into the hole at the top, into the cage of my fingers and palm. I shake it, one, two, three, then put the hand up to my lips, tilt my head, and blow.
A flight of pinky-purple cranes flows into the air, floating over the fence to hover above the gathered crowd—all staring upwards, mouths open, sighs of wonder issuing forth. The cranes flap for a few seconds, then unfurl, and drift gradually down to grabby hands. After the first small finger touches the first piece of paper, I turn and walk away—no need to talk to anyone, and best if I don’t, it makes me harder to remember. We’ll have a full house tonight, with all these kids running home to show their parents the flyers that will be gone by tomorrow morning, turned into dust.
Marching away, I pout—the rhythm of the road is weaker and weaker. I’d fully expected to see a pale face amongst the healthy pink ones; a small form that gave off nothing but cold. A space around them no child would step into though they didn’t know why. Couldn’t see anything, except maybe a fog, a lack of focus on certain angles. I can’t help but feel that little drop of disappointment. No one, not proper dead or otherwise. No use to me.
Yes, the pulse is weak, but the circus lights will draw them, like moths to a flame. It’s the way they’re designed after all. Even if you’re not aware of it, somehow, the lights bring you home. And I think about the man who came for me when I wasn’t quite dead. How I still kicked when he tried to pick me up from the suitcase my uncle had packed me in. How happy he seemed to see me, to realise what I was. How greedy he appeared as he said, “Ah little one, look at you. Wanting to live, so badly.”
And here’s me now, living so badly. I wonder if I look just like him?
•••
By the time I get back to the field, Ichabod’s changed into his Ringmaster’s uniform: black trousers and shiny boots, a red jacket with tails trimmed with gold braid and buttons over a crisp shirt, and a top hat as dark as ebony. White gloves that he somehow manages to keep pristine no matter what—of all the magic I’ve seen, that’s the bit that amazes me the most. He nods at me, tips his hat as he sets off to walk through the avenues of our ephemeral little city, and I take my position on the bench seat again, breathing in the moments of quiet before it all kicks off. Night’s falling and headlights are coming down the road, engines rumbling. There’s the scuff of shoes, the murmur of voices of those who’ve decided to walk, finding the evening air was too good to waste.
A family with four teenaged boys and two small girls arrives first. The parents look quite young, must have started early; school sweethearts. They’re holding hands and I smile without meaning to, though my heart hurts at the sight. Things denied to me often make me ache. The woman catches my eye and smiles back. The man calls, “Who’s Tissot?” without using the French pronunciation, so it comes out a hard “sot.”
“My great-great-great grandmother,” I lie, then gesture for them to move along—not bossy-like, but the same way a wave carries you to the shore, or out to sea. The teenage boys give me a glance, nudging each other and blushing as they follow their parents.
I don’t know who the original Tissot was—by the time I caught the Impresario’s eye all that remained was the name on the wagon (which Ichabod refreshes once a year). I’m not sure the Impresario knew much more than he told me (and Ichabod is a tight-lipped little bastard) and, having found me, he had no intention of engaging in a lengthy apprenticeship. The moments I remember of him were his haste, showing me something once, twice, maybe three times if it was especially complex or I was being especially obtuse, watching with impatience as I demonstrated what I’d learned. Muttering Got it? Yes? Good. Then onto the next lesson.
And as I said, not much meaning given—none at all, really, just the way to do things, how to summon the circus, to find the little lost souls who form the troupe, knowledge of when and if they might be freed. That, at least, has nothing to do with me—if their murderer were to be found then they’d be gone the next time the circus materialised. Once, Ichabod whispered when he’d had too much to drink, one of the fliers had disappeared mid-performance, mid-air. He told me that and the rule that I couldn’t interfere, no matter what I might know or find out or deduce. Our purpose was to provide a home for the darling dead, the unwanted babes, for as long as they might need it. Not to give justice.
Someone needs to be their Impresario—their shepherd, really. Not a ringmaster, no, that’s Ichabod, who reminds me time and again he’s the original and the best. He’s got no intention of relinquishing his role. But the shepherd must find the lost ones, and show the way, feeling the beat beneath the asphalt. And the shepherd needs very specific qualifications: must be in the between, the space that’s neither life nor death. A conduit. Someone who can follow the hollow ways. So, when the Impresario found me—when his shoes and the rhythm of the road led him to where I lay, washed up on that riverbank—he found me mostly dead, but just a little bit alive. Like he once was, and whoever came before him in a long line of the mostly-dead.
And when he discovered me, when he realised what I was…well, all he saw was escape. A replacement. I hated him for a lot of years, but as I grew—and strangely enough, I did grow, dead-alive though I am—I began to understand it. I’ve been doing this for nigh on seventy years and I would give anything to bequeath the mantle. Make someone else the shepherd. I’ve been looking for a new me for at least two-thirds of my half-life. Still, no one. Or at least no one in the right state, or no one who’s been willing or able to say Yes when I asked them. Not yet.
