Carnival of Shadows (33 page)

The child returned the card, facedown, and then Slate held the pack against his forehead for just a second.

He then tossed that pack of cards out into the audience. Again, hands snatched upward and retrieved them. Every single one of them was the seven of spades. Another round of applause.

Slate then asked for a volunteer. Unsurprisingly to Travis, Laura McCaffrey hurried on up to the stage. The crowd applauded her.

Travis could see Danny right there, beaming from ear to ear. The man was proud of his sister in every way possible, and for a moment Travis felt… felt what? He did not know, and he put such thoughts out of his mind and watched as Slate presented his next trick.

“We have never met, have we?” Slate asked Laura McCaffrey.

“No, sir.”

“Your name, my dear?”

“Laura. Laura McCaffrey.”

“Good evening, Laura. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” she said. She gave a small curtsy.

“I wondered if you would be so good as to help with me with my next presentation.”

“Ooh, yes please,” she said, and she laughed nervously. She glanced down at her brother, gave him a little wave. Danny McCaffrey waved back. It was then that she made eye contact with Travis. She did not raise her hand to acknowledge him, but she looked at him so directly, so pointedly, that Travis was almost stunned. It was only as she turned her attention back to Mr. Slate that Travis realized he had stopped breathing.

Slate produced a blindfold from his back pocket, another set of cards from the table.

He held up the blindfold, had Laura inspect it, cover her eyes with it, and pronounce that she could see nothing through it at all.

“Very good,” Slate said. “Now, if you don’t mind…”

He turned her away from him, and then he tied the blindfold, ensuring that it was not too tight, and yet she could still see nothing.

Laura held her hands out and waved them a little. “Where am I?” she said, and the audience laughed.

“We will need complete silence,” Slate said. “
Complete
silence.”

Laura stood there.

Slate took a pack of cards from the small table and showed them to the audience.

“Ordinary cards,” he said. “Regular cards.” He handed them to a man standing near the stage so he could inspect them. The man did so and returned them forthwith. Slate put them back on the table.

Slate turned to Laura. “Now, my dear, this is very simple. I too will apply a blindfold. I will then place my right hand on the top of your head. I will then pick a card and show it to the audience. I will not see it, and nor will you, of course. You will then tell them what card I am holding up.”

There was a moment’s hesitancy, and then Laura said, “But I
won’t
see it, will I? I have this blindfold on.”

A murmur of uneasy laughter threaded its way from those near the stage and out into the audience.

For some reason, Travis felt a knot of concern in his gut. Butterflies. That was the sensation. Like when he was a child and he knew his father had been drinking. Like the world was made of eggshells.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Slate said, his voice soothing, almost avuncular. “Just tell me the first card that comes to mind when I say the word
Now
. You understand?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Very good. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, I need
complete
silence.”

Slate set the table to his left and slightly behind him. He produced a second blindfold and applied it. He felt for the edge of the table, the cards he’d positioned there, and then he raised his right hand and placed it on Laura McCaffrey’s head.

Did Travis see her flinch? Did that just happen?

Slate took the first card and held it aloft.

It was the five of hearts.

Even if his own blindfold was superficially applied, even if the fabric was sufficiently transparent for him to see the card he had taken, there was no way Laura McCaffrey would know what he was holding. Unless…

“Now,” Slate said.

Laura flinched again. Travis felt sure of it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know which card it is.”

Sounds from the audience.

“The first thing that comes to mind, Laura,” Slate said, his voice gentle, almost persuasive.

“Hearts,” she said, the word snapped from her lips like a threat.

A collective
Oooh
among the audience.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s hearts.”

Slate dropped the card to the stage.

“We try again,” he said, and he took another card and held it up for the audience to see.

The nine of clubs.

“Now,” he said.

“Nine,” Laura said. “Of spades?”

The sound from the audience was one of slight disappointment. Close, but no cigar.

“Don’t question what you see,” Slate said. “The first thing that comes to mind, okay?”

“Okay,” Laura said, and then she added, “I think I need to pee.”

There was an unsteady laughter from some in the audience.

Travis looked at Danny McCaffrey. The smile was gone. He looked simply concerned.

Slate took a third card, held it up.

The eight of hearts.

“Now,” he said.

“Eight,” Laura said. “Hearts.”

The audience started to clap.

“Silence!” Slate said.

He dropped the eight of hearts and took another card.

The four of spades.

“Now,” he said.

“Four of spades,” she said.

There was no applause, just a strange uneasiness that emanated from the stage and spread out among the spectators.

