Pilo Traveling Show (Pilo Family Circus #2)

21. ABOVE

Gonko paced back and forth through the campsite where the remains of his secret show stood like grave markers. The other clowns watched him pace from safely out of kick range. Goshy stood by the remains of the baby Goshy JJ had killed, the shovel blade still wedged in its head. "I just couldn't stop Jamie from killing it," JJ said. "He was, like, possessed by lust for blood."

A clown tear of fluorescent green dripped down Goshy's cheek and bounced around where it fell. His belly gurgled with sad hunger.

"Something's up I tell you," Gonko raged. "It's a mighty bad time to be AWOL with Kurt on the hunt. We better be on our toes when we get back."

"We should maybe go back now, boss?" said Rufshod. "Sneak back, check it out?"

"Maybe we oughta. Bury all this gear first. C'mon, you sad pack of jizz tissues, dig!" Then a ripping sound rent the air. The clown heads all slowly turned, just as the rotating clown-head game in Sideshow Alley was now turning for the last few times. Their mouths all opened wide enough for ping pong balls. Then a dozen large shapes, followed by twice as many small ones, burst out into the afternoon and looked about in shock and confusion. Gonko alone knew what he saw, but he was too stunned to do more than stare. In that instant, these things from beneath the Funhouse would know all about the secret traveling show.

However, that looked to be the least of their troubles. A sizzling noise arose, as the entities howled in pain, staggered, and groped blindly in the morning sun.

Millions of consumed souls burst from each of them in small explosions of white light, fading from visibility as they soared skywards. The entities' outlines wavered to flickering, fast-bending lines as they twisted and folded to wretched, writhing shapes.

All their works and deformities, all the things their knowledge and willpower had held together, now bent, withered, and broke apart just as they did. Doopy said, "Gee, golly, I don't feel so good . . . it kinda sorta hurts, guys." His skin began to melt and slide from his face. His ears and eyes sucked back into his skull and smoke gushed out the gaps. Goshy's kettle scream went full blast as his skin turned to bubbling liquid, slipped from the fat and muscle beneath. "Mr. Bigbad's comin', Gonko. It ain't no fair, I wanted to taste the sky pretties, Gonko, I wanted to be a super duper clown . . ." Gonko, JJ, and Rufshod fell to their knees, clutching their throats. Their bodies lurched and quivered on the grass. There was a pop and crack as bones broke. Ooze and sludge poured from ruptures in Gonko's skin. It was over, he was over, and in that moment he knew that, somehow, his own scheming had brought things to this. As had the fortuneteller. One furious surge of anger held him together longer than the others. His quivering bones, in a melting pile of flesh, shuddered and shivered, tried to pull themselves back together, the white gloved hands reaching in vain to scoop liquid flesh back about the bones. Then Gonko joined his fellow clowns and lay inert. Their clothes—like a deflated balloon's skin—spread across the grass.

Below, as the unfortunate marines screamed and fired through their nightmare, all that was the showgrounds began to crumble. Great swaths of nothing were torn into the place's fabric. The tunnel collapsed, trapping and dooming those inside. They were people who at least had this much: they had understood and accepted that not every heroic deed is known and praised by those rescued, and that one day they may die in war.

Like the tents below, the traveling show's campsite tents deflated and faded in sunlight that seemed, just now, to pour down a little more brightly. The air filled with birdsong. Soon, all that remained of the clowns was the scuff marks their shoes had made in the dirt, and the memories left in three people's heads, where the memories would be forced by a skeptical world to remain.

The tenuous links holding the circus and its nether world to the world we know buckled and snapped at last, were closed off. The realities split and parted, and the foreign thing dropped away like a parasite forced by death to finally release its fangs.

•

The three of them—Jodi, Dean, and Jamie—surfaced not knowing that the marines would not survive, nor how close the timing of their escape through the lift had been; a few minutes longer, and they too would have been trapped. About them the city bustled through its usual throes of morning. It was noisy, yet somehow seemed eerily quiet. Angry men in hard hats chased them off the construction site.

They looked around like strangers to the world, seeing it all through new eyes and, each in their own way, realizing that the normality around them was a lie.

Dean took from his pocket a little velvet bag that was half full. "So this is what you did last time," he said to Jamie. "You made yourself forget. How about now?"

They all stared at the bag. Jamie didn't know whether he wanted to forget or not. But as they stared, the bag seemed to shrink and lose color until it was gone altogether. They looked at each other, and Jamie broke a stunned silence. "I think that means it worked. Where I set up the gates, at the tunnel . . . the big monsters came up here and died. I think it worked!"

Jodi's veil faded to nothing. So did the rest of her clothes, as did Dean's—clothes the carnies had made for them. Only Jamie remained dressed in his ill-fitting marine outfit, which he quickly stripped off. They sat on the park bench naked and laughing. Wolf whistles and cheers fired at them from passing cars. "It worked!" Dean screamed, jumping atop a parked car. "How long were we gone?"

"Not much more than a week," Jamie said.

"A week! Man, we may not even have lost our jobs." Dean whooped at the sky, blew kisses to a passing police car, which was, luckily, otherwise occupied.

Still laughing, they ran most of the way back to the apartment, broke out all the liquor they could find, and celebrated. Their old lives, or something resembling them closely enough, stretched out ahead in their minds. A few bad memories and a few bad dreams, it seemed to them then, was not too high a price to pay.