Maybe I was just an idiot. Because when he lifted me out of that suitcase, I—having been thrown in the river and floated, unexpected and Moses-like, downstream—I was very far from home. Maybe it was the rush of oxygen after so little for so long. Maybe it was seeing the light when so many hours had been spent, mostly dead, in the darkness of a bag. Maybe it was sheer desperation. But when he asked if I wanted to go on, to live again, I said Yes. Just like an idiot.
And a deal’s a deal, right, when someone’s pulled you back from being extinguished, even if they didn’t explain the fine print. Because you didn’t ask for it, did you? In my defence, I was only eight, but I probably knew enough about adults by then to know not to trust them.
Though I rambled the streets of Pleasance a good while this afternoon I couldn’t find the place where the pulse beneath my feet led. Frustrating, but it probably meant that the lost one was still moving around, although not by their own volition. Eventually I had to give up, trust that somehow they’d find their way to us, even though we can stay for no more than one night. People might notice us; might notice that in the morning light only a single wagon leaves a town when just hours before there was a whole community of youngsters smiling and laughing and joking. Children with nothing to fear because the worst had already happened to them.
Cars begin to park by the side of the road, then along the dirt track, then people stream through the gate I hitched back earlier so no one else would get splinters. We don’t charge admission, which makes us damned near irresistible. Small family groups, parents and children, some of whose faces I recognise from the schoolyard. Some see me and whisper and point, draw their parents’ attention to the pretty brunette sitting there grand as you please. I smile, clench my fists, then throw them upwards as if they might leave my wrists, open my hands at the last moment and rainbow glitter flies everywhere, catching the light from the circus. The parents laugh and nod—they know it’s a trick, how could it be anything else? No such thing as magic, they’ll whisper to their offspring. The kids know better, but it’s a fight they can’t win. They’ll hang onto the memory of the moment until the day the switch flicks and they become grownups themselves, then they’ll decide Yes, a trick, there’s no such thing as magic.
Soon the field is filled with moving forms, chatter, laughter, oohs and aahs as the fire-eaters weave through the crowd, gradually herding the spectators, did they but know it, along the main avenue and into the Big Top, gripping bags of candy and fatty foods on sticks, things that will harden arteries in short order—although folk will feel strangely hungry in a few hours, as if they’ve eaten nothing at all. I watch until the last of the assembled have disappeared into the tent, and there’s no one left to spend their coins at the booths. The carousel is empty, the music suddenly tinny. Then the heads of the Tissot Family Circus troupe turn as one towards me, seeking permission. I nod and they drift like spiderwebs towards the entrance to the Big Top. I wait a moment, then clamber down from my post, intent on taking in the show with the rest of them.
The moment, however, my feet hit the grass, I sense it. The thud and beat of the signal. Close by, so close by. Almost like someone’s drumming their heels on the ground. I take a tentative step forward, feel it weaken, then right, then left—that’s it. Left, left, lefter.
Towards the cars parked on the dirt road. Past the trucks. To the only sedan, newer, well-kept, clean and polished. The rhythm is like an earthquake here, like I can barely keep my balance though I know I’m the only one who’s being thrown about by the tremors. But there’s no sound. No noise of heels beating against the floor of the trunk. I just know it’s there.
Finger to the lock, I press hard, breathe a single word, and the lid flies open.
A small body, a blonde girl, maybe six. Eyes open and glazed, unmoving, pink dress, one sneaker. Two fingers broken. Mostly dead; so much mostly dead. But there’s a spark and a thud I can hear, so faint, so faint. I touch her face—cold! Stiff and still—and I call quietly. Call her to come back, just a little, just a smidge. And the world’s not around me anymore, the field is gone, and I feel more than see this tiny person standing in a dim corridor, pausing, uncertain, half-turning towards my voice.
And all I can feel is that greed—the hunger to be free—and I think that when she’s here, when she’s looking up at me with trust and hope, then I will ask her if she wants to go on, to live again, and maybe, just maybe she’ll say Yes, just like the idiot I was. Just maybe she’ll take my place and I’ll get to sleep once and for all.
And she’s almost turned around in the long dark tunnel, she’s almost facing me, her feet might begin to move in the right direction and I might just put out a hand to guide her, draw her on, encourage her…
And I can’t.
Can’t say the words I want.
Instead I whisper No. Go back. It’ll be okay.
And I watch as she walks towards actual death, true death, and I feel the rhythm of the road fading beneath my feet until there’s nothing left, not the slightest tingle. And then she’s gone from the tunnel, steps through the brightness at the other end, and I close my eyes for long seconds.
When I open them, I’m in the field, in the world, her wispy little ghost beside me. Properly dead, nothing that might be fooled into being the next shepherd, the Impresario. But a something, a someone who could at least have a better time of it with the Tissot Family Circus, for a while, or forever.
I look at the car—the vehicle someone chose to drive here while this child lay in the darkness like forgotten luggage—and I know that I can’t interfere. But, oh, I look into the trunk, at the physical body lying there unmoving. I know that I come from a long line of non-interfering Impresarios. I can’t meddle. But I can fail to close the lid. I can set a few fairy lights, blue and spectral to highlight the open maw, something to draw the attention. Who knows? The little one’s time with us might be short. Might be very long. Who knows?
I sigh, offer my hand, and say, “Do you like carousels?”