Slate took another card.

The seven of clubs.

“Now,” he said, this time his voice barely a whisper.

“The seven of clubs,” Laura said.

Slate dropped the card.

Another one, and yet another, each time Laura McCaffrey giving the correct number, the correct suit, each time Slate allowing the card to fall to the stage at his feet.

And then they were done and Slate took off his own blindfold, also that of Laura, and they stood there together, Slate holding her hand in his, she smiling, looking somehow proud of herself even though she seemed not to understand what had happened, and Slate’s face was varnished with sweat, and his eyes seemed to look back at the audience from some place that was not the tent, was not that small stage, was not some field in Seneca Falls, Kansas.

Something had happened here. Travis had watched the entire thing, and he could not even begin to explain how Slate had done this.

Akiko Mimasuya appeared to the left of the stage. She held a huge bouquet of flowers, those same white flowers that Travis had seen appear from Slate’s hands.

Slate took the flowers from Akiko, presented them with a flourish to Laura, and then he took her hand and assisted her as she stepped down from the stage.

Danny grabbed her like he’d believed she would wander off alone if left unattended, and Laura McCaffrey just looked back at him with a sort of distant vacancy. She looked exhausted. She looked utterly exhausted.

The crowd were still applauding and whistling. Whatever had happened here, it had impressed them greatly.

Travis, however, was very definitely unsettled. He elbowed his way as quickly as he could through the throng and found the exit. Then he stepped out into the cool night air and took several deep breaths.

“He’s good, wouldn’t you say?”

Travis turned.

Doyle stood there, a sly smile on his face.

“But it’s just a trick, of course, Agent Travis,” Doyle replied. “Nothing more nor less than a trick.” He touched the brim of his hat with the head of his cane, and then he walked away into the shadows.

28

Travis headed for his car. Still people thronged toward the carnival, chattering, laughing, excited.

It was like fighting against an incoming tide, and—unable to resist—Travis felt himself being turned back the way he’d come. He went with it, still disoriented, still trying to address his own reaction to what he had seen. Somehow, some way, Slate had managed to get Laura McCaffrey to
see
the cards—cards that even Slate had not been able to see. At least that was the appearance of what had happened. Doyle had said it was a trick. But what kind of trick was this?

Back toward the main marquee the crowd went, and Travis found himself at the doorway once more, this time amid a crowd of excited children.

“See the magnificent Bellanca brothers!” Chester Greene was shouting. “See the magnificent Bellanca brothers!”

Travis searched for money, but before he had a chance to pay the entry fee, he was inside the tent. The stage was still there, but all signs of Slate’s presentation had gone. The vast majority of those in attendance were children, and Travis found himself at the rear of the marquee with a handful of adults.

The Bellancas appeared, all of them dressed identically, their faces white, their costumes striped in black-and-white vertical lines, and they began by tumbling and gamboling and catching one another and holding each other aloft and then letting go in ways that drew gasps of surprise and wonder from the audience.

Travis found himself barely able to watch at one point—one of them, held vertically aloft by the linked hands of another two, and then a fourth and a fifth climbing higher and higher until there was a black-and-white human column that turned and turned, faster and faster, the two on the ground growing ever quicker as they spun. Those above held their arms out to their sides, and Travis watched as those black-and-white stripes blurred into an indistinct gray, faster and faster and faster.

And then Akiko Mimasuya appeared, and with half a dozen swift steps, she had scaled the human column. She was upside down at the very pinnacle, and then her feet were held, and she was spinning also, but horizontally, her arms out to her sides, colored scarves unfurling from her fingers. Still the column turned ever quicker, and with the bursts of color at the top, it was like watching some kind of human firework display. It was all Travis could do to keep his mouth closed. It wasn’t until he experienced a fainting sensation that he realized he was once again holding his breath.

And then the column was slowing, and Akiko came down, climbing gracefully, like some sort of spider, and lay on the ground.

The brothers were around her, and they seemed to be pushing her with their feet.

Akiko responded by folding in her elbows, her knees, tucking her head down, and then it seemed as if she was curled into a ball, almost fetal, and one of the brothers lifted her and put her on his shoulder. Like Atlas bearing the weight of the world, save there seemed to be no weight in her at all. She stayed there—immobile—and then the brothers were each bowing their backs, leaning forward and making a circle. They stood with their feet apart, each the same height, and with their arms raised upward and then crooked so each held the elbows of the one adjacent, they created what could only be described as a fence, and within that fence of upright arms, Akiko was contained. She started to roll then, head over heels, across the bowed backs of the Bellanca brothers, her sideways fall prevented by their arms. Again, a strange and surreal thing to witness, for it became almost
un
human, like something that defied the very nature of human physicality. Suddenly, Akiko seemed to unfold like a flower, and she was up on her hands and feet, running around the narrow circle like some kind of caged feline thing, and then she was on her feet, and she seemed almost to fly across those bowed backs, her feet barely touching them, again the multicolored scarves billowing from her hands.

