Beautiful Freaks (14 page)

“Eat up, the cabaret starts at midnight.”

“Cabaret?”

“Well sort of.” Hugh’s lips tw
isted as if thinking.
“It’s not quite
like
any cabaret act you’ve ever seen
before
.”

“I haven’t … I mean, I haven’t been to any cabaret before.”

“Oh, of course not.” Hugh suddenly looked serious. “Well, I might have just spoilt cabaret for the rest of your life, dear
boy
. Once you’ve visited The Palace of Beautiful Freaks, no other cabaret in the world is going to quite live up to it.
”

*

Although supper was a tempting affair, the combination of overindulgence earlier that evening, and excitement, meant that Kaspian barely picked at the platters in front of him. It seemed that Hugh had little appetite for food either, and so platters came and went untouched as if supper were merely part of the ritual.

As the last platter was removed, the heavy chime of a grandfather clock spread through the room, starting a small flutter of movement as men headed towards the far end of the room. Hugh stood to join them and Kaspian followed, walking towards an entrance that he had not previously noticed. It had been concealed with heavy-black velvet curtains. Two women dressed in Greek style robes, held them back on either side. The fabric of their dresses was so light that it left little to the imagination. Their faces, however, were kept a complete mystery as one wore the tragic mask of Melpomene and the other the smile of Thalia. Kaspian found the smooth white porcelain of their masks eerie. He shuddered as he passed, just as if one of them had breathed a cold, deathlike breath onto the back of his neck.

Once on the ‘other side’, it was difficult to orientate yourself. Everything about the room told you it was a theatre, but it was unlike any theatre Kaspian had ever visited. Low-lit lamps caused the scarlet interior to throb with light and the gold gilding to shimmer with distorted stars. He scanned the perimeter of the room, taking in the spectacle he’d entered. The best he could deduce was that the room was hexagonal and each of the seven remaining walls appeared to have its own curtain-concealed window, or maybe a stage.

In the centre of the chamber, three rows of theatre chairs were arranged in an arc. Most of the twenty or so seats were already filled but two on the front row had been reserved for Hugh and his companion. The unexpected sound of metal beneath his feet caused Kaspian to look at the floor and note that the chairs were attached to a large circular plate, as if it might revolve and send the spectators on a merry-go-round journey. An idea that took more substance when he saw that a large lever was set into the plate. The pull-handle was nestled in between two chairs in the front row.

Goosebumps broke out over Kaspian’s skin. He looked around with the same wonderment a child shows in a toyshop, and as his eyes fell on the ceiling, he could conceal it no longer,

“It’s totally sublime,” he whispered to no one in particular.

Hugh followed Kaspian’s gaze towards the ceiling. “It’s delicious isn’t it?”

The whole ceiling was painted with the image of one single rose bloom, as scarlet as the walls. It was an endless whorl of petals, of dark inviting crevices and smooth flat petals. The artist had painted drops of dew so lifelike that Kaspian imagined them getting heavy with gravity and falling onto the audience below. Kaspian blushed at the thoughts that the image brought to his mind, and he felt as if he were being initiated into some great secret of manhood.

A dispute at the door pulled his attention away from the ceiling. A gentleman, clearly worse for drink, was demanding entrance to the theatre but it was already full. Within seconds, the manageress arrived, ordering the curtains to be pulled and the door to be closed. Even though the glimpse of her had been br
ief, Kaspian recognised her immediately. With her black dress, auburn
ringlets,
and monocle hanging from her neck
,
there could be no doubt.
His heart pounded and a hundred questions hit him all at once.

Who is she? What was she doing here? Why is she haunting me?

Hugh sat
low
in his chair,
with
one leg slouched o
ut into the aisle. With
a smile
he
lit
a cigarette and offered it over. Kaspian
declined it with a shake of the head and a small wave of the hand.
He could hardly breathe already.

“Enjoy the show,
my friend!
” Hugh whispered as the curtain pulled back to reveal a
glass-fronted
chamber
.

Inside, a
white
swirling
mist
obscured the contents
. Where it hit the glass, ice crystals laced to form the letters of
a name – ALICIA. Almost as quick as it formed, it faded.
The eddies
of fog cleared to reveal a mountain scene. Not the usual theatre flats, but a set that looked as if it were made from real rock and snow. In the foreground, a tree framed the scene. Stripped of its leaves and laced with frost, its branches hung with long delicate, but deadly, icicles. Kaspian guessed they must be made of glass – but they looked so real he could almost see the blue-coldness radiate off of them and several of the larger ones appeared to drip melt-water.

If all of this was not spectacular enough, centre stage laid a woman on a grey, velvet chaise longue. She was dressed in wisps of fabric that looked as unsubstantial as cobwebs held together by frost, and h
er hair was so blonde
as
to be almost white.
P
earls and crystals
had been
threaded
through her curls
so that she sparkled like freshly
exhaled
frost.

Kaspian couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t truly sleeping. Her eyes were closed and her arm fell languorously to her side so that it rested on the head of a pale canine that looked suspiciously like a wolf. Something primitive and raw ran through Kaspian’s instincts. The creature lay with its heavy head between its paws, giving a false impression of being at rest, but Kaspian knew it wasn’t. It was waiting. Protecting.

