The Magpye: Circus by CW Lynch Read Free Book Online

one ever came looking for trouble. But they were
wrong. One day, trouble did come to the circus.
    It had been a night like any
other. The last of the audience had drifted away, the lights from
their cars lost in the ever present toxic glow of the distant city,
their laughter no longer echoing. Props and equipment were checked
and put away, money was counted and divided. Exhausted, the circus
folk headed to their caravans for a few precious hours of sleep
before another early start and day of preparation. Able had
finished his work and was heading back to the caravan that he
shared his with mother, hopeful for some hot food before bed, when
he heard it.
    A gunshot.
    Gunshots were not uncommon, of
course. Although he would never admit it, Malcolm practised from
time to time, and some of the other men hunted for rabbits and the
like. Circus life was tough life. Meat was meat, and meat was for
the pot. That's what Able's mother had said. Another memory,
another fragment. That was the curse of being the Magpye. All these
ghosts, all these memories; he could remember his mother's thoughts
on meat and a hundred other trivial things but not, for even a
moment, her face or her laugh or the feel of her hand in his as a
small boy. The dead were so much flotsam, drifting in the foam,
ruined by the river. Face down his mother's corpse rushed by,
leaving only thoughts of fire. And gunshots.
    The gunshot had been unlike any
he had heard in the circus before. Too low and loud to one of
Malcolm's trick pistols, but not one of the hunters' shotguns
either. Able's body had tensed the moment he had heard it. A
gunshot, in the circus. A stranger with a gun.
    He'd run towards the sound,
nimbly avoiding boxes, hopping over ropes. His mind held a perfect
map of the circus, every last inch of it. He could run through it
blind-folded. He had, from time to time. In the dead dark of the
circus he stopped, and listened to the night air. Waited. A second
gunshot came soon enough. Then another. Then another. And soon the
whole circus was full of gunshots and screaming.
    He remembered Dorothy, in his
nightdress, shotgun cradled in his huge arm, calling out. Dorothy
wasn't afraid of anyone. He remembered Magda screaming, looking for
her husband, already lost. He remembered a clown, nameless to him
now, as the first person he had seen die. A clown, half in his
make-up and half out, clutching his stomach, trying to stop his
intestines from spilling out into his wide-waisted clown's
trousers. He'd fallen at Able's feet, gasped his last onto the dewy
grass. More gunshots, more screaming.
    Able remembered running back
towards his own caravan, looking for his mother. This wasn't some
kids come back looking for a little trouble, or some pickpocket who
thought the circus was fair game. This was something else,
something unreal. He remembered running into Malcolm, naked except
for his boxer shorts, boots, and a cowboy hat. He was smiling. "Got
three of them kid, three of them already." He hadn't see Malcolm
again after that until he was licking his blood off the side of a
burnt out caravan, months later, hoping that Malcolm's ghost was
wearing trousers.
    He remembered the shapes the
shadows made as they leapt and danced around him. He remembered the
red light of fires and the growing heat. Fires all around him,
caravan after caravan going up. An explosion, on the other side of
the big top, and cheering. They had cheered, he had remembered
that. People running everywhere, so much screaming. More
gunshots.
    Able remembered his mother's
caravan and his relief that it was still standing. He remembered
his mother, silhouetted in the doorway. No face, no smile, no eyes
for him to remember, just a blurry shape yelling at him to go to
Marv's old caravan. Marv had boarded it up when he'd left, put
three padlocks on the door. Able had a way in though, a trick panel
in the floor of the caravan that Marissa had shown him when they
were just kids. Marissa said her dad had told her