The children were utterly captivated, and—looking sideways—the adults each held that same expression of disbelief.

Whoever these people were, they were just unbelievably good at what they were doing. Akiko Mimasuya then appeared to fold up like human origami, and wherever she stepped, wherever she extended a leg, wherever some means was required to prevent her falling or tumbling to the ground, there was an arm or a hand there to stop her in the precise moment it was required.

And then the brothers were down on their knees, again forming a circle, their foreheads to the ground, Akiko in the middle of them, lying on her side with her arms over her head, her knees tucked up into her chest.

Travis was uncertain as to whether there had been music previously, but in that moment, he became aware of music. Very aware indeed. It was Oriental, no doubt, but there was something altogether hypnotic about the specific intonation, perhaps the rhythm, the sequence of notes and chords that were being played. He watched in silence, almost unable to move, as Akiko performed a dance within that circle of prostrate men. Akiko Mimasuya was a green shoot emerging from frozen ground, a flower opening in spring, a bird taking flight, a preening swan, a slender tree bowing deferentially before the might of the wind. She was…

Travis was enchanted, transfixed, staring in wonder, unable to blink, unable to avert his gaze or consider any thought at all but for that which was happening in front of his very eyes.

Akiko Mimasuya ceased to belong to any realm of physicality or tangibility that he understood. Akiko Mimasuya became something other than a delicate and laconic Japanese woman; she was not the daughter of people killed in the Pacific conflict; she did not belong to the Carnival Diablo; she did not serve tea or smile politely or watch Michael Travis with an air of distance and a lack of comprehension. She was someone else entirely. She was some
thing
else entirely. Travis felt his misconceptions and preconceptions slip away unchallenged. He wanted to speak to her. He wanted to ask her… Ask her what? He did not even know what he would say if she gave him a moment to open his mouth.

And then her dance was complete, and once more she folded down into nothing, and the Bellanca brothers lifted her between them and carried her away and out of the marquee as if she weighed nothing at all.

The audience erupted in applause, and the children were all dancing themselves, trying to copy what they had seen.

Doyle appeared then, and the children fell silent. He held his cane aloft, and he waved it back and forth above the host of bright and eager upturned faces.

“The Thin Man is coming,” Doyle said. “Go now! Run, children! Go get your folks! Tell them the Thin Man is coming!”

There were squeals of excitement, and the children went in all directions, bursting out through the doorway of the marquee in a rush of noise and uncontainable energy.

Travis was left there at the back, alone, he believed, though he seemed unable to turn either left or right to determine whether there were other adults still present.

Doyle looked at him.

“Enjoying the show, Agent Travis?” he asked, and then he smiled, once more touching the brim of his hat with the head of his cane, and— without waiting for a response—he was gone.

Travis wanted to leave but could not. He needed some air. He wanted to see the sky, to feel his feet on solid ground. The performance had impressed him, no question about it, but it had also unsettled him, just as had been the case with Slate and Laura McCaffrey. His parameters were moving. That was the only way he could describe it. His understanding of what human beings were capable of was somehow shifting. There were things here that he was struggling to understand, struggling to explain, and he did not like it. This flew in the face of things that he
knew
to be possible, things he knew to be impossible, and though there had to be a rational and understandable explanation, he was damned if he could see it.

He looked toward the doorway, knew that any attempt to escape would see him trampled underfoot by the incoming flood of people. He stayed back at the side of the marquee, close enough to the stage to see what was happening yet sufficiently shrouded in shadow so as not to draw attention to himself. The marquee filled up quickly, and there were children running back and forth between the legs of the adults. They’d heard the Thin Man was coming, and the Thin Man was evidently someone they wished to see. This was Oscar Haynes, born and raised in Chicago, a man who had walked around the edges of that world within which Travis himself had been involved so many times, the world of hoodlums and gangsters and racketeers and bootleggers.

The music began. The crowd fell silent. Every once in a while a child erupted in laughter and an adult was heard to
Ssshhh
them. The music was ponderous and dramatic, and when Oscar Haynes appeared on the stage there was a collective gasp of something that fell between wonder and horror.

Oscar Haynes was a walking skeleton. His clothing was skintight, and on it was painted the human frame, seemingly every bone and joint, and his face was painted white, his eyes heavily shadowed, and on his
skull
he wore a top hat, from the band a festoon of short and brightly colored feathers. He moved awkwardly, like some sort of zombie, and the children screamed excitedly, both terrified and transfixed. The effect was startling to say the least, and Travis stepped forward to better see what Oscar Haynes was going to do.

This was no two-bit hustle for dimes and quarters. Everything Travis had seen thus far was remarkable in its own way. Laura McCaffrey, Danny, Sheriff Rourke—all those who had commented on the carnival, that it had to be seen, that it was impressive and special—had been right. Travis was without words. He really was without words.

But the Thin Man was something different. This was a spectacle that possessed a sense of the grim and macabre, and yet the children did not seem afraid.

Haynes stood for a while in silence, and then—as that same silence filled the marquee—another record was placed on the gramophone. This was lighter altogether, even playful—just a simple piano melody accompanied by a few strings. It changed the mood in the tent, and the skeleton on the stage became almost cartoonlike. Due to the skintight nature of Haynes’s costume, it was impossible to see how he could conceal anything, but suddenly his hands were full of flower petals. He tossed them into the audience, and a great red cloud hovered over the heads of the spectators for a second. Hands reached to snatch them from the air, but—even as fingers touched them—they were gone.

A gasp of amazement filled the air.

Haynes held his stomach and mimed laughter.

Again, Travis experienced that rush of awkwardness, as if his own skin could not contain him. It was an illusion, no doubt about it, but how had Haynes created that illusion? Was this some kind of mass hypnotism? It could not have been, for there was no such thing. Surely it was not possible to make everyone see the same thing at the same time? Travis did not have a moment to question it further. Haynes was at the edge of the stage, within arm’s reach of those at the front of the crowd. He started to turn then, just around and around, and as he turned, he appeared to shrink down toward the ground. Faster and faster he went, and with each revolution, he grew smaller and smaller, somehow contracting his limbs until he was little more than three feet tall, and yet he was entirely proportioned, and he did not seem to have bent his legs, and he could not have been kneeling, for Travis could see the man’s feet. Oscar Haynes was the same height as Travis, perhaps taller, and then he was half that height, and still turning, turning, growing in height again, yet again, until he was once again as tall as he’d been when he’d begun.

Haynes slowed to a halt, and as he stopped, Travis could see that he held three or four scarlet balls in each hand, each of them the same size, no bigger than a golf ball. Where had they come from? How had he created the appearance of shrinking in size, and—even as he returned to his normal height—obtained six or eight red balls?

Haynes started to juggle those balls, and Travis watched, his eyes wide, as those balls flew ever faster and higher. There were six or eight and then there were ten, then twelve, and then it was as if there was a constant stream of scarlet red balls flowing from one hand to the other in an uninterrupted sequence. Again a gasp of wonder and disbelief issued from the gathering, and Travis stepped forward again to see more closely what was before him. His mind was fighting what was in front of his eyes, and yet he knew this was no hallucination, no delusion. This
was
an illusion—it
had
to be—but it was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

And then the balls were disappearing, seemingly being absorbed into Haynes’s hands, for there was an endless stream of them, and then they seemed to be intermittent, and then Travis believed there were few enough of them for him to count, and then there was four, then two, then none.

The balls were gone—every single one of them—and there was no place into which they could have possibly vanished.

The crowd erupted into spontaneous cheers and clapping and whistling. The sound was close to deafening.

Travis clapped with them, involuntarily perhaps, for his mind was elsewhere, still trying to fathom this, still trying to make sense of something that made absolutely no sense at all.

Haynes looked at him then. Travis knew it. He
felt
it. That skull looked right at him, and did Haynes wink at him? Was that some sly and knowing glance of
acknowledgment?

Got you now, haven’t I?
it said
. Go
figure this one out, Agent Travis.

Or was it merely Travis’s imagination?

He stepped back, trying perhaps to be invisible, to go unnoticed, but he knew that Haynes was fully aware of his presence.

“Two volunteers!” Haynes shouted.

It seemed that everyone in the tent but Travis wanted to volunteer, but Haynes plucked two children from the front row, neither of them more than ten or twelve years old. He positioned them facing each other and at right angles to audience, Haynes himself behind them and facing the crowd.