The unpleasant taste of blood filled Kaspian’s mouth. Until this point he had failed to notice he’d been chewing the flesh of his finger, a habit he’d had since boyhood, and which he thought he had left behind. He willed his hand onto his knee, but the nervous tension displaced and he found his hand was barely able to hold his tapping leg.

From somewhere in the room
,
Beethoven’s
Für Elise
played. Slowly, Alicia rose to stand en pointe on her ribbon-bound feet. The current of music swept her away and she
dance
d
. She was accomplished
; her body moved like silk. But as she danced, she grew more and more ghost-like. R
epeatedly she moved adagi
o,
reaching out for a lost, imagined
love.
T
he madness of her grief grew,
and it was as if she were in danger of being caught
in
a never-
endi
ng cycle of fouette en tournant. As she span, the wolf began to howl and snow began to fall. Everything about it was so
impossibly sad
that
Kaspian thought
he might start to scream and never stop.

All at once Alicia stopped turning and the wolf fell silent. There was a terrible moment of stillness
;
the kind that is charged with the anticipation of a coming horror.

Amongst all the pure, desolate white, a crimson rose began to bloom over the space of Alicia’s heart. As the colour seeped through the delicate fabric of her dress, she looked down on it with an almost childlike curiosity. The blood transferred from the fabric to her hand and she was held captive by the sight of it. It reminded Kaspian of a scene he’d once seen in the play,
Macbeth
. Slowly, very slowly, she raised her eyes to look out on the audience.

They met with Kaspian’s.

Her eyes were deep wells of sorrow, and in that moment he felt all the pain and joy of her heart in one vital rush.  Her eyes fluttered. The spell between them broke and she fell onto the velvet chaise. She clutched her left hand to her breast and the right hand trailed the floor with the weight of a large, fierce looking icicle;
its tip
was
stained with blood.

T
he window
misted
again
and her name
, “Alicia,”
spread
out across the glass to triumphant applause. The heavy
red
velvet curtains swished closed. All around
him
the men w
ere on
their
feet calling out, “
Bravo! Bravo, Alicia!”

Kaspian
sat, his breath shuddering in his lungs, his hands trembling.
“Is she dead? Is she really dead?” he asked Hugh, looking at him out the corner of his eye.

Hugh used no words to reply, he just offered Kaspian a smile that told him to believe whatever he wanted to believe. Kaspian
had never felt so entirely alive. It was a feeling he would have given his whole fortune for.

Once all the men
had return to their seats
, the fellow
sat
nearest
to
the
handle pulled it with a good-humoured
shout of, ‘Geronimo!’ and sent the audience on a wild,
spinning journey. They came to an abrupt halt in front of the stage
directly
opposite Alicia’s.

Hugh turned to Kaspian, who was still lost in a strange new place somewhere between desire and pain. A smile crept across his face as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a silver hipflask.

“Medicinal purposes,” he whispered handing the flask to Kaspian. “I know exactly how you’re feeling. Enjoy it – you’ll never feel it in quite the same way again.”

Kaspian raised the flask to his lips, smelt the warm spices of brandy and filled his mouth with the burning fire.

With the parting of the heavy curtains, he found himself dazzled by a great shaft of low sunlight. It was so bright that his hand shot to his eyes to protect himself from the glare. By the time his eyes had adjusted, the leaves which were pressed against the glass in the formation of a name, began to
fall, letter by letter: SYLVANI
A.

Behind the glass was a perfect woodland glen, complete with small, wild rabbits nibbling at wild flowers and chasing each other between the ferns. Toadstools littered the leaf-strewn floor, and somehow the last remaining leaves on the tree quivered as if blown by a light wind. This time there was no doubt in his mind that everything he saw was real, including the sunlight.

In the middle of the setting
sat Sylvani
a. In her arms she held a harp. Kaspian blushed as he looked at her
,
for she was mostly naked except for the garland of flowers and leaves
that
covered her modesty. On her ankles she wore anklets of small gold bells
,
which trembled out a tiny
,
timorous sound. Her hair was the colour of freshly fallen chestnuts and fell in curls around her pretty
,
elfin
face.

Sylvani
a’s fingers
pluck
ed
at the strings of the harp with a delicate melody, like a lullaby
. It was so s
oft and soporific that Kaspian felt his eyes heavy with mellow sleep
,
and for a moment he must have dropped off because when he opened his eyes the harp had gone and she stood with her back to them. Her head was turned slightly over her shoulder, her arm extended outwards. A pair of small
,
pretty, blue
birds fluttered down from their hiding place and landed on her arm.

Once again the silence fell, and knowing this time that something awful was sure to happen, Kaspian felt the beat of his heart accelerate. Imagining all kinds of horrors and terrors that might befall the girl, his blood pounded, his breath became shallow, his pupils dilated. Waiting. Waiting … waiting.

Then an eruption of scarlet hit against the glass and he thought that his heart might explode.

The glass box was almost too small to contain her glorious red butterfly-wings. They fluttered and trembled in the sunlight, being at once transparent and opaque, like the capturing of a rainbow in a prism.

Kaspian let out a shocked gasp and an incredulous, “No!”
He
instructed
his eyes search for the straps or ties that must surely fix
the wings to the girls